Newspaper Page Text
ARKANSAS
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL, 1964—PAGE 9
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School Board Takes Some Actions
Advocated by Little Rock Negroes
(Continued From Page 8)
a t its offices in East Side Junior High
School, some 40 to 50 Negroes picketed
in the rain. They had signs saying
“Tuckerism Must Go”; “Matson Pre
siding, Tucker Dictating”; “Total Inte
gration, not Token Integration”; “We
Shall Overcome”; “All Men Are
Created Equal,” and “We Won’t Wait
450 Years.”
After the board meeting, the pickets
went to a Negro Church, heard a talk
from Vaughs and ended with the sing
ing of “We Shall Overcome.”
Invite Study
Next day, March 25, COCA sent let
ters to the Ministerial Association and
to the Greater Little Rock Conference
on Religion and Human Relations, in
viting them to make an impartial study
of the legitimacy of the Negro griev
ances against the school board.
The executive committee of the min
isterial association met March 26, and
proposed that a biracial committee be
formed to try to ease the tensions and
to avert the school boycott. It offered
to convene the first meeting of such a
committee. It proposed that there be
one representative each from the school
board, the Little Rock City Manager
Board, the Little Rock Chamber of
Commerce and the Conference on Re
ligion and Human Relations, and that
four Negro members be selected by
COCA and SNCC.
Spokesmen for the Conference on
Religion and Human Relations and the
City Manager Board welcomed the idea.
That afternoon, J. H. Cottrell Jr., a
school board member and also a mem
ber of the state House of Representa
tives, made a fiery speech in the House,
which was in special session to act on
a voter registration law.
Addresses Legislators
Speaking for a resolution (SCR No.
1) condemning SNCC for advocating
a school boycott at Little Rock, Cot
trell accused
SNCC of having
Communist con
nections and said
■t did not repre-
sent the Negroes
oj Little Rock.
He also attacked
the Arkansas Ga
zette for its edi
torials advising
we school board
™ taJ k to COCA,
e said he had
n°t intended to run for re-election to
e School Board next fall, but an-
ounced that because of those editor
ials he would be a candidate and hoped
e publisher of the Gazette would run
against him.
% March 27, the school board mem-
ip-M Were s plit over the biracial com-
* e ® idea offered by the ministerial
w Ociat ‘ on - Matson, Lamb and Harrel
r e ready to accept, Tucker and Mc-
said ^ ar ! reservations and Cottrell
Co . would not agree to such a
Turt ” ee under any circumstances.
' A 'hetV> r ant ^ McDonald raised doubt
’*'ouP v. the committee as proposed
nf tv, " ave a very good cross-section
e local Negro community.
yternoon the Chamber of Com-
a tw e Executive Committee said after
a d e ° ■ 0Ur rueeting it could not reach
Isi0n whether to accept it.
Welcome Proposal
' ss ued another statement
Diittg welcoming the biracal com
pos^ i? r °P°sal. “We accept the pro
'll! p ' Vl . the understanding that we
Aprjj g° n tinue our plans for protest
diani Cs Un ^ unless promising me-
suej a *' e set up to resolve the is-
hoarjj ” 6 ivT aVe raised with the school
^id. ’ ae statement by Dr. Townsend
W e
•chooj b 1 mus t understand that the
°sition ° arc * Has yet to make any prop-
btitil aj| n answe r to our petition and
UlUst aae t ua te one is forthcoming,
^ntinue our plan for protest
’ the statement continued.
■Peated its previous assur-
*t had no desire to stir up
v - want a °J str ffe in the community
. gro c v, m on ly the opportunity for
4 'iesegj.p 1 ren to enjoy the benefits of
^titm; ^ ate( i education as it is their
^etne °p a ^ r '§ht as declared by the
pj v 0Ur t of the United States.”
f the six school board mem-
rsy
COTTRELL
bers (Lamb apparently was not noti
fied in time to attend) met with a
Negro group on
the afternoon of
March 30. In addi
tion to COCA
leaders, Negroes
who opposed the
boycott plan and
all Negro school
principals were
invited and a t-
tended.
An hour was
spent discussing
the purpose of
the meeting, and
another hour was devoted to the griev
ances of the COCA group. Afterward,
neither side indicated belief that much
had been accomplished except for es
tablishing that the vocational school
still was segregated. Plans for the
boycott continued.
The Negro protesters gathered later
at a church for a boycott rally and a
speech by John Lewis of Atlanta,
national chairman of SNCC. Lewis
said there can be no tranquility in
Little Rock until the schools are com
pleted desegregated.
★ ★ ★
In a telegram to Sen. John L. Mc
Clellan (D-Ark), published as an ad
vertisement March 3 in the Arkansas
Democrat of Little Rock, the Capital
Citizens’ Council questioned whether
McClellan and other “southern states
men” were doing all they could to de
feat the civil-rights bill in Congress.
