Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL. 1964—PAGE 19
MARYLAND
Superintendent Praises
Results in Baltimore
(Continued From Page 18)
, g r ace, although attendance for many
his meant long bus rides when deseg
regated white schools were nearer
[heir homes. Both Negro schools have
grades one through 12.
The desegregation plan calls for re
assigning ninth-graders at both Negro
' schools to other schools this Septem
ber' the students in the top three
trades in the fall of 1965; the first-
grade chidren in the fall of 1966, and
' all the remaining nupils (grades two
to eight) in seotember, 1967. Once the
flegro classes have been shifted out,
the plans call for using the two build
ings as biracial schools.
The action of the five-member coun
ty school board was reported to have
been a solit decision, with, two mem-
- bers seeking a speedier timetable.
Charles H. Reed Jr., chairman of the
county board, was reported in the
Baltimore Evening Sun as favoring
( eliminatim of the third step: the shift
1 of only the first-grade children in 1966.
j “I felt it would be better to integrate
I all grades, one through eight, at the
|. same time,” he was quoted as saying,
“because it would mean no more than
another 100 students would have to
be shifted and it would hasten the
change-over.”
Called Too Slow
January). The commision in March
unanimously adopted a motion that
said it was “most anxious to see that
the problem of de facto segregation be
solved.”
The commission’s action followed a
series of recommendations by its direc
tor, Edgar L. Feingold, on ways to
dispense with the four Negro elemen
tary schools and one Negro secondary
school which continue to serve about
half of Baltimore County’s Negro pop
ulation. Feingold’s key point was a
proposal to close out the four ele
mentary schools this June, reassign
the Negro pupils to predominantly
white schools in the same areas, and
then use the former Negro schools on
a racially mixed basis as annexes for
overflowing desegregated schools.
The county commission instructed
Feingold to set up a meeting with
the county Board of Education so that
the commission could formally present,
its views. The meeting was scheduled
for late March but was postponed to
early April.
Baltimore County at last count had
2,075 Negroes scattered among 83 pre
dominantly white schools, with 2,017
Negroes remaining in the five all-Ne
gro schools and 37 schools having all-
white enrollments. The county has 97,-
802 white pupils.
f
The four-sten plan was promptlv as
sailed as too slow by members of the
Harford County Human Relations
Commission, the county chapter of the
NAACP, the Maryland branch of the
NAACP and teachers at one of the
Negro school. The Human Relations
Commission, which previously had
urged a faster desegregation program,
criticized the adopted plan on grounds
that it extends segregation nearly an
other four years, makes no provision
for the employment of additional Ne
gro teachers, places limitations on ex
isting transfer rights and would leave
Negro classrooms empty when class
rooms in the county are at a “pre
mium.”
Teachers at the Harve de Grace
Consolidated School met in protest dur-
mg school hours and a spokesman pre
pared a statement which said in part:
We object to the slow process of de
populating our school and feel it is
demoralizing, derogatory and biased
We object to the fact that the plan
■usultingly states that Negro teachers
should be carefully selected [for trans-
ers to biracial schools]—with compe-
tenc Y the criteria. The Board of Edu-
[ atl ® n implies that the masses of our
ac ulty are competent only in a seg-
re ?ated situation.”
The county’s school superintendent,
1 u CharIes 'Willis, followed up the
^achers’ statement with one of his
j'"’ 71 ' The law against teachers’ hold-
./ /'"stings when they were supposed
h c ^ assr ooms “is very clear,”
a dding that he considered their
Ct “ n “willful neglect of duty.”
, ® Harford County Branch of the
NAAcp
called the four-year program
Bothi -L— am
desi ° ut 3 surre Ptitious maneuver
to delay for another four
Count,™ 6 ^ ese £ r egation of the Harford
the (^ public schools” and pointed to
w as T* *^at while the school board
^ Panning to have formerly Negro
sp. 7001113 stand empty, it also was
$125,000 for portable class
ic,:, a .‘ °vercrowded predominantly
lte schools.
Th,
State NAACP Protests
*'hich y[ a * ew ’de NAACP organization,
dons brought federal court ac-
in jni-?® a ’ ns t Harford’s school board
a fresh t ^57 an< i I960, fired off
it flegram of protest against what
tends t SS < a new Pl an which ex-
segf e the original school de-
era) Tv 10n Plan approved by the Fed-
Ijjg sfrict Court in Maryland.”
said, . aoart -approved plan, the NAACP
segfgg *[ a for complete school de-
The “i 0n i n Harford County by 1963.
kachjjj ameful failure” which has left
*as a i5 sta ^ s “completely segregated”
TfreR , Proteste d.
