Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 12—APRIL, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
LOUISIANA
Orleans Board Rejects Broadening
Of Desegregation; Gets New Plea
NEW ORLEANS
1 1 '’he Orleans Parish school
board on March 9 reiterated
its rejection of a plea by a Negro
parent-teacher group for a broad
ened base of desegregation in the
elementary schools.
Four days later, on March 15, an
addendum to the petition of the New
Orleans Parent-Teacher Association
Council was delivered to the board
asking for even further broadening of
school desegregation and desegregation
of professional and nonprofessional
staffs.
By unanimous vote, the school board
approved a report by President Lloyd
J. Rittner recounting the circumstances
surrounding the petition of Oct. 28,
1965, asking for desegregation of all
elementary grades from kindergarten
through the sixth.
Rittner said in his statement to the
board March 9: “As a result of this
extensive study (ordered by the board
in October), and based upon its prior
experience, this board is convinced that
granting the request contained in the
petition to immediately broaden the
base of integration to include all the
elementary grades from kindergarten
through the sixth grade, is not feas
ible either from an administrative, fi
nancial or educational point of view;
and that this board’s previously adopt
ed plan of gradual desegregation of
the public schools of this parish, is
infinitely more sound than the course
of action suggested in the aforesaid
petition.
“This board is aware of all the prob
lems set forth in the subject petition,
but is satisfied that said problems have
absolutely nothing to do with broaden
ing the base of integration in the ele
mentary schools of this period.
“Furthermore, this board has found
that many of the conclusions drawn
by petitioners from facts presented in
their petition are erroneous. For ex
ample, the size of an elementary school
has no relationship to the achievement
level of the students enrolled therein.
A comparison of the results of achieve
ment tests given to students in the
sixth grade of 41 Negro elementary
schools in March, 1963, indicate that
in the schools which comprise the up
per quartile in population a slightly
larger percentage of students scored
at or above the national average than
did those students in schools which
comprise the lowest quartile.”
Goals Listed
The board said its goals and the
goals of the staff are:
“(a) To raise the achievement level,
and the quality of instruction, and to
improve the curriculum of all the pub
lic schools of this parish.
“(b) To increase the number of con
sultants, and assistant principals at the
junior high school level and in the
larger elementary schools.
“(c) To alleviate overcrowded con-
Legal Action
ditions which exist in some of the
schools of this parish.
“(d) To find the additional financial
support necessary to accommodate the
anticipated continued growth of the
public school system of this parish;
and,
“(e) To accomplish all the foregoing
while continuing to comply with the
orders of the federal court to desegre
gate the public schools of this parish
with all deliberate speed.”
In its March 13 communication to
the board, signed like the previous ones
by William J. Washington as chairman
of the Social Action Committee, the
New Orleans PTA Council said:
“Integration is a total process which
is not completed until all students at
all grade levels and the professional
staff as well as the non-professional
staff are assigned without regard to
race, color or creed.”
The group made three specific re
quests:
“1. That the Orleans Parish School
Board will broaden the base of inte
gration to include all grades from kin
dergarten through high school in Sep
tember 1964.
“2. That all employes, professional as
well as non-professional, will be em
ployed without regard to race begin
ning in September, 1964.
“3. That assistant principals will be
employed and assigned to all schools
where the enrollment is in excess of
the recommended maximum of the
Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools.”
Crowded Negro Schools
Concerning crowded conditions in
Negro schools, the PTA Council said:
“Great concern and promise of relief
from overcrowded conditions in the
Negro elementary schools were ex
pressed in a hearing of April 24, 1963,
before the U. S. District Court for the
Eastern District of Louisiana with the
Honorable Frank B. Ellis presiding and
in a document purported to be an
answer to our petition of Oct. 28, 1963,
addressed to the president and mem
bers of the Orleans Parish School Board,
signed by Mr. O. Perry Walker (su
perintendent) and dated Nov. 25, 1963.
“The research done by members of
this committee shows there is still pla-
tooning and overcrowded schools and
classes in excess of the maximum for
accreditation by the Southern Asso
ciation of Colleges and Schools and
approved by the Louisiana State De
partment of Education.”