McClellan answered that the tone and
contents of the telegram would make
no friends for the anti-civil rights cause
and said he was doing all he could, as
he always had, against the civil-rights
proposals.
★ ★ ★
One of two projects for 1964 adopted
by the Little Rock Chapter of the
League of Women Voters is a survey of
minority problems in Little Rock. Mrs.
William S. Steele, president, said the
league would try to determine the ex
tent of discrimination in schools, hous
ing, jobs, transportation and recreation.
Miscellaneous
USIA Makes Movie
About Little Roek
A film crew from the United States
Information Agency was in Little Rock
the week of March 9 photographing
scenes at Central High School.
Charles Guggenheim of St. Louis, in
charge of the crew, said the USIA
was making a 20-minute film for show
ing overseas in an effort to bring Little
Rock into perspective. In other nations,
he said, Little Rock is still a phrase
used to epitomize all that is undesir
able about the United States. Guggen
heim said the USIA does not consider
that fair or accurate, and “this will
be the first motion picture on Little
Rock that is sympathetic.”
All nine of the Negro children who
entered Central under armed guard
in 1957 will be used in the movie and
one of them, Jefferson Thomas, now
a student in the City College of Los
Angeles, was brought back to Little
Rock to appear in some of the scenes.
None of the nine still lives in Little
Rock.
★ ★ ★
First Negroes Participate
In Basketball Tournament
Two Negro boys, Louis Bryant and
Robert Wilks, were on the Fayette
ville High School basketball team in
the annual state AA-AAA tournament
at Little Rock, March 11-16.
They were the first Negroes to ap
pear in this tournament, made up of
the schools in the two largest cate
gories (according to enrollment) of Ar
kansas schools. Fayetteville defeated
Searcy in the first round but lost to
LEWIS
TEXAS
41 Districts Added to
(Continued From Page 7)
be opened to all races in September,
1965, and that tuition will be charged
then for the first time. Rice has been
collecting fees from students.
Dr. Pitzer added that no student, oth
erwise qualified, would be rejected be
cause he cannot pay the tuition. He
declared:
“Students will be admitted to all
areas of college life without regard
to color—in the dormitories, the labora
tories, and on the athletic field.
“Our lawyers are confident that the
judgment will stand, and now we can
get to work on making Rice one of
the really top schools of the nation.”
Trustees contended that Rice, which
has among the highest admission stand
ards in the area, would be prevented
from continuing as a first-class univer
sity if the racial and tuition bars kept
it from getting adequate financing.
Government research funds, for ex
ample, carry non-discrimination pro
visions, as do many from private in
dustry. More than 85 per cent of Rice’s
$6,000,000 of research contracts are gov
ernment-supported, and were in danger
of being transferred to desegregated
schools.
★ ★ ★
Attorneys for Negro patrons planned
an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court
to speed up desegregation of George
town Independent School District.
(Miller v. Barnes— filed September
1962.)
A federal court has ordered desegre
gation to start next fall, with two
grades the first year and one annually
thereafter.
★ ★ ★
Teenagers of Texas Association of
Student Councils (white) and Negro
Lone Star Association of Student Coun
cils delayed a proposed merger be
cause state teachers associations of the
two races are still separate.
The Negro teachers’ organization has
offered to join Texas State Teachers
Association, which has a committee
studying the proposal.
What They Say
Ridgway Declares
Leaders Must Accept
Their Responsibility
Boyd Ridgway, executive secretarty
of the Little Rock Chamber of Com
merce during much of that city’s de
segregation difficulty of 1957-1959, said
of that experience:
“The greatest lesson learned is this:
if the vested leadership fails to accept
its responsibility, a new leadership will
evolve.”
Ridgeway now lives at Grand Prairie,
near Dallas, in the same block as Dean
Dauley, who was Little Rock city man
ager during the school crisis. The two
men are associated in operating a new
national bank at Grand Prairie. Dauley
also is general manager of the Texas
Pavilion at the New York World Fair.
★ ★ ★
State District Judge A. R. Stout of
Waxahachie criticized the civil rights
bill pending in Congress, and said al
most every line is unconstitutional but
“no one knows what the Supreme
Court may hold.”
Stout told the Waco Rotary Club
that he is deeply disturbed about how
the government is run by and for mi
nority groups.
In the Colleges
Dean Says Remedial
Courses Are Needed
Nine out of 10 students admitted to
Texas Southern University, predom-
inantly-Negro state school at Houston,
must take remedial courses in mathe
matics and English, according to Dr.
Hadley Hartshorn, dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences.