Rossiljjii 3 l' m ° re Sun reported that the
"esegj y °f legal action to speed the
3 Publir. 9 1011 Plan had been raised at
d°ns r, Meeting of the Human Rela
te n e ™ misslon on March 17. The
^ition T S accoun t also spoke of op-
?°Un^ . , lb® four-year plan on the
[bhorri r, lts being too swift a change.
. ou nty at last reckoning had
iC ” 0o l \ es an( l 2,189 Negroes in its
system.
>h e
★ ★ ★
tu mer (H -
j/B havp 7 eps 1° dhninate segrega
te Co Ur ,T en advocated in Balti-
[["BBUsiojj ^ by its Human Relations
Jtls of j l°U°wing earlier discus-
facto segregation (SSN,
New Demand Foreseen
In Anne Arundel County
Anne Arundel County, immediately
to the south of Baltimore, also has
heard the first rumblings of a demand
to have a program to replace its eight-
year-old voluntary desegregation pro
gram.
The Rev. Warner R. Traynham, an
Episcopal priest who heads the county
branch of the NAACP, raised the is
sue twice in March, describing Anne
Arundel as having “a desegregated
school system with integration as an
option.”
A particular target of Father Trayn-
ham’s has been an all-Negro secondary
school in Annapolis with 2,000 stu
dents, more than half of whom, he
says, are transported by bus from all
parts of the county. Contending that,
the bus transportation is a senseless
waste of taxpayers’ money,” Father
Traynham has urged that the trans
ported Negroes be assigned to second
ary schools closer to their homes and
thereby provide classrooms in the Ne
gro school for students now in over
crowded secondary schools in the An
napolis area.
Father Traynham has proposed that
the county require all students to at
tend schools in their areas, instead of
giving Negroes a choice of remaining
in an all-Negro school or transferring
to a predominantly white school.
A desegregation system based on
choice, he asserts, “encourages and
perpetuates segregation and is there-
fore discriminatory. It capitalizes on
the natural conservatism of people.
Most people, white or Negro, do not
initiate social change.” He also has been
critical of the limited use of Negro
teachers in the county.
Under Anne Arundel’s free-choice
plan (which also has prevailed through
most of Maryland), more than a
fourth of the county’s 7,684 Negro pu-
pils have entered previously all-white
schools. Desegregation advanced on a
grade-a-year basis on the secondary
level, but grades 11 and 12 were de
segregated simultaneously just prior to
the current school year in a consoli
dated last step. With the close of the
transition phase, some further action
by the county school board has been
anticipated, but no move has been
announced.
In the Colleges
Morgan Launches
10-Point Program
To Enroll Whites
A 10-point program to stimulate
white student interest in the offerings
of Morgan State College was adopted
in March by the college’s Board of
Trustees.
A “vigorous campaign” to attract
white students to the predominantly
Negro college had been proposed ear
lier by its president, Dr. Martin D.
Jenkins, who had said it was “anomal
ous to have the University of Mary
land and other institutions integrated,
An Apple for Teacher
Ford Foundation Grants
To Aid Negro Education
Mauldin, Chicago Sun-Times
and Morgan segregated.” (SSN, Febru-
ary.)
The trustees in their unanimous ac
tion said that segregated institutions
were “inconsistent with democratic
principles” and that Morgan should be
considered in the current reorganiza
tion of public higher education in
Maryland as an integrated institution.
Morgan now has an estimated 180 non-
Negro students in an enrollment of
about 2,800, but most of them are for
eign students rather than local white
residents.
Some of the steps recommended by
Dr. Jenkins and adopted by the trus
tees were to expand the evening school,
atrrange student exchanges with other
colleges, encourage community organi
zations to use campus facilities, en
courage high school students to visit
the college, emphasize the financial aid
available without regard to race, en
list the support of public and private
school systems in promoting the col
lege among white high school students
and hold conferences with religious, la
bor and civic leaders to provide back
ing for the desegregation effort.
NEW YORK
T he Ford Foundation an
nounced on April 7 grants
for four major programs designed
to improve educational opportuni
ties for Negroes and children of
other disadvantaged families.
