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teN YEARS in review SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY, 1964—PAGE 7-B KENTUCKY Decision Got Quick Support From Officials LOUISVILLE T op Governmental and school officials in Kentucky gave prompt, though cautious, support to the Supreme Court’s desegre gation decision of May 17, 1954. Their actions established a pat tern of quiet compliance, which has generally prevailed for a dec ade of increasing desegregation in public education. Of 227 school districts 10 years ago, 188 contained both white and Negro pupils and none had desegregated classes. The current school year finds the total number of districts reduced through mergers to 204, of which 165 contain students of both races. Of these, 153 operate desegregated classes, and another 10 are desegregated in policy. All eight public institutions of high er education are desegregated and all private colleges are believed prepared to admit qualified Negro applicants, although a few have not yet expe rienced actual biracial enrollment. Ten years ago when the news of the Supreme Court’s ruling reached this former slave-holding state, Gov. Lawrence W. Wetherby said at the cap ital city of Frankfort, “Kentucky will do whatever is necessary to comply with the law.” Though the state’s elementary and secondary schools were completely seg regated at the time, a trend toward increasing desegregation in higher edu cation had already been established. In 1949 a federal district court had or dered the University of Kentucky to open its graduate schools to Negro stu dents. Amend Day Law The following year, 1950, saw the state legislature amend the Day Law, which had required school segregation. The change permitted Negroes to attend institutions of higher education pro vided the institutions’ governing bodies approved and provided comparable courses were not available at Ken- Jttcky State College for Negroes. The University of Louisville and some ' ® a Uer colleges and some seminaries ^segregated under the amendment. And in the year before the Su preme Court’s ruling, Paducah Junior doge had desegregated under fed eral-court order. Thus the support giv- e \ l cour ^ ruling of 1954 came against ■ a ack ground of falling racial barriers “> education. Additional acceptance of the ruling within a year from the State De- ertment of Education, the Kentucky ncation Association, the Kentucky v ?° Boards Association and the min'* y -Association of School Ad- trators, as well as from the state ‘orney general. that 16 ■?»* Supreme Court ruling, 5u- Alay 31, 1955, received official giver, 111 Kentu cky similar to that - Ven the first. State Board Directive of I j'/ Une . 1955, the State Boar ^ards'f Ca u° n - d * rected local scho< idly a 10 desegregation “as rap howev conditi °ns warrant.” Actually State rf’ accord ^ n 2 to records of th reg ati epartm ent of Education, deseg 6, i9j- n nheady had begun: On Jun summer a ,A fe Sr° girl had entered Next ~ SCh ° o1 class in Fayette Counti 'atereri w July 18, six Negro childre ;or regui yne County’s Griffin Schoc Wed a if r cesses. Other districts fol ‘S55 I t voluntarily, and by Octobei “•racial 1 districts had initiate eUpila. ciasses involving 313 Negr Wrt^L,v rst: court test of the Supren Wt j,GT ng , s in the state, U.S. Di ^55. Alac Swinford on Dec. i ord a °wnuora on uec. :e Sate i* Adair County to desej W its el 111511 sch ° o1 b y Feb. 1, 19£ the iqr|^ ntar y schools at the sta v' 5 r wiyear - W* in th 0ther federal-court deci ^ v e affimf j St f te hi the past deca< legation ^ tlle Precedent that raci „ d th e _ m Public schools is illeg. jp*. 0re recen t decisions ha 1 ^ell no e *p e Sation of teaching stai The o , Student bodies. ^ ioun^i 01 fbe 1956-57 academ , w and s m v ^i 0re di stricts desegri iT® 1 clL 8 :° 17 T Ne Sr°es enrolled in b jWille UT Interest was focused c sm’all c 0 ® tate ’ s . largest ci ty. ai “city, 1 communities in West Kei 1,1 1956 r ■ ’ ^msville, a former slav. WETHERBY SWINFORD trading center, desegregated peaceably at all grade levels in what was called “The Quiet Heard Round The World” in a book, The Louisville Story, by the late School Supt. Omer Carmichael and journalist Weldon James. Carmich ael was summoned to the White House by President Eisenhower to tell how he had prepared for the desegregation success. But things differed in the Western Kentucky communities of Sturgis in Union County and Clay in Webster County. Reports of desegregation strife there prompted Gov. A. B. Chandler to send in National Guard troops to escort some Negro pupils through crowds to classes in formerly all-white schools. Twelve Negroes attempted to attend schools in the two towns but they withdrew after the state attorney general ruled they were enrolled illeg ally. The schools were desegregated subsequently under court order. By October, 1956, some two and a half years after the Supreme Court’s first ruling, the trend toward school desegregation was firmly under way, with the executive branch, the ju diciary and the public-education hier archy clearly committed by both word and act. “Too Slow’ From 1956-7 to 1962-3, however, the number of desegregated districts rose only from 91 to 119. This was viewed by the State Board of Education as too slow a pace and the board directed the State Department of Education to encourage more compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. Within two years, the number of de segregated districts jumped to its pres ent 153 total, enrolling 29,855 Negroes, more than half the total, in