About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1963)
PAGE 4—JULY, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS GEORGIA Two More State Colleges Admit Negroes; Total Rises to Five MACON wo more state colleges, lo cated at opposite ends of Georgia, desegregated in June. Otis Samuel Johnson, a Negro, was admitted June 10 to Armstrong College in Savannah, in the southeastern part of the state. A 33-year-old Negro woman was registered June 11 at West Georgia College at Carrollton, in the north western part of Georgia. This brings to five the number of public colleges desegregated in Georgia. The others are Georgia Tech and Geor gia State in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in Athens. Johnson, 21, attended two evening classes for the first time June 12. His name and other details were at first withheld after the board of regents of the university system requested that no one not having business with the college be admitted and Savannah Police Chief Sidney B. Barnes Jr., took the position this included newsmen. Armstrong President Foreman Hawes told summer school students at an orientation meeting that any student involved in campus disturbances would be dismissed from the school. Savannah police, state troopers and fire department personnel stood guard around the campus and roadblocks were in evidence. Later, Hawes commended the white students for good behavior under “pre sent conditions.” The registration figure for summer school students at the time Johnson enrolled was reportedly 379. Expansion Set Armstrong will expand from a two- year to a four-year college this fall and a number of Negroes have ap plied for admission. Dr. James E. Boyd, president of West Georgia, withheld the name of the Negro woman enrolled at the Carroll ton school summer session. Another college official said she is the wife of a Carroll County public school teacher and plans to become an elementary school teacher. The campus was quiet and no inci dents were reported. West Georgia en rolled 1,159 students during the last regular term but the size of the sum mer school enrollment was not avail able. An effort to form a White Citizens Georgia Highlights Two more state colleges desegre gated. A Negro student was admitted to a white vocational school in Macon, and Savannah advanced a plan to de segregate this fall. By a 2-to-l decision, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant a Negro request that Atlanta school desegregation be speeded. Negro students are in the majority in 51 of 198 school systems in the state. Color bars in all Catholic parochial schools in Georgia will be eliminated this fall. Council in Carrollton, so far reported ly unsuccessful, was believed to have stemmed in part from the college de segregation. Noting moves to organize the council, the Rev. Donald H. Har rison of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, said that where such organi zations are active, “the result is an atmosphere of separation, alienation, fear and hatred.” Schoolmen Negro Admission To Vocational School Voted The Bibb County Board of Education on June 13 approved the admission of a Negro into the white division of Dudley Hughes Vocational School in Macon. And a plan to desegregate Chatham County and Savannah schools this fall was submitted to a U.S. District Court judge at Brunswick. The admission of Bert Bivins, 22- year-old Macon Negro, was the first desegregation approved in a school operated by the Bibb board. The vo cational school has a Negro division but Bivins wanted to enroll in an electronics course which is taught only in the white division. Negroes have filed several desegre gation petitions with the Bibb board and the board has asked Superior Court to clarify its position in view of a charter provision requiring school segregation. Judge W. D. Aultman delayed a ruling but Negro leaders in Macon said a school desegregation suit would be filed in federal court soon. Bivins’ application was approved be cause the vocational school is a division of the State Department of Vocational Education and is only administered by the local board, and under the cir cumstances the charter segregation provision does not apply, according to Wallace Miller Jr., a member of the Bibb County Board of Education. Chatham Plan U.S. District Judge Frank Scarlett said the Chatham plan calls for de segregation of Savannah schools be ginning with the 12th grade in Sep tember. Negroes had urged that at least three grades be desegregated at once. There are six high schools and some 40 elementary schools in the Chatham County system. Judge Scarlett issued an order of ficially dismissing a Negro injunction plea to halt a group of white people intervening in the original Chatham desegregation suit. But he also signed an order asking Negro plaintiffs to show cause whether the proposed school desegregation plan would not satisfy an order of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal appellate court overruled Scarlett’s order upholding an argu ment for continued segregation in Sa vannah schools. Submission of a de segregation plan by July 1 was de manded and the Chatham County Board of Education went to work on it. Scarlett said the proposal leaves supervision of the desegregation plan entirely in the hands of the Chatham County school superintendent. The present superintendent, D. Leon