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ARKANSAS SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL, 1964—PAGE 9 ; i i r l 5 ) 1 1 r i r \ [ f i 1 9 1 f 1 r 5 t e 3 f f t e d 0 s 4 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.