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PAGE 16—MARCH, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
SOUTH CAROLINA
Desegregation Requests
Made in Three Districts
COLUMBIA
tree South Carolina school
boards were faced during
February with preliminary ac
tions seeking desegregation.
In industrial Greenville, counsel for
the schools refused a request by the
Negro plaintiff in a desegregation suit
brought last August that it stipulate
four facts related to the case.
In Rock Hill near the North Caro
lina border, 14 Negroes requested
transfer to all-white schools.
And in low-country Orangeburg, be
lief was expressed that a desegregation
suit was imminent following similar
requests for transfers.
In the meantime, rumors persisted
that at least two school boards in the
state—and perhaps more—were laying
the groundwork quietly for voluntary
desegregation next September.
Legal Skirmish
In the first legal skirmishing since
the Greenville case (Whittenberg v.
School District of Greenville County et
al.) was filed Aug. 19, Negro attorneys
sought four specific admissions from the
school board.
They were:
• “That the defendants herein are
operating the public schools of Green
ville County, South Carolina, on a raci
ally segregated basis.
• “That the defendants operate 77
schools which are limited to attendance
by white students only and which are
staffed by white teachers, principals
and other white professional personnel.
• “That the defendants operate 17
schools which are limited to attend
ance by Negro students only and
which are staffed by Negro . . . per
sonnel.
• “That the assignment of profes
sional personnel in the School District
. . . is determined solely by the race
and color of the children attending the
particular school and the race and
color of the personnel to be assigned.”
Request Refused
The request, filed by a battery of
lawyers that included four who have
been associated with many desegrega
tion efforts in this area, asked for an
swers in ten days. It was served Feb.
12.
School Board Attorney E. P. (Ted)
Riley, retiring state chairman of the
Democratic Party, waited only five
days.
In each case he refused to make the
admission requested on the ground that
it was “irrelevant to the issues raised
in the pleadings.”
The reply also stated that “the de
fendants submit that the only school
in issue in this action is the school
covered by the plaintiff’s application
for admission.”
Transfer Sought
The suit was brought in the name
of Elaine Whittenberg, then 11, by her
father, a Greenville service—station
operator. She seeks to transfer from
all-Negro Gower School to all-white
Anderson Street School.
Although she was the only listed
plaintiff, four other Negro youngsters
sought transfers about the same time.
Intervention motions were subsequent
ly filed.
The Greenville district is the state’s
largest in population. Its ratio of Ne
groes to whites is relatively low.
On February 25 Supt. W. C. Sullivan
of Rock Hill School District 3 acknowl
edged that ten Negro parents, repre
senting 14 minors, had applied for
transfer from Negro to white schools.
‘Normal Procedure’
The school trustees immediately an
nounced they would follow “normal
procedure” on the requests and take no
action until 30 or 60 days before the
opening of the new school year in Sep
tember.
Ten of the children want to leave
Emmett Scott High School (Negro) in
favor of Rock Hill High School (white).
The other four want to move from
Edgewood Elementary School to Sylvia
Circle School.
One of the students is teenager
Kathleen Knox, daughter of the Rev.
W. B. Knox, president of the Rock
Hill branch of the NAACP.
Other Negro parents making the re
quests were Lizzie M. Good, Ida Cun
ningham, Iday Watson, Mary A. Young,
Ruth E. Young, Melissa D. Murdock,
Lewis Knox, Elizabeth Hope and the
Rev. Robert G. Toatley.
Rock Hill is a manufacturing center
of 29,400 located 20 miles south of
Charlotte, N.C.
★ ★ ★
The status of segregation in Orange
burg, county seat of a downstate agri
cultural and industrial county with a
heavy Negro population, was presented
to the State School (Segregation) Com
mittee Feb. 27.
Representatives of the Orangeburg
school system appeared before the
committee, headed by State Sen. L.
Marion Gressette
o f neighboring
Calhoun County,
during a meeting
of the 15-member
group at the State
House in Colum
bia.
They expressed
belief that there
is a “probability”
of desegregation
suits being filed
against the school
system because they have several re
quests for transfers to white schools
from Negro students. Sen. Gressette
released no other information on the
closed discussion.
He said his committee will soon make
a report “relating ... to the field of
public education.”
Legislative Action
Bill Would Give
Local Authorities
Broadened Power
On the calendar and ready for action
in the House of Representatives as
February ended was a bill that would
broaden the powers of local school
boards in segregation issues and enable
them to counter-attack if federal im-
South Carolina Highlights
Three South Carolina school
boards were faced with preliminary
desegregation actions.
A General Assembly bill would
empower local school boards to
charge fees to servicemen’s children
if the U.S. government cuts off its
impacted-area aid because of segre
gation practices and would addition
ally give the school trustees greater
powers in the area of pupil assign
ment.
Two of the first Negroes to enter
the University of South Carolina in
this century said indifferences and a
lack of communications were the
chief annoyances during their first
semester at the school.
Students at all-Negro South Caro
lina State College asked changes in
law that would allow whites to at
tend and teach at the school.
pacted-area funds are cut off.
The House Education and Public
Works Committee, which reported out
the bill on Feb. 27, amended a previ
ously passed Senate version to increase
school board authority even more than
the original bill had.
If the federal government should cut
off funds it pays schools in impacted
areas, this measure would permit local
school trustees to charge children of
servicemen and other federally con
nected personnel tuition fees equal to
the per-pupil cost of education in the
area.
The second portion of the bill gives
local boards the power to transfer any
pupils from one public school to an
other within the district “so as to pro
mote the best interests of education”
and gives them the right to determine
what school any pupil may enter.
Approximately 30 South Carolina
school districts receive about $4 million
a year in federal impacted-area funds.
★ ★ ★
A fund totaling $250,000 is expected
to be available to start the tuition-
grants plan for private schools during
the fiscal year beginning in July.
The plan, designed as a “safety
valve” against wholesale desegregation
of the public schools, was enacted last
year. But the first appropriation to get
it started was included in the current
money bill, which was in a conference
committee to iron out differences in
the House and Senate versions as Feb
ruary ended.
Although Rep. Clary H. Smith of
Spartanburg attemped to re-channel
the $250,000 for grants into teacher-
pay increases, the allocation remained
in both versions.
Gov. Donald S. Russell had asked $1
million to start the program last year.
Each grant will be deducted from the
amount the participating school district
receives in state aid. One reason for
the quarter-million-dollar fund is to
take care of grants requests from pupils
already attending private schools.
One state official said the figure was
“pulled out of the air.”
No applications have been received
by the State Department of Education
to date and only four school districts—
three in Charleston County alone—
have indicated a willingness to partici
pate in the plan.
But Charleston’s School District 20
now has some desegregation and is
under a federal-court order to deseg
regate fully next September. Segrega
tion policies of a number of other
districts are under attack in the courts.
In the Colleges
Two USC Negroes Discuss Attitudes
Two of the University of South Caro
lina’s four Negro students said Feb. 17
that indifference toward them by white
student and a lack of communications
were the biggest annoyances they en
countered during their first semester
at the previously all-white school.
The two, political science major Rob
ert G. Anderson of Greenville and
biology major Henri Monteith of Co
lumbia, appeared on a panel before the
biracial Columbia Council on Human
Relations.
With them on the panel were two
white USC students—Jean Derrick of
Columbia and Mary Carleton O’Neal of
Columbus, Ga.
Miss Montieth said, “The university
has been formally integrated, but that’s
all.”
She agreed with Anderson that “a
lack of communications exists” and that
“too many students are indifferent.”
Anderson, who is a member of the
university’s highly successful debate
team, added that there are still days
when he sees portions of the USC cam
pus (in downtown Columbia) for the
first time.
“But I’m proud to say,” he added,
“I’ve met students who believe in my
sincere efforts to get an education at
the university.”
He also expressed surprise that most
of the friendships he has developed at
the university are with Southerners.
Anderson, who previously attended
Clark College in Atlanta, was, along
with two other Negro men, admitted
voluntarily to the 7,000-student state
university last September after Miss
Monteith successfully went to court
to effect her transfer from the College
of Notre Dame in Baltimore to USC.
