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VOL. 10, NO. 10
THE
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Objective
APRIL, 1964
Gradual Plans Before High Court;
Five Districts To Open All Grades
Leadership Confers in Little Rock
0zell Sutton of COCA; school board president Russell H. Matson Jr.; Dr. Garman
P. Freeman of COCA; Dr. W. H. Townsend, COCA president.
ARKANSAS
Little Rock Board Votes
12-Grade Desegregation
T he U.S. Supreme Court is ex
pected to rule this spring on
gradual desegregation plans for
schools. Five Southern districts
already have announced they
would end their gradual plans
and open all grades in all schools
to both races in the fall.
Gradual desegregation programs
came under sharp attack before the
Supreme Court in March when NAACP
attorneys argued that Atlanta’s grade-
a-year plan does not meet the criterion
of “deliberate speed.” The court has
heard arguments recently on the At
lanta, Ga., and Prince Edward County,
Va., cases, and the ruling in both suits
is expected to have considerable legal
implications for school desegregation
in general.
The five districts planning to extend
their desegregation plans in the fall in
clude Knoxville and Knox County,
Tenn.; Little Rock, Ark.; Reidsville and
Randolph County, N. C. In addition,
Carburrus County, N. C., has agreed
to begin desegregation in September by
allowing all children to attend any
school in the district in which they re
side.
LITTLE ROCK
T he Little Rock school board
voted March 24 to extend its
desegregation plan to all 12 grades
next September.
Four of the 12 grades were segre
gated this year, and two would have
been desegregated this fall under the
previous plan. Thus, the new decision
"ill extend desegregation to all 12
grades one year earlier than had been
planned.
The board’s decision came almost
simultaneously with an announcement
ham Little Rock Negro groups that
their dissatisfaction with the board had
reached the point that they would
Pmket the board’s next meeting, and
w ould urge all Negro students to boy-
wtt the public schools on Monday
Pnl 6. The picketing was carried out,
at the board on April 3 met some of
e Negroes’ terms and the boycott
* as postponed. (See Community
action.)
In the eight desegregated grades this
. e ^~ a U hut the second, third, fifth and
1X grades—123 of the 7,046 Negroes
in the Little Rock system are attending
school with the white pupils. They are
scattered through 15 schools.
The second and fifth grades would
have been desegregated in September
by the promotion of the Negro children
in the first and fourth grades this year.
The board’s decision in March was to
proceed with desegregation of the third
and sixth grades in the 1964-65 school
year, instead of waiting one more year.
Little Rock put its desegregation
plan into effect in September, 1957. The
original plan was to desegregate the
three high-school grades that year,
then in due time the three junior high
school grades, then the six elementary
school grades, and to have all 12 grades
desegregated by the 1963-64 school
year. This plan was drawn up volun
tarily by the Little Rock school board
but it was attacked by the NAACP as
being too slow. The federal courts ap
proved the plan and ordered it put
into effect.
The school board did not proceed
with its original plan because of the
intervention of Gov. Orval E. Faubus
(See LITTLE ROCK, Page 8)
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
S
WASHINGTON
enate debate on the Admin-
c . istra ti°n’ s civil-rights bill
an _, d l ast through the summer
M > n to the fall, Majority Leader
•Wd 1 ^ ans ^ e ld (D-Mont.) said
p^, 1 T- His appraisal of the pros-
3 S S ^ nvo ^ing cloture against
° ut hem filibuster was the most
inustic yet made by any sup-
X er .of the legislation.
t u Vil ~ rights m easure formally be-
ate n if penc *I n g business of the Sen-
"'eek^ j rc ^ 26 after two and a half
the bln 0 * ^ e ^ ate on whether to place
'all
°n the calendar. In two roll-
to caj° tes ^\ e Senate voted 67-to-17
she^T* 1 Up The bill and 50-to-34 to
ID.0J. a m °tion by Sen. Wayne Morse
Ike Sen t t0 sen< ^ legislation to
day- , a e Judiciary Committee for 10
i, 1 hearings.
beiwj 6 two Procedural votes, Sen.
^ L>. Rile coll /"Tt /-«„ \ a 1 3
p RiVA-CULUcU VULCb, OC11
tr of iL ' Bussell (D-Ga.), floor lead-
^hforti 6 ®° ut hern forces, declared:
hh o-j na J-ely, we have lost a skirm-
i
i
k> fink! ® battle. We shall now begin
„ the war.”
1Jf e focy aate discussions of the meas-
ll °tls a „ on such tangential ques-
Su newsletter” issued by North-
^t>er &c] POrters of the bill and news-
.'j'ertisements placed by a group
j. se n the Coordinating Com-
°t fundamental American
at ion S ’ nc ” w hich opposes the leg-
Southemers sharply attacked the
newsletter and Northerners criticized
the advertisements, charging that they
were financed largely through the Mis
sissippi State Sovereignty Commission
with funds appropriated by the Missis
sippi state legislature.
As the debate moved into the sub
stance of the civil-rights bill, Sen.
James O. Eastland (D-Miss.) charged
March 21 that the effect of Title IV,
which deals with school desegregation,
would be to impose desegregation on
the South while preserving de facto
segregation in the North. He said this
would happen because segregated hous
ing patterns are more prevalent in
Northern communities.
Eastland said Southern senators
would offer an amendment to the bill
requiring school transfers to end racial
“imbalances.” As
it now stands, the
bill includes an
amendment added
in the House of
R e p r e sentatives
stating that deseg
regation was not
intended to re
quire transporting
pupils out of their
school neighbor
hoods. Eastland
said the amend- eastland
ment was written
to accommodate New York, and should
not be allowed to stay in the bill.
Knoxville announced its plans for
complete desegregation when school
board attorneys appeared in the U. S.
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals at Cin
cinnati on Feb. 20 to argue an appeal
by the Negro plaintiffs in the Knoxville
suit. The city system began admitting
Negroes to schools with whites by
court order in 1960, and about 220 Ne
groes now attend the first six grades
of 13 previously all-white schools.
County Joins City
The Board of Education of Knox
County, surrounding Knoxville, voted
on April 1 to extend desegregation
through the remaining grades this fall.
The county schools voluntarily began
a desegregation plan similar to Knox
ville’s after the city had received its
court order. The county now has about
48 Negroes in biracial schools.
Little Rock’s decision to extend its
desegregation plan to all 12 grades next
school year will complete the school
board’s plan one year earlier than had
been planned. This school year, the city
system has 123 Negroes attending bi
racial schools in all grades but the
second, third, fifth and sixth. The sec
ond and fifth originally were the only
ones scheduled to be added next fall
but the board decided on March 24 to
include all four grades.
Both Randolph County and Reids
ville had begun desegregation volun
tarily in 1963, using a gradual approach,
and they still faced desegregation suits
filed by Negro students. On March 20,
U. S. District Judge Edwin M. Stanley
signed a consent order, approving an
agreement negotiated by attorneys for
both sides. The Reidsville plan pro
vided that students entering the school
system, either at the first grade or
above, must request admission to the
school of their choice. In Randolph
County, any pupil may be reassigned to
any school within the attendance area
in which he resides, provided the school
teaches the child’s grade.
Three days earlier, Judge Stanley
had signed a similar consent order in
the Cabarrus County school suit. The
district will desegregate for the first
time next September. All children can
be assigned “without cause or reason,
to any school in the district in which
said parents and child or children may
reside, . . .” the order provides.
In addition to consent agreements
(See THE REGION, Page 20)
In This Issue
State Reports
Alabama 10
Arkansas 1
Delaware 4
District of Columbia 1
Florida 3
Georgia 1
Kentucky 15
Louisiana 12
Maryland 18
Mississippi 14
Missouri 13
North Carolina 16
Oklahoma 7
South Carolina 5
Tennessee 6
Texas 7
Virginia 1
West Virginia 11
Special Articles
The Region 1
SERS Board 4
Ford Foundation Grants 19
GEORGIA
Stairstep Program Used
By Atlanta Challenged
Leader Sees Summer-Long Debate
MACON
Tn a case that could have legal reverberations far beyond Atlanta,
the Supreme Court of the United States was asked in Washington
March 31 to decide whether that city’s grade-a-year school desegrega
tion plan meets the criterion of “deliberate speed.”
Mrs. Constance Baker Motley, associate counsel of the NAACP
Legal Defense and Education Fund, argued that it does not, and asked
the high court to order Atlanta school officials to “disestablish segrega
tion.”
Mr. Motley was supported by Assistant U.S. Attorney Burke Mar
shall, who appeared as a friend of the court to declare that “any sys
tem that starts with initial racial assignment and depends on transfer
afterwards does not comport with” the court’s original school desegre
gation decision of May 17, 1954.
But A. C. (Pete) Latimer, a former
member of the Atlanta Board of Edu
cation and now its attorney, urged the
Supreme Court to allow gradual transi
tion “from a totally segregated system
to a desegregated one.”
Sharp Differences
“I do not propose to sit idly by and
see the State of New York by some
sort of double standard be placed in
the category of a state that can oper
ate its public schools to suit its own
peculiar ideas of what is and it not
discrimination . . . and have Missis
sippi conform to some standard that is
written by the federal government,”
said Eastland.
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) said
he saw a substantial difference be
tween New York efforts to achieve de
segregation beyond the requirements
of court decisions and Mississippi’s re
fusal to make a start desegregating. Sen.
Kenneth B. Keating (R-N.Y) also de
fended his state’s efforts and predicted
that only har^rtcore opponents of the
civil-rights bill would vote for East
land’s amendment.
But Sen. Sam J. Ervin (D-N.C.) in
dicated he would not favor the racial
(See MANSFIELD, Page 17)
In more than two hours of final
arguments on the case (Calhoun vs.
Latimer), the Supreme Court heard
sharp differences on the facts as well
as the legal implications of Atlanta’s
stairstep plan.
“It’s quite evident that we’re con
fused,” Chief Justice Earl Warren said.
He asked both sides to file additional
papers for clarification. A decision is
expected this spring.
The confusion apparently stemmed
from the fact that Atlanta’s plan has
been revised since it was sustained
last fall by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals. A number of pupil-trans
fer criteria to which Mrs. Motley and
Marshall addressed objections are to
be dropped this fall in favor of only
one standard—proximity to the school
to which assignment is requested, Lati
mer told the court.
Under the Atlanta plan, 12th and
11th grades were desegregated in 1961,
(See U. S., Page 2)
VIRGINIA
Prince Edward
School-Opening
Decision Asked
RICHMOND
a 13-year legal history
i ’ITING
of “delays and frustrations,”
NAACP General Counsel Robert
L. Carter asked the Supreme
Court of the United States on
March 30 to order prompt reopen
ing and desegregation of the pub
lic schools of Prince Edward
County, Va.
The high court in Washington heard
more than three hours of final argu
ments in the case (Griffin vs. County
Board of Prince Edward), and then
took it under advisement. Prince Ed
ward County was one of five localities
that figured in the court’s original
(See PRINCE EDWARD, Page 20)
Next Month;
Ten Years in Review
A comprehensive, factual, objective survey of developments in
the decade since the Supreme Court's school desegregation deci
sion of May 17, 1954. Written and edited by the staff of
Southern School News