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PAGE 8-A—MAY, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS SOUTH CAROLINA Greenville Desegregation Set For Next September COLUMBIA rustees of the Greenville County School District, larg est in South Carolina, have agreed to desegregate next September. The move makes unnecessary the trial of a suit brought Aug. 19, 1963, by a Negro student seeking to enter a white school. Because the case, later expanded to cover five more students, was pending in court, a formal order was required. It was issued on April 27 by U.S. Dis trict Judge J. Robert Martin of Green ville. The Greenville County plans to de segregate followed substantially plans agreed to by Charleston District 20 trustees after they had been ordered to desegregate. The Greenville school district includes 75 white schools and 20 Negro schools. The enrollment is about 55,000, of which 20 per cent are Negro pupils. Under the Greenville plan, the first one in South Carolina to be submitted voluntarily, students may submit ap plication for transfers from Negro to white schools between May 1 and June 1 of this year. Judge Martin’s order requires publication in the Greenville newspapers, once a week for three con secutive weeks, of the new board pol icy and of two key paragraphs of his order. Copies of the policy statement, adopted unanimously by the board, are required to be sent home to parents by their children, along with copies of the two paragraphs of the judge’s order. The paragraphs from Judge Martin’s order state that students have a right to choose racially non-segre- gated schools, and give formal accep tance to the board’s new policy state ment on transfers and pupil assign ments. One of the students, Beatrice Thomp son, withdrew from the case since she was scheduled to graduate this June. The judge ordered the board at the hearing March 19 to consider the ap plications and report back on April 6. The board reported on that day to the ty’s 1956 desegregation policy. An NAACP leader asked in April if the school board intended to “effectively implement its avowed purpose.” A voluntary desegregation program gradually opened all grades of white schools to Negro transfers in Anne Arundel. As of last fall, 1,972 Negroes attended 44 formerly all-white schools while some 5,700 remained in all-Negro schools. A bone of contention, particu larly for the NAACP, is that Negroes are transported from any parts of the county to the county’s one all-Negro secondary school in Annapolis although the county’s 1956 desegregation policy said that Negroes would attend “the nearest school or [their] present school.” Emotional Adjustment An “adequate period of time must be permitted for the psychological and emotional adjustment” to total integra tion, the Howard County Board of Edu cation declared in April in a statