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': o / Inside: A Special Section, 4 Ten Years In Review II Factual Southern NOKm i, • 0 u <0 SMO luefj* 1 * 'i 1 s i n o o v v,0 «03o EWS Objective VOL. 10, NO. II—SECTION A NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE _ * •*' MAY, 1964 Public School Desegregation School Districts With Negroes Total & Whites Deseg. Enrollment White Negro In Desegregated Districts White Negro Negroes In Schools With Whites No. % t Alabama .... 114 114 4 539,996** 287,414* 106,199** 70,896** 21 .007 Arkansas 415 228 13 328,023** 112,012** 66,752 18,643 366 .327 Florida 67 67 16 964,241* 237,871* 669,375 130,667 3,650 1.53 Georgia 197 181 4 689,323 337,534 95,731 77,599 177 .052 Louisiana 67 67 2 460,589** 301,433** 68,700 79,077 1,814 .602 Mississippi 150 150 0 304,226** 291,971** 0 0 0 0 North Carolina .... .... 171 171 40 820,900* 347,063* 367,764* 133,164* 1,865 .537 South Carolina .... .... 108 108 1 368,496* 258,955* 3,108 9,539 10 .004 Tennessee .... 154 143 45 687,902* 164,940* 380,321 120,447 4,486 2.72 Texas 1,421 899 263 2,045,499 326,409* 1,300,000* 200,000* 18,000* 5.52 Virginia .... 130 128 55 710,176 228,961 486,231 145,658 3,721 1.63 Delaware District of Columbia .2,994 2,256 443 7,919,371 2,894,563 3,544,181 985,690 34,110 1.18 . 86 86 86 78,730 18,066 68,321 13,976 10,209 56.5 1 1 1 19,803 117,915 19,803 117,915 98,813 83.8 . 204 165 163 611,126* 54,874* 492,701* 54,874* 29,855 54.4 . 24 23 23 540,667 160,946 535,691 160,946 76,906 47.8 .1,597 212* 203* 793,000* 95,000* NA 90,000* 40,000* 42.1 .1,160 241 197 541,125* 43,875* 324,023* 35,596* 12,289* 28.0 . 55 44 44 417,595* 23,449* 417,595* 23,449* 13,659* 58.2 . 3,127 772 717 3,002,046 514,125 1,858,134 ft 496,756 281,731 54.8 .6,121 3,028 1,160 10,921,417 3,408,688 5,402,315 ft 1,482,446 315,841 9.3 •Estimated. ** 1962-63. tt Missouri not included. + No. of Negroes in schools with whites, compared to total Negro enrollment. Southern Education Reporting Service, May, 1964 ALABAMA Desegregation Of All Schools In State Considered By Court MONTGOMERY |Y egro plaintiffs and Justice ‘' Department attorneys asked a three-judge federal court panel ® Montgomery April 23 to order Jne State Board of Education to ^segregate local schools in all systems of the state. In their final rebuttal briefs, called or by the court which heard the case ee v. Macon) in February, attorneys ■°r the plaintiffs contended that by in- ervening in Macon County, ordering e transfer of the 12 Negro pupils *n teachers at Tuskegee High, and ■ osing the school for economic reasons, ■ board had shown it controls all lo- schools in the state, he board rescinded its actions in e ruary (SSN, March) after the State ', i J? reme Court ruled the board had no = thonty {q w j lat it did. The board ... e< d hi its final brief that while it ° made a mistake it had retreated could not therefore be enjoined to Rfegate all school systems. •; e 6 suit Was brought in the name of !o - ^ e 8 ro pupils ordered admitted ■ast <T i0Usl y a U-white Tuskegee High -heir ^ mber - •^ ter at blocking a< hnission with state forces, Gov. of Wallace withdrew in the face int erf Urt , or< iers ordering him not to ^skegee, or in Huntsville, and Mobile, where schools ^ This Issue ^ Reports S&? ::::::::::::::::: *.a S3? of Columbia 1-A Ssa; l-j- | Stu<i v 7_A , ^Uisian^ 6-A VtT<? Pl 2-A Okl aho~ ar ° lina 6-A c. ^Ronia , . T enj le J arol uia 8-A 7-A I Snia 5 - A ' ^ v irgirua‘t A Articles Vitt n s UA f, the South 2-A 'huy ar s in Review 16 pages also were desegregated for the first time last fall. State troopers and, at one time, Alabama National Guardsmen were used in the other three cities as well. Desegregation in these cities was finally achieved, but in Tuskegee all white students withdrew, leaving the high school to the 12 Negroes and a white faculty of 13. It was this school the state board ordered closed Jan. 30 (SSN, February, March). Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. of Montgomery, one of the three judges weighing the omnibus suit which grew out of the Macon controversy, agreed that operation of the school was un economic. But he ordered the 12 Ne groes transferred to two other white high schools in the county—six to Shorter and six to Notasulga—in Feb ruary. All white students withdrew from both these schools as well, most of them joining former students of Tus kegee High at the private Macon Acad emy, opened last fall. There remained only the six Negroes in the high schools at Shorter and Notasulga. The Notasulga high school was de stroyed by fire in the early morning hours of April 18. (See below.) Plaintiffs and Justice Department at torneys in the Macon suit asked, in ad dition to a statewide desegregation or der, that the state’s Pupil Placement Law and grants-in-aid to students at tending private school be declared un constitutional. They further requested the court to prevent state officials from interfering with desegregation any where in the state. There was no indication when the court would rule on the case. Besides Johnson, the judges considering the case are Richard T. Rives of Montgom ery, member of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and District Judge H. H. Grooms of Birmingham. In their rebuttal brief, plaintiffs con tended that the state board’s contention that it had no authority to intervene in Macon, to order local schools closed or to transfer pupils, was incorrect, as was the State Supreme Court’s ruling that the state board had no such legal authority as it exercised. Justice Department attorneys said in their brief that “Alabama has a state school system administered by both state and local officials” and the state board could thus be ordered to de segregate all systems. Plaintiffs’ attorney Fred Gray of Montgomery contended that “the rigid (See NEGROES, Page 3-A) THE REGIOI ment Figures Show Little Change T he percentage of Negroes attending schools with whites in the Southern and border region stood at 9.3 per cent at the end of the 1963-64 school year—the 10th since the 1954 ruling in the School Segregation Cases by the U.S. Supreme Court. Surveys by state agencies in Texas and West Virginia changed consid erably the estimated figures for those states, but for a regional tabulation the increase in Texas desegregation offset the decrease reported in West Virginia. The 17 Southern and border states, plus the District of Columbia have 315,841 Negroes in biracial schools, out of a total Negro enrollment of 3,408,688. The Southern School News survey in November, 1963, had reported 318,039 Negroes in desegregated schools. Separating the region into the South and border areas, the 11 Southern states have 1.18 per cent of their Negroes in schools with whites, and the border states, plus D.C., have 54.8 per cent. As a result of the new survey of desegregated schools in Texas, the estimate of Negroes attending classes with whites was raised from 14,000 to 18,000. (SSN, April). West Virginia no longer keeps racial records but a special study indicated that only an estimated 13,659 Negroes are in biracial schools, compared with the previous estimate of 18,500 (SSN, January). Arkansas also experienced a sizeable drop in its figures, decreasing from 1,084 Negroes in schools with whites to 366. The withdrawal of one white student from an otherwise all-Negro school in Pulaski County caused the change (SSN, March). More complete figures from Maryland showed a decrease in desegregated Negro students from 77,816 to 76,906. Since last November, the number of desegregated districts increased by 20 to a total of 1,160. The region has a total of 6,121 public-school districts with 3,028 of these having both races enrolled and the other 3,093 being either all-white or all-Negro. Nineteen of the additional desegregated dis tricts were located in the recent Texas survey. One Tennessee district desegregated this spring by federal court order. (For comparative figures for the 10-year period of school desegregation, see the special section, Ten Years in Review in this issue). FLORIDA White Teachers’ Group Removes Race Provision HE MIAMI Florida Education Asso- x ciation, professional organiza tion of white teachers and school administrators, voted April 25 to remove its policy of racial segre gation. The action came at the annual FEA convention in Miami Beach. By more than the necessary two- thirds vote, 4,000 FEA delegates re moved the word “white” from the charter and left membership open to all qualified personnel regardless of race. The FEA. is the first state teacher DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA LBJ Agreeable To Modifications WASHINGTON P resident Johnson has dropped his firm insistence on Senate passage of the civil-rights bill in exactly the form approved by the House of Representatives. Word that the White House now ex pects some modifications of the measure reached the Senate April 30 and drew varied reactions from spokesmen for the opposing sides in the civil-rights filibuster. Sen. Allen J. Ellender (D-La.) con strued the President’s stand as “a change of heart over this obnoxious and pernicious measure.” He credited the eight weeks of Senate debate with bringing out the change, and said he hoped the debate would continue. Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D.Minn.), leading spokesman for the bill’s pro ponents, said the President “wants a civil-rights biff with the coverage and the enforceability that are in the House bill, but he expects the Senate to work its will, and that does not preclude amendments.” Humphrey predicted that the South ern filibuster would eventually be broken and that the bill would be passed, perhaps by early summer. In developments dealing with the school desegregation section of the measure: • Sens. Paul A. Douglas (D-Ill.) and John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) took the Senate floor April 3 for a detailed defense of Title IV, the school section. Douglas said that at the present rate it would take 1,000 years to complete desegregation of the schools in the Deep South. “It is long past time for the Congress to use its great authority to ensure that in this time, the rights of all our chil dren are vindicated,” Douglas said. Cooper told the Senate that “the in feriority of Negro education, a proven result of segregated schools, cannot be allowed to continue, for eduaction is vital to our national security and our economy.” • Sen. Russell on April 14 challenged proponents of the civil-rights bill to show their “sincerity” by proposing an amendment to permit the Attorney General to eliminate racial imbalance in big-city schools. Noting that the House-passed version rules out such authority, Russell said: “If this bill is not shot through by hy pocrisy and demagoguery, they can of fer these amendments and vote them up and down.” • Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), who previously had been regarded as a pos sible supporter of the civil-rights bill, said April 25 that the measure was “seriously defective and potentially dangerous.” He concentrated his criti cism on Title VI, which provides for withholding federal funds from dis- (See JOHNSON, Page 2-A) organization in the Deep South to take such action. Balloting was secret on voting ma chines borrowed from the Dade County registrar, and totals were not an nounced. FEA officials said, however, there was little organized opposition. The proposal was made by the Dade (Miami) Classroom Teachers Associa tion which removed racial barriers last year. The CTA said it was ready to withdraw from the parent organi zation if the proposal had been re jected. Pinellas County teachers also have taken steps to remove racial barriers locally, and they supported Dade’s campaign. FEA’S action is expected to spur sim ilar moves in county teacher organiza tions since its new president, Dade County’s Supt. Joe Hall, has worked with the CTA to bring about full desegregation. The FEA debate hinged largely on legal points. Ed Henderson, exec utive secretary, pointed out that FEA has been of ficially recognized Mfltl by the legislature as the teachers’ professional spokesman and is charged by law with setting standards. Unless FEA was opened to all quali fied persons, he said, its position might be subject to court challenge. FEA’s counterpart for Negro teach ers, the Florida State Teachers Asso ciation, held its meeting simultaneously a few miles away in Miami. Members said it probably would be the last an nual meeting for the group. Dr. Gilbert Porter, FSTA executive (See TEACHERS, Page 3-A)