The petition listed 35 of the city’s
42 Negro elementary schools and cited
enrollment figures which, it contended,
showed the schools or classes within the
schools to be overcrowded.
★ ★ ★
The largest private nonsectarian
school in the state, supported largely
by the state-financed grant-in-aid pro
gram, closed in March due to financial
Judge Takes St. Helena Case
Motion Under Advisement
Motion for a court order to force
prompt desegregation of St. Helena
Parish public schools was taken under
advisement March 6 by U.S. District
Judge E. Gordon West of Baton Rouge.
Following hearing on the petition,
Judge West said the St. Helena Parish
school board would have “ample time”
in which to work
out a desegrega
tion proposal. At
torneys for the
National Associa
tion for the Ad-
vancement of
Colored People
had requested
that the board be
given 30 days.
Attorney Nor
man Amaker con
tended that the
school board had acted in bad faith
and that the “integrity” of the court’s
1960 desegregation order was at stake.
Federal Judge J. Skelly Wright in that
year ordered both the St. Helena Par
ish School Board and the East Baton
Rouge Parish School Board to submit
desegregation plans.
Succeeding Judge Wright, Judge
West last year received and approved
WEST
the East Baton Rouge desegregation
proposal. But Judge West pointed out
that no time limit has been set for the
St. Helena board.
Furthermore, he said, it has been
“standard procedure” for school boards
to wait until they have been given
definite deadlines before acting.
Judge West said he believed the St.
Helena board had acted in “utter good
faith” in this matter and that the board
would have been in bad faith had it
not exhausted every legal remedy to
maintain the school system “as they
thought it should be.”
Counsel for the plaintiffs argued that
an order to prepare a plan of desegre
gation had been in effect since 1960
and that further steps now should be
taken even though “some persons” re
gard the 1954 decision of the U.S. Su
preme Court in Brown v. Board of
Education to be “one of the truly re
grettable decisions of all time.”
This drew a retort from Judge West
who noted that he had used the quoted
phrase last year in ordering the East
Baton Rouge school board to present a
desegregation plan.
“I stated that in a previous decision,”
Judge West declared, “and I reiterate
it today.”
and other difficulties. Tuition grants to
its pupils were suspended.
Junior University of New Orleans,
East, a 12-grade school that began op
eration in 1963, was ousted from its
high-rise building on St. Charles Ave.,
which was sold at auction Feb. 28.
Efforts were made during the first
two weeks of March to obtain new
quarters for the school in Jefferson
Parish. Four sites were chosen by
JUNO authorities and each was de
clared unsuitable for school purposes
by Jefferson Parish health officials.
On March 11, the Louisiana Financial
Assistance Commission, which admin
isters the state grant-in-aid program,
suspended monthly tuition payments.
As of the beginning of the current
school year, 921 pupils at the school
were approved for tuition grants, which
in September totaled $29,464.
In announcing the commission’s de
cision to suspend the grants, James
Fountain, commission director, said the
school ceased to exist at its St. Charles
Ave. location on Feb. 27 and that the
commission would watch to see what
develops.
May Be Reinstated
“As soon as the (school’s) director
shows the commission he has a bona
fide school in operation, these grants
will be reinstated,” Fountain said.
He asserted that under commision
rules a school must show that it has
buildings and qualified teachers if
children attending are to receive the
state grants.
JUNO operates a separate campus
on the West Bank of the Mississippi.
Initially the only facility of the private
institution, in 1962-63 it enrolled 420
pupils who received $108,548 in tuition
grants. With the opening of the East
Bank school last fall, the West Bank
JUNO enrollment dropped to 254 pu
pils who, in September 1963, received
$8,108 in grants.
★ ★ ★
Earlier in the month, two citizens’
organizations had some things to say
about the tuition-grant program. The
First District Parent-Teachers Associa
tion on March 5 urged the state legis
lature to revoke the grant-in-aid pro
gram entirely.