Fayetteville’s Negro Athletes
Robert Wilks (with ball); Louis Bryant (No. 14).
Forrest City in the next game.
A writer in the Forrest City Daily
Times-Herald, made this comment:
“A team from east Arkansas playing
an integrated school from northwest
Arkansas . . . what would happen?
Nothing. Both teams conducted them
selves exceptionally well (there were
no boos or catcalls as there was in
an earlier game) and when two play
ers accidentally ran together, floor
ing both, they got up, shook hands, and
went about their business.”
What They Say
‘Outsiders’ Needed
In South: Carter
At a Lenten program March 18 at
the Grace Episcopal Church at Pine
Bluff, Hodding Carter III, managing
editor of the Delta Democrat-Times
at Greenville, Miss., said it was in
evitable that “outsiders” would come
into the South to change the depressed
situation of the Negro and that white
Southerners should accept them.
“If the white community does not
consider the new industrialist, come to
break our shackles of economic bond
age to a one-crop agricultural system,
an outsider, then the Negro commun
ity cannot be expected to consider
those as outsiders who have come in
the name of setting all Negroes free of
shackles which confine them economi
cally, politically and socially.”
★ ★ ★
Dr. Werner Ehrich, chairman of the
Federal Democratic Party in the state
of Bremen, West Germany, and Alex-
andros Trakkas, publisher of a newspa
per at Volos, Greece, met accidentally
March 11 at Little Rock on their sep
arate tours of the United States, spon
sored by the State Department.
They said they were impressed by
the absence of any sign of racial ten
sion in the city. Trakkas said he wished
the Europeans could see for themselves
what determination the Americans have
to try to solve the racial problem.
Desegregation List
Reporter Howard Spergel of the
Houston Post quoted Dr. Hartshorn
as telling a group of Negro teachers
and administrators, “If we do not get
your help in the next two years, we
have a good chance of being out of
business.”
Hartshorn referred to the poor qual
ity of graduates from Negro high
schools. Of the 1,000 admitted last Sep
tember with deficiencies, 250 dropped
out or failed, he reported.
Forty per cent of the university’s
3,850 students this spring are taking
courses to provide knowledge they
should have received in high school,
he said.
The dean did not elaborate on his
remark about TSU being “out of busi
ness” unless its quality of students im
proves.
This apparently referred, however,
to the possibility that the major role
of providing degree coures in Houston
be assigned to the University of Hous
ton, which the state took over for op
eration last fall. Both universities are
desegregated.
Dr. S. M. Nabrit, president of Texas
Southern, was quoted as saying the
inadequate teaching of Negroes in ele
mentary and sec
ondary schools “is
a crisis.” He said
state officials are
considering abol
ishing tax sup
port for remedial
courses in higher
education and
making students
pay tuition for
such special in
struction.
“You can see
how tragic this would be because you
would have to charge a higher tuition
to students who are already culturally
deprived and have a hard enough time
meeting the tuition,” said Dr. Nabrit.
He said there should be more, rather
than less, support for remedial courses
in colleges.
Nabrit said if TSU rejected all appli
cants who needed to make up educa
tional deficiencies, it would have to
close for lack of students.
A state examiner said TSU has im
proved in the past five years in its
education offering and record-keeping.
The Ford Foundation has grantetd
TSU $400,000 to provide summer rem
edial courses for prospective students.
It will teach 300 this summer and 600
in 1965.
But Nabrit said the solution must
come from better preparation of stu
dents in the public schools.
★ ★ ★
Plans for upgrading a church-sup-
ported college for Negroes, Jarvis
Christian College near Hawkins, in East
Texas, meanwhile were made public.
Texas Christian University, operated
by the same denomination, will give
Jarvis assistance in administration and
teaching. A substantial new building
program is planned.
Jarvis has operated for 52 years,
and currently has 600 students. Two
bunded applicants were turned away
last fall for lack of space. Its faculty in
cludes 24 Negroes, three white Amer
icans, four Cubans, three Indians, one
Oriental, and several others.
★ ★ ★
The Houston Informer quoted Dr.
George P. Cuttino, professor of his
tory at Emory University, as saying
that only 14 freshmen applicants to
Bishop College (for Negroes) at Dallas
have admission scores high enough to
have qualified at Emory. Bishop en
rolled 279 freshman according to this
report. Dr. Cuttino blamed inferior
preparation of Negroes in public
schools.
★ ★ ★
More Negro political activity is un
der way in Texas this year than at any
other period of this century.
A number of Negroes are running
for office, ranging from school board to
governor. The Rev. M. T. Banks, a
Negro from Beaumont, is among can
didates for governor.
Texas is expected to send about 2,-
500,000 voters to the polls this year, an
all-time high. Forecasts of voting by
Negroes range from 170,000 to 300,000.