They were the first Negro students at
the institution since Reconstruction.
Derrick, a sociology major, told the
meeting he had sensed “a quiet, deep
resentment” among some students prior
to the Negroes’ entry. He said he
thought the Negroes’ range of friends
in the student body was widening.
Miss O’Neal disclosed that a student
committee had heen formed to help
ease desegregation. She added that
much good had been done by the of
ficials of the school in preparation for
the event.
In the fall, the university suggested
that, in the interest of safety, the Ne
groes not attend athletic events. But
Miss Montieth disclosed that she and
Lucinda Brawley, Negro co-ed at
Clemson College, the state’s second
largest school, had attended an athletic
event shortly before the end of the
semester. She said she now believes she
can attend all USC events.
Anderson, who told the group he
sought entrance into the university
primarily because he is a South Caro
linian, said, “I now realize that South
Carolina can be as good as I can help
make it.”
★ ★ ★
Certain students at South Carolina
State at Orangeburg, the state’s only
government-supported Negro college,
OUTSIDE THE SOUTH
New York Board Ordered
To End Racial Imbalance
A federal court has held for
the first time that a school
board violates the equal protec
tion clause of the 14th Amend
ment by continuing de facto seg
regation — or racial imbalance —
through a neighborhood schools
policy.
U.S. District Judge Joseph C. Zavatt
on Jan. 24 ordered the Manhassett,
N.Y., school board, on Long Island, to
submit a plan by April 6 for ending the
de facto segregation in the elementary
grades by next September.
The National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People, which
has fought de facto segregation in sev
eral lawsuits, called Zavatt’s ruling a
landmark decision. Robert L. Carter,
the NAACP’s general counsel, said the
59-page opinion would “carry more
weight” than any other decision on the
issue.
Two State Supreme Court Justices
in New York state, ruling in other
cases, have held that school officials
could not consider race in redrawing
school zones, even if the intent was
to end de facto segregation. State Su
preme Court Justice Edward G. Baker,
in his ruling last September, stopped
a New York City plan to end racial
imbalance in transferring white stu
dents from their neighborhood junior
high (Balaban et al. v. Rubin et al.,
SSN November, 1963). On Jan. 10,
State Supreme Court Justice Isadore
Bookstein ruled that Malverne, N.Y.,
could not consider race in drawing
school zones, as ordered by State Com
missioner of Education James E. Allen
Jr.
Principal Issue
Racial imbalance resulting from nat
ural causes, such as a neighborhood
schools policy, has been the principal
issue of recent suits in the Northern
and Western states. In New Rochelle,
N.Y., (Taylor et al v. Board of Edu
cation et al, SSN, January, 1962), the
federal courts ordered the school board
to permit Negro students to transfer
to schools outside the district because
the board at one time had created a
racially segregated school and therefore
was under constitutionally imposed
duty to end segregation.
A federal district court, in refusing
to dismiss the Hempstead, L.I., school
suit (Branche et al v. Board of Educa
tion et al, SSN, May, 1962), held that
a school board cannot ignore segrega
tion resulting from compulsory attend
ance in a neighborhood school. This
decision lacked the weight of the recent
Manhassett one since a full hearing
on the merits of the earlier case had
not been held and the judge was con
sidering only a motion for a summary
judgment.
The first case expected to present
the issue of de facto segregation
squarely to the U.S. Supreme Court
is that involving the Gary, Ind., school
board (Bell et al v. School City of Gary
et al, SSN, June, 1963). Both federal,
district and circuit courts have held in
this case that the school board is not
obligated to correct any racial im
balance caused by neighborhood
schools. “Racial balance in our public
schools is not constitutionally man
dated,” U.S. District Judge George N.
on Campus
have informally petitioned the General
Assembly to permit whites to enroll
or teach at their school.
The petition, found on the college’s
bulletin board, asked the legislature to
amend two sections of the South Caro
lina code of laws so as to eliminate
restrictive clauses.