McCormac, is retiring Aug. 1 and will be replaced by Thord M. Marshall of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., In signing the dismissal or der, Scarlett said his court was not altogether bound by the U.S. Su preme Court’s 1954 school deseg regation ruling because the Su- preme Court could not have reversed its own separate-but-equal decision which stood long before the 1954 ruling. Miscellaneous Catholic School Desegregation To Be Complete Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. McDonough announced June 23 that elementary and high schools in the Savannah diocese will be desegregated this fall. This completes lowering of racial bars in parochial schools in Georgia. The Savannah diocese includes 88 counties and a number of cities in south and central Georgia. The Atlanta diocese, which includes the city of Atlanta and 71 north Georgia counties, was desegregated last fall. ★ ★ ★ Lovell School, by unanimous vote of the board of trustees, denied admission to Negro applicants. The Atlanta school, a private institution, has a church-re lated status with the Episcopal Church but is not controlled by the church. Among the three Negro students who sought to enter Lovell- was the young son of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ★ ★ ★ Horace Mann Bond, a Negro who is dean of Atlanta University, told a United Nations committee in New York that separate-but-equal school facili ties have a ruinous psychological effect on Negroes. Mercer University President Rufus C. Harris, in a speech at Waycross, urged Southern educational leaders to employ more determined effort than is now being observed to avoid the neces sity of federal supervision. ★ ★ ★ Delegates to the National Youth Forum meeting in Atlanta were told by the Rev. Andrew J. Young, a Negro minister, that “A trick of the South is to give the Negro good schools and poor education. In some areas of the North they try to steer all Negroes in to trade schools, regardless of I.Q.,” he said. Southern School News Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency establishd by Southern newspaper editors and educators with the aim of providing accurate, unbiased information to school administrators, public officials and interested lay citizens on developments in education arising from the U. S. Supreme Court opinion of May 17, 1954, declaring compulsory segregation in the public schools unconstitu tional. SERS is not an advocate, is neither pro-segregation nor anti-segregation, but simply reports the facts as it finds them, state-by-state. Published monthly by Southern Education Reporting Service at 1109 19th Ave., S., Nashville, Tennessee. Second class postage paid at Nashville, Tennessee. OFFICERS Bert Struby Chairman Thomas R. Waring Vice Chairman Reed Sarratt Executive Director Tom Flake, Director of Publications Jim Leeson. Director of Information and Research BOARD OF Frank R. Ahlgren, Editor, The Commer cial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Luther H. Foster, President, Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee Institute, Ala. Alexander Heard, Chancellor, Vander bilt University, Nashville, Tenn. C. A. McKnight, Editor, Charlotte Ob server, Charlotte, N.C. Charles Moss, Executive Editor, Nash ville Banner, Nashville, Tenn. Felix C. Robb, President, George Pea body College, Nashville, Tenn. Reed Sarratt, Executive Director, South- Dl RECTORS ern Education Reporting Service, Nashville, Tenn. John Seigenthaler, Editor, Nashville Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn. Don Shoemaker, Editor, Miami Herald, Miami, Fla. Bert Struby, General Manager, Macon Telegraph and News, Macon, Ga. Thomas R. Waring, Editor, The News and Courier, Charleston, S.C. Henry I. Willett, Superintendent of Schools, Richmond, Va. Stephen J. Wright, President, Fisk Uni versity, Nashville, Tenn. CORRESPONDENTS ALABAMA William H. McDonald, Chief Edi torial Writer, Alabama Journal, Montgomery ARKANSAS William T. Shelton, City Editor, Ar kansas Gazette, Little Rock DELAWARE James E. Miller, Managing Editor, Delaware State News, Dover DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Erwin Knoll, Washington Bureau, Newhouse Newspapers FLORIDA Bert Collier, Editorial Writer, Miami Herald GEORGIA Joseph B. Parham, Editor, The Macon News KENTUCKY James S. Pope Jr., Sunday Staff, Louisville Courier-Journal LOUISIANA Patrick E. McCauley, Editorial Writer, New Orleans Times-Picayune MARYLAND Edgar L. Jones, Editorial Writer, Baltimore Sun MISSISSIPPI Kenneth Toler, Jackson Bureau, Memphis Commercial Appeal MISSOURI William K. Wyant Jr., Staff Writer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch NORTH CAROLINA Luix Overbea, Staff Writer, The Journal-Sentinel, Winston-Salem OKLAHOMA Leonard Jackson, Staff Writer, Okla homa City Oklahoman-Times SOUTH CAROLINA William E. Rone Jr., City Editor, The State, Columbia TENNESSEE Ken Morrell, Staff Writer, Nashville Banner TEXAS Richard M. Morehead, Austin Bu reau, Dallas News VIRGINIA Overton Jones, Associate Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch WEST VIRGINIA Thomas F. Stafford, Assistant to the Editor, Charleston Gazette SUBSCRIPTION RATES One year (12 issues), $2. ©roups: five or more copies to different addressees, $1.75 each per year; five or more copies to one addressee, $1.50 each per year. Add 50 cents to above rates for orders outside U.S., Canada and Mexico. Single copies, any issue, 20 cents each. Ten or more copies, any one issue, 15 cents each. MAIL ADDRESS P.O. Box 6156, Nashville, Tennessee 37212. Under Survey White Students Outnumbered In 51 Systems A survey by the State Board of Edu cation disclosed the following: Negro pupils are in the majority in 51 of Georgia’s 198 school systems. Hancock County, with 82 per cent, has the highest percentage of Negro students. Sixteen local systems operate no schools for Negroes, either because there are no Negro children of school age or because there are so few the' are sent to another system. Negro pupils in Atlanta elemental schools exceeded 50 per cent of tow 1 enrollment for the first time in !