biracial schools. Eleven other districts have plans or policies calling for desegre gation—leaving only the Graves Coun ty district practicing segregation with out plan for change. Negro leaders point out, however, that the desegregation is far from com plete in many counties and in some is hardly more than token. Neverthe less the State Department of Educa tion’s school desegregation report for 1963-64 described the progress since 1954 as “unbelievable.” GEORGIA Complete Segregation of Schools Maintained Until 1960-1 Session MACON S enator Herman E. Talmadge, one of the best-known segre gationists in the nation, was gov ernor of Georgia when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its public school desegregation de cision May 17, 1954. Talmadge was succeeded early in 1955 by Gov. S. Marvin Griffin, who said in his gubernatorial campaign, “Come hell or high water, races will not be mixed in Georgia schools.” There was no school desegregation during the Talmadge and Griffin ad ministrations, but Gov. Ernest Van diver, who had promised that “not one, no, not one” Negro would go to school with whites in Georgia, was forced in January, 1961, to admit Negroes to the University of Georgia at Athens or close the public schools. He chose to desegregate. Following the University System de segregation in early 1961, Atlanta pub lic schools admitted Negroes in the fall of that year under another court order. Griffin’s main line of defense against court-ordered desegregation was a plan for the state to make individual grants for educational purposes to students. The idea was to provide money for pupils who preferred private segregated schools to public desegregated schools. Opposition Grew Vandiver latched on to the private school plan and put a million dollars aside for tuition grants, but as deseg- VANDIVER funds to be used funds. regation contin ued and increased, opposition grew against the pro ject. In 1962 and 1963, legislative acts re- stricted imple mentation of the plan, placed the proof for showing need for the grant on local officials, and required local i supplement state Today, only a handful of students at a private school in one of Georgia’s 159 counties are receiving tuition grants. By the end of 1955, six school sys tems in Georgia had received desegre gation petitions, but the May, 1955, de cision of the Supreme Court, handing lower federal courts and local officials the duty of ending all racial segre gation in public schools “as soon as practicable” was greeted with defiance by the state government. In Georgia, in the years following the major desegregation rulings, re sistance hardened and the voices of “moderates” were greatly muted. Many laws designed to curb Negro voting and strengthen segregation were passed, and the General Assembly gave Gov. Vandiver the power to close any school that desegregated. There was activity in the federal courts, however. A school desegrega tion suit filed against the University of Georgia by a Negro, Horace Ward, was denied in 1957 by a U.S. District Court on grounds that Ward had not exhausted his administrative remedies. New suits were filed against Georgia State College in Atlanta and the uni versity in Athens. And a suit filed early in January, 1958, resulted in June, 1959, in a federal court order for desegre gation in Atlanta public schools on May 1, 1961. The Atlanta Board of Education was ordered to submit a plan to the court. The board came up with a grade-a- year desegregation plan, starting with the 12th grade. With the state and fed eral governments on a collision course, many Georgians became concerned that the schools would be closed to avoid desegregation. Sibley Commission The legislature created the Sibley Commission, headed by an Atlanta banker, John Sibley. After extensive public hearings over the state, the commission re ported to the peo ple in the spring of 1960. The ma jority wanted state constitution al changes to per mit freedom of choice in schools forced to desegre gate. The climate of public opinion began to change so that the argument, which had been segregation versus de segregation, became closed schools ver sus open, desegregated schools. In January, 1961, two Atlanta Ne groes, Hamilton Holmes and Miss Char- layne Hunter, became the first members of their race to attend a white public GRIFFIN TALMADGE school when they entered the univer sity under court order. They were sus pended following campus disorders but were reinstated a few days later by a court order. The 1961 session of the legislature repealed compulsory school closing laws and fell back on local option, tuition grants and freedom of choice plans. In the fall of 1961, Georgia Tech in Atlanta desegregated. Georgia State followed in 1962 and so did Armstrong, Columbus, Valdosta State, West Geor gia and Savannah State in 1963. All college desegregation after the uni versity at Athens was voluntary. To day, 35 Negroes are in predominantly white colleges and one white is in a predominantly Negro school. Graded Schools Below the higher education level, Georgia has 177 Negroes in predom inantly white elementary and second ary schools. Atlanta desegregated un der court order in 1961 and so did Chatham County (Savannah) in 1963. Clarke County (Athens) and Glynn County (Brunswick) desegregated vol untarily in the fall of 1963. Public school systems in Dougherty County (Albany), Muscogee County (Columbus) and Bibb County (Macon) have been ordered to desegregate next fall Segregation of teachers is main tained but this concept is under legal attack, as