The first section says the school is
for the “higher education of the colored
youth of the state.” The next says that
the faculty and the president shall be
“of the Negro race.”
The unsigned notice expressed fear
that South Carolina State will be de
nied its pro-rata share of federal grants
if such racial clauses are retained.
The petition also deplored the legis
lature’s practice of electing only whites
to the board of trustees and called for
the election of non-whites this year.
South Carolina State, with 2,400 stu
dents, is the state’s third-largest insti
tution of high learning.
Beamer ruled on Jan. 29, 1963.
Because of the complexity 0 f t}, t
issue in de facto segregation and tl e
number of conflicting court decision
on the subject, Judge Zavatt concluded
his decision in the Manhassett case
with a statement of “precisely vvha-
today’s opinion has and has not de
cided.” He continued:
“The court does not hold that the
neighborhood school policy per se is
unconstitutional; it does hold that this
policy is not immutable. It does not
hold that racial imbalance and segrega.
tion are synonymous or that racial
imbalance, not tantamount to segre- i
gation, is violative of the Constitution
It does hold that, by maintaining and
perpetuating a segregated school sys
tem, the defendant Board has trans- i
gressed the prohibitions of the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. The court does not hold
that the Constitution requires a com
pulsive distribution of school children
on the basis of race in order to achieve
a proportional representation of whites
and Negro children in each elementary
school within a school district. There
is no authority to support this claim
of the plaintiffs. There is not repre
sented here the question as to whether
or not such compulsive distribution,
though not required, may be permitted
under the Constitution or by state
law. ... I
“This decision makes unnecessary a
determination as to whether the seg
regation found to exist is violative
of other clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment or of the Civil Rights Act’
99.2 Per Cent Segregated
Manhassett has three elementary
schools—two of them all-white schools !
and one, Valley Elementary, with an
enrollment of 94 per cent Negro. Judge
Zavatt said that the “separation of 100
per cent of the Negro children from
99.2 per cent of the white children ap
proximates closely the total separation
condemned in Brown. The fact that 100
per cent of the Negro children are
not separated from eight-tenths of one
per cent of the white children does not
divest it of its segregated character.
The decision stated:
“. . . the separation of the Negro
elementary school children is segrega
tion. It is segregation by law—the lav
of the School Board. In the light of the
existing facts, the continuance of the
defendant Board’s impenetrable attend
ance lines amounts to nothing less than
state imposed segregation. ... j
“In a publicly supported, mandator;
state educational system, the plain tins
have the civil right not to be segre
gated, not to be compelled to atten
a school in which all of the Negro c
dren are educated separate and apa
from over 99 per cent of their w
contemporaries.”
Injury by Segregation
to whether the plaintiffs ^
injured by segregation, the co
. despite the infirmities
-tainties of presently ay
s of measuring estimated wten
potential and scholastic a
, the evidence in this case
of establishing a causal re ^
sen the scholastic achieyemem _
/alley children and their se jTj, e
from practically all of their
mporaries. ^
re denial of the right not ^
gated cannot be assauag ^
jrted by evidence indica s ^
rachievement in the three ^
ue in whole or in pa 1 0 r
economic level, home in ijjje
ured intelligence quotien
of public education in ° ur “ J eI nk
is not limited to these a ^ e r
icts. It encompasses a j*
nation for participation
stream of our society.
.ream ui uui , •
are dealing with Leaves
l ge 5 to 11. They see the ^
in an almost entirely Neg
tending a school of £in ; . „ ^o-
If they emerge beyond tn ^
if the Valley area into « ^
it large, they enter a
inhabited only by white rjp
are not so mature an‘ tb c
as to distinguish bet Z aI ^ t
eparation of all Negros St 2 "’
mandatory or pemnssi ^
based on race and tn ^
al situation prevailing you
district. The Valley
+V>/-V CQTYIP feElinS ®
* e *5
aisiiiu. ■ e
es the same feeling °
to their status w‘ g up i*f
as was found by **
Brown to flow
l Brown to flow T 0 pefi’
r similar segregation F
Rtnt.p law.”