*»• Negro enrollment was 37 per cent 111 1950. of Negroes make up 28 per cent o Georgia’s population and 33 per ce of the total school enrollment. ★ ★ ★ One hundred teenagers from sta ^j most of them white, met to study ^ discuss racial relations at the firs . sembly of the Youth Forum ° j. United Church of Christ as College, a Negro school in Atlan Court Refuses to Order Speedup by Atlanta Schools The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Ap peals, meeting in New Orleans June 17, refused to order Atlanta to speed up its reverse stairstep public school desegregation The decision was 2 to 1. Judge Grif fin B. Bell of Atlanta and Judge David T. Lewis of Salt Lake City formed the majority. A dissent was filed by Judge Richard T. Rives of Montgomery. The majority opinion said, “ . . . the Atlanta plan is working. Progress is the test, and the necessary transition in taking place. There has been no trou ble. All responsible officials and many private citizens have cooperated to make it work and to preserve public education.” Negroes had appealed after Judge Frank Hooper of the U.S. District Court in Atlanta had turned down their re quest that all students be reassigned on the basis of school districts and the length of the desegregation span be shortened from 12 to seven years. Future efferts to speed up a court- approved plan should first be taken up with the school board, the decision said. “The courts are ill-equipped to run the schools. “Litigants must not ignore school officials and school officials must not abdicate their functions to the courts. They, like the courts, are bound by the Constitution.” Noting that the district court plan is for the transition period, the ruling said time will tell whether other ques tions regarding discrimination in the areas of extra-curricular activities or leading from the assignment of teacher personnel are rendered moot. “There is no evidence to support a charge of discrimination in extra-cur ricular activities in the grades that have been desegregated in Atlanta,” the court said, “and the district court did not err in postponing the consider ation of the teacher assignment ques tion.” Judge Rives, in his dissent, called the majority decision “a backward step.” The essential fact, he said, is that Atlanta schools do not have a single grade, in either the grammar or high schools, in which Negro children are permitted to become students on the same basis as are white children. Negro students in the top three “desegregated” grades, he said, cannot enter such desegregated schools with out being subjected to requirements that do not apply to any white student in the grade. Continuing, Rives said that even though the appellants did not appeal from the original decision of the trial court approving the transfer plan, this did not foreclose the right of appel lants to complain that, when the plan was actually put into operation, it was operated in a manner that clearly discriminated against the Negro stu dents. The majority opinion, Rives said, is requiring a prompter complaince with the Supreme Court’s decision in New Orleans and Pensacola than is being recuired in Atlanta. Eleventh and 12th grades in Atlanta were desegregated in the fall of 1961 and the tenth grade in 1962. The ninth grade will be desegregated in Septem ber of this year under the grade-a- year plan. Judge Rives said he favored desegregating the eighth and ninth grades in 1963 and the fifth, sixth and seventh grades in 1964. Four Questions The majority opinion posed four questions: • Can the Atlanta plan be justified in the light of results of its operations to date? • Assuming that it may, has it been applied in a discriminatory manner? • Was it error for the district court to postpone consideration of the prac tice relating to assignment of teachers? • Did the court err in not speeding up the plan as suggested by appe ^ “Gradualism in desegregation, the usual,” the court said, is a ^ an accepted mode with the emp oe ,” on getting the job of transition ^ The court went on to say the board acted in “utmost S throughout this litigation an trict judge proceeded “in a pe and wise manner to accor a P ^ jjje their constitutional rights w . same time preserving the „ process in the transition peri ^ 7- There are now 41 all-b®S r ° all-white elementary schools jj* ta, since the plan has not r i e ' elementary grades. There segregated high schools, ' e coT d&- and six all-white in Atlanta * ^ to evidence presented befo ^ Al in commenting on the U t;P . lanta School Supt. J ohn ' a l s co^ said: “We’re happy the ^ m ade 0 has agreed progress is he Atlanta.”