The program, said an adopted reso
lution, has been subject to many abuses
Political Action
Louisiana Highlights
A request for broadening elemen
tary-school desegregation was re
jected by the Orleans Parish School
Board, while yet another plea for
extending desegregation to all grade
levels and to professional and non
professional staffs was made by a
Negro parent-teacher group.
Grants-in-aid to pupils attending
Louisiana’s largest private, non-sec
tarian school were suspended after
the school’s main building was sold
at auction.
A Negro honor student at one of
Baton Rouge’s desegregated high
schools applied for enrollment as a
freshman at Louisiana State Univer-
sity which thus far has admitted
Negroes only to its graduate divi
sions.
In a Founder’s Day address, South-
em University’s president recounted
the growth in status of the state’s
principal institution of higher learn
ing for Negroes.
A federal court took under con
sideration a motion for prompt deseg
regation of St. Helena Parish public
schools.
Gov.-elect John McKeithen said he
would “stand in a schoolhouse door
way to resist integration attempts.”
and public funds should not be used
for private organizations.
On March 2, the President’s Coopera
tive School Club adopted a resolution
demanding that “the governor and state
legislators make available to public-
school children an amount of monies
equivalent to those being allocated to
tuition-grant students.”
The Orleans Parish School Board re
ceives from combined state, local and
federal sources $329.99 per year per
pupil in average daily membership.
Meanwhile $360 per year is allocated
to students attending nonpublic school
under the grant-in-aid program.
At the same time, said the resolution,
private schools whose pupils receive
tuition grants also are eligible to re
ceive directly from state funds an
additional $44.77 per pupil for lunches,
milk, textbooks, libraries, and library
books. This brings the total for tuition-
grant pupils to $404.77 per pupil.
★ ★ ★
The First District PTA called on the
state PTA organization to reaffirm its
position in favor of a state compulsory
attendance law. Statistics of the 1960
U.S. Census were cited showing that
Louisiana has the highest rate of il
literacy among the 50 states. Also noted
were the demands of a progressively
higher level of education for employ
ment. The resolution said an unedu
cated and unskilled populace will in
crease the cost of welfare services and
crime containment in the community.
The state’s compulsory attendance
law was amended in 1958 to make it
unoperative in desegregated school dis
tricts. That provision was further
amended in the first special session
of the legislature in 1960, repealing
compulsory attendance outright. This
act, however, was declared unconstitu
tional by the federal courts in that
same year; and the ensuing legal con
fusion has never been dispelled by the
legislature.
★ ★ ★
In Rapides Parish, in central Lou
isiana, moves were under way to build
a new consolidated school for Negro
children in the area around Pineville
and to win voter approval for consoli
dation of white high schools in the
south end of the parish.
The Rapides Parish School Board has
called for a bond election May 5 on a
$491,000 bond issue to build the Negro
school. Purchase of a 15-acre site is
under negotiation.
Negro elementary-grade children in
Wards 9, 10 and 11 now attend the
Kelso Elementary School, which may
be closed if the construction of the
new school is approved. High-school
students in the three wards now are
transported to Alexandria.
★ ★ ★
The Rapides Parish Classroom Teach
ers Association on March 17 was called
upon to police its own profession in
order to forstall attacks on the state
teacher tenure law.
Dr. Tandy W. McElwee of the North
western State College, director of test
ing service and associate professor of
education, made the recommendation.
He said proposed amendments to the
state tenure law would allow school
boards to dismiss 1 per cent of the
teachers under tenure without cause.
The amendment was proposed last
year ostensibly to permit local school
boards to weed out incompetent teach
ers, but Dr. McElwee said, it is not
known what they would do.
Louisiana’s basic teacher tenure law
was enacted in 1936 establishing pro
cedures and criteria for teacher dis-
(See ORLEANS. Page 13)
McKeithen Ready to ‘Stand in Door’
“I am prepared to make the sacri
fice of standing in a schoolhouse door
way to resist integration attempts,”
Gov.-elect John J. McKeithen said in
a New Orleans interview on March 10.