The grants include:
• $895,000 for efforts in the South
to upgrade teaching, strengthen curric
ula and raise learning motivation and
achievement.
• $270,000 to Harvard University for
legal and educational assistance to help
school systems solve de facto school
segregation problems and design pro
grams for integrated schools.
• $200,000 for summer study at priv
ate schools and colleges for elementary
and secondary-school students from de
prived backgrounds.
• $696,000 for experiments in New
York City on preschool education and
job training.
“These efforts reflect a growing ap
preciation in all parts of the country
of the damaging educational, economic
and cultural poverty that is the heri
tage of too many Americans, both Ne
gro and white,” said Henry T. Heald,
president of the Foundation.
School-Improvement Center
For programs in the South, the Foun
dation granted $500,000 to help launch
a joint school-improvement center in
Nashville, Tenn. The center will be
conducted by George Peabody College
for Teachers, Fisk and Vanderbilt uni
versities and the Nashville-Davidson
County public schools. Focusing on
schools attended primarily by Negroes,
the center’s activities will include in-
service training of teachers, remedial
courses in English and mathematics and
special courses for superior students,
improved student-counseling programs
North Carolina
(Continued From Page 17)
missal of a principal of 20 years ex
perience started a boycott of seven all-
Negro schools in Warren County
Tuesday, March 31. Their action, spear
headed by the local NAACP branch,
came after a series of complaints to
school officials, including a March 9
appearance before the school board.
The NAACP action followed a three-
and-a-half-hour Easter meeting.
Spokesmen for the NAACP, Robert
Blow of Durham and T. T. Clayton of
Warrenton, an attorney and candidate
for the House of Representatives in the
General Assembly, say they are attack
ing poor schools, and they want the
ouster of James Byers as principal of
Hawkins High School.
Only 202 of 1,370 students of the
12-grade school attended classes on the
first day of the boycott.
Byers, the Negroes claim, is not in
sympathy with civil-rights activities in
the community. The NAACP also wants
the end of segregation in Warrenton.
Warren County’s 20,000 population is
68 per cent Negro.
“The local people feel that Mr. By
ers has been in long enough,” Blow
said. “The school is not accredited, and
the students feel that they are not get
ting the type of education needed to
continue on to higher learning.”
Improved Schools
Hawkins school is accredited by the
State Department of Public Instruc
tion, but not by the Southern Asso
ciation of Secondary Schools and Col
leges, Byers said.
“The main aim of the boycott is to
see that all schools in Warren County
are improved,” Blow said.
Eugene R. Davis, chairman of the
Warren County school board said:
“As far as I could see, they didn’t
like Byers because he did not associate
with members of the PTA, didn’t visit
homes, and wasn’t a member of the
NAACP.
“A group of five or six parents want
to see Mr. Byers removed. It’s a per
sonal thing. He’s doing a splendid job.”
About 70 per cent of the Negro
school children did not attend school on
the first day of the boycott.
★ ★ ★
The Chapel Hill Board of Education
approved a change in assignment policy
to permit all sixth-grade students to
take their choice of junior high schools
in the city in spite of a suggestion that
Negro teachers could conceivably be
assigned to a predominantly white
junior high school.
This action was taken March 16. It
followed a series of boycotts of the
Lincoln Junior-Senior High School in
February on the complaint that the
school is inferior to the predominantly
white Guy B. Phillips Junior High
School.
Supt. Howard Thompson proposed
the new assignment policy on the
grounds that the present policy which
assigns Negroes to basically Negro jun
ior high schools and whites to predomi
nantly white junior highs may not
stand up in court.
Under the new policy, parents will
be asked which junior high school they
want their children to attend after fin
ishing the sixth grade. The board will
have final assignment power, however,
in spite of the parents’ requests. In
one case, however, seventh-grade stu
dents of the all-Negro Graham School
will be assigned to Lincoln Junior High.
Chairman’s Statement
Thompson said Phillips Junior High
can hold all junior-high-school stu
dents of the city. Dr. Richard Ellis
asked what would happen to seventh-
grade teachers at Lincoln if not enough
students choose that school. Dr. Rich
ard Peters answered:
“Is the concern of the board that
teachers who are considered competent
enough to teach Negro children would
not be competent enough to teach white
children?”