is the grade-a-year deseg regation plan used in Atlanta and Sav annah, and contemplated by Macon and Columbus. Albany’s stairstep plan was thrown out by the U.S. Fifth Cir cuit Court of Appeals, and first and second grade Negro children in Dough erty County have been ordered regis tered without discrimination for the 1964-65 school term. MISSOURI State Segregation Laws Considered Invalid (Continued from Page 6-B) The Rev. John J. Hicks was elected to the St. Louis Board of Education April 7, 1959. He was the first Negro elected to a public office in a citywide vote in St. Louis. Hicks, a Methodist minister, was named board president in 1963. James E. Hurt Jr., elected to the St. Louis board on April 4, 1961, be came the second Negro board member. He is president of a small loan firm and a member of the St. Louis Council on Human Relations. Establishment of a permanent ad ministrative committee to deal with problems of racial segregation in St. Louis public schools was announced Nov. 3, 1961, by the Board of Educa tion. School board officials receive com plaints of alleged discriminatory prac tices from time to time, many of them connected with the transportation of students from overcrowded schools to other areas of the city. Racial segregation in St Louis pub lic schools had worsened in the seven years since the school system officially desegregated, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission reported on Dec. 2, 1962. St. Louis was one of several cities outside the South that had “problems of resegregation due to residential pat terns as well as a serious imbalance in the distribution of white and Negro teachers,” the report said. The report noted that the city was an “outstanding exception” to the gen eral rule that school officials and the Negro community lacked rapport. Sweeping changes to promote maxi mum desegregation in St. Louis public schools were recommended June 21, HURT HICKS 1963, by the Citizens Advisory Commit tee on Integration. The 12-member bi racial committee urged the desegrega tion of teachers on all school faculties, redrawing of some school districts, complete desegregation of Negro pup ils transported by bus and the inclusion of an open enrollment principle which would permit some students to attend available classrooms regardless of resi dence. The committee, headed by the Rev. Trafford P. Maher (S.J.), pointed out that “while some resegregation in the schools has taken place, it has not been done through deliberate intent on the part of the Board of Educa tion.” Several pa trons’ organiza tions of predom inantly white north and south St. Louis schools maher expressed un compromising opposition to the pro posed desegregation of Negro pupils transported by bus. Supt. of Instruction Hickey recom mended July 24, 1963, that a modified open enrollment policy be established. He proposed a “permissive transfer” plan under which elementary and high school students might attend schools other than those of their own neighbor hood districts, if space were available. Parents would be responsible for trans portation. The St. Louis Board of Education filed suit Aug. 7, 1963, in U.S. District Court, asking a judgment upholding the legality of the board’s bus transporta tion program and seeking an injunction restraining Negro and civil-rights groups from interfering with transport ing of pupils. On Aug. 20, the St. Louis branch of the National Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People filed suit in the same court. The petition accused the school board of operating a seg regated system in violation of the con stitution and asked that school officials be restrained from segregating trans ported Negro pupils who are sent to predominantly white receiving schools. Extensive desegregation in the St. Louis public schools, despite continued residential segregation, was reported in a study approved Feb. 11, 1964, by the Board of Education. The adminis trative report noted that the school system is adding 3,300 Negro children annually and is losing 1,100 white chil dren. The report said there were 1,818 white and 886 Negro teachers in the school system in 1953. In 1963, there were 1,811 white and 1,670 Negro teach ers. Several factors lessen the degree of school desegregation that can be ac complished, acting Supt. of Instruction William Kottmey- er told members of the Board of Education. These include the rapid rise in the num ber of Negro pu pils, the steady decline in the number of white pupils and the lack of desegrega tion in the hous ing pattern. In Kansas City, where protests against “resegregation” had not been as emphatic as in St. Louis, some 200 persons marched on the board of edu cation July 5, 1963, to present a list of demands they said would promote de segregation of public schools with re spect both to children and to faculties. The sponsor was the Kansas City Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. As in St. Louis, the Kansas City public schools were desegregated the year following the 1954 Supreme Court decision. The Kansas City hoard follows a neighborhood school policy, but permits transfers, regardless of race, where classroom space is avail able. The CORE group sought a policy statement from the board looking to ward greater desegregation by the drawing of school district boundaries, in selection of new school sites, in granting transfers, and in faculty as signments. The board said improved education of the child in the classroom, whoever the child might be, was the primary concern of the board and staff. KOTTMEYER