He said he would do so “should it be
considered beneficial to the state by
our finest constitutional lawyers.”
McKeithen had returned recently
from visits to Gov. Orval Faubus of
Arkansas and Gov. Paul Johnson of
Mississippi. He said he hoped soon to
visit Gov. George Wallace of Alabama
and Gov. John Connally of Texas.
After that, he said, he hopes to visit
President Johnson.
Prior to his trip to Little Rock and
Jackson, McKeithen said he wanted to
discuss with other Southern governors
“what course we should pursue in the
presidential election.”
Of his hopes for a conversation with
the President, McKeithen said: “Cer
tainly the tidelands oil issue will be
one of the thing discussed. The civil-
rights issue is another.
“And I would think Mr. Johnson
would want to talk with me about how
Louisiana will go in the 1964 Presi
dential election.”
“Under No Obligation’
Previously he had said, “Our rela
tions with the Johnson administration
will depend on the administration.
We’re under no obligation to him.”
McKeithen scored a hard-won vic
tory over Republican Charlton Lyons
in the March 3 general election.
In the political vein, the governor-
elect fired a bolt at one of the state’s
strongest segregationist political lead
ers, William N. Rainach, former state
senator, first chairman of the Joint
Legislative Committee on Segregation,
and member of the State Sovereignty
Commission.
McKeithen was sharply critical of
mckeithen
RAINACH
Rainach’s support of Lyons. “I will
appoint much more intelligent men to
the State Sovereignty Commission than
Mr. Rainach,” he asserted. “I’ll let it
go at that.”
A few days earlier, Rainach, who
ran third in the 1960 Democratic guber
natorial primary, said of the governor:
“The longtime state sovereignty and
segregation people welcome John Mc-
Keithen to our ranks. We take the po
sition that a deathbed conversion is
better than none at all—and we hope
he sticks.
“We hope what he has to offer will
be intelligent and we hope it will be
leadership.”
Analyzing his victory over Lyons,
McKeithen on March 5 said the rural
vote and part of the state’s conserva
tives made him the next governor.
★ ★ ★
The Public Affairs Research Coun
cil, a private research agency, also
made an anlysis of the Jan. 11 primary
in which John J. McKeithen defeated
de Lesseps Morrison to win the Demo
cratic nomination for governor (SSN,
February). Race, religion and urbanism
were listed as major factors in that
election.
“It can be seen,” said PAR, “that 11
of the 16 parishes in which Negroes
made up the lowest percentage of reg
istered Democrats were also among the
16 parishes from which McKeithen re
ceived his highest percentage of votes.
Conversely, “12 of the 16 parishes
having the highest percentage of reg^
iste ed Negroes were among the
parishes from which Morrison rec ,f*^
his highest percentage of votes,
PAR analysis continued.
The study also showed that Moin
son, a Catholic, was strongest in ur
areas of the southeast part of the s ^
McKeithen was strongest in ■
areas of the west and north an
the parishes without major urban c
ters. . _
In the Jan. 11 primary run-off.
Keithen accused Morrison of ® „
bargained for the “Negro bloc vo •
In the general election, McK e '
carried 14 of 15 Negro precincts in ^
leans Parish but Republican C
Lyon’s vote was quite large there ^
McKeithen carried two Negro P re ^^.
in Baton Rouge, Lyon led in fi ve -
lar returns were recorded in
nantly Negro areas of Caddo, K a
Iberville and Calcasieu paris eS -
★ ★ ★
A final and official tally of
Caddo Parish on March 5 sho'' j aC tc
veteran legislator Rep. Wellbo gg-
was defeated. An outspoken s
tionist and six-term dean of tne ^
Parish delegation, Jackson e g j.
in the March 5 general elec io
B. Johnston Jr., 31, an attorn , e
An official recount of the foCf
Johnson 21,122 to Jack’s 21,U3-
other representatives were c r011 pd-
of them Republicans, in the
robin election. ^960-^
Rep. Jack was active in the i ^
legislative fight against dese
of the Orleans Parish schools.