Grey Culbreth, board chairman, said:
“We can run ourselves into a lot of
trouble if we go too fast here. We cer
tainly aren’t going to look good to the
county commissioners if we have emp
ty classrooms, empty because of our
assignment policies.”
The vote for the change was unani
mous.
What They Say
Alexander Wants
Change In Tactics
Negroes will have to live in inte
grated communities to get rid of school
segregation, Kelly Alexander of Char
lotte, state president of the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, said in a policy state
ment. He said:
“School officials are still following a
pattern in North Carolina communi
ties of assigning Negro children to
schools which are peculiar to segre
gated districts.”
“In the urban centers where rede
velopment programs are operated, Ne
groes are being displaced from Negro
areas to wider Negro-segregated living
patterns which result in assignment to
Negro schools in these areas . . .
and scholarship aid for needy students.
The center also will provide books
and teaching materials and will support
adult-education programs to strength
en community interest in the schools
and parental motivation for the edu
cation of their children. The center’s
activities will be developed under a
committee representing the co-operat
ing universities and schools, which will
appoint a director.
Vanderbilt also received a $120,000
grant for continued support of its
teacher-education program. The uni
versity plans to include Negro candi
dates in the Master of Arts in Teach
ing program and to place teacher in
terns in predominantly Negro high
schools. Vanderbilt and Peabody have
received previous teacher-education
grants totaling $1,285,300.
The Foundation granted $150,000 to
the Southern Association of Colleges
and Schools for an eight-state pro
gram to identify talented Negro and
white seventh or eighth-grade children
from deprived families, and work with
them and their parents throughout their
high-school years with the aim of plac
ing them in college. Pupils from 10
public school systems will be selected
for guidance and counseling by 18 par
ticipating colleges and universities and
the Berea preparatory School in Ken
tucky. Most of the grant will be used
for the services of guidance personnel,
possibly including returning Peace
Corps veterans.
Participating Schools
Schools participating in the program
include:
Alabama—Spring Hill College and
Tuskegee Institute; Georgia—Emory
University, Morehouse College and
Spelman College; Kentucky—Berea
College, Centre College and Transyl
vania College; Louisiana—Tulane Uni
versity and Dillard University.
Mississippi—Tougaloo Southern
Christian College; North Carolina—-
Davidson College, Duke University and
North Carolina State College of Agri
culture and Engineering; Tennessee—
Fisk University and Vanderbilt Univer
sity; Virginia—Mary Baldwin College
and University of Virginia.
Atlanta University received $125,000
for a summer course to train about 50
Negro elementary-school teachers as
reading specialists. The course will be
followed by work with teachers in
teacher-training methods. The objective
is to prepare a core of specialist teach
ers for service with schools—such as
those in the Nashville area—undertak
ing remedial reading programs.
The grant to Harvard University
for research and assistance on de facto
segregation in the public schools will
enable scholars from the university’s
law school and graduate school of edu
cation to co-operate in analyzing the
educational and legal aspects of the
problem. The project will involve field
research and consulting services in a
variety of communities. Results of the
research will be used in preparing case
studies for use by school administra
tors and lawyers.
The $200,000 program among private
schools and colleges for summer work
with disadvantaged elementary and
secondary pupils will include cultural-
enrichment activities and remedial
studies in basic subjects. Aimed at
increasing the students’ success in
school and their chance for college, the
program will be carried out in co-op
eration with public school systems. The
National Association of Independent
Schools received $50,000 of the total for
programs among six independent day
schools in the Boston area.
Under a $385,500 grant, a pioneering
project in New York City in the pre
school education three- and four-year
old children from slum homes will be
continued through mid-1967. The pro
ject was begun in 1962.
In co-operation with the city’s Board
of Education and Department of Pub
lic Welfare, the project is attacking
the problem of the retarded achieve
ment of children from impoverished
families that sets in at the third and
fourth grade and is a prime cause of
later school failure.
The New York City Board of Edu
cation was granted $304,000 to continue
through 1966 a co-operative work-study
program with the city’s Personnel De
partment to provide high-school stu
dents with job experience in municipal
departments and cultural institutions
The project began with the aid of
a Ford Foundation grant in 1961.
“We are encouraging Negroes to
purchase homes out of the segregated
areas and to utilize the new concept
of requesting that their children, re
gardless of where they live, attend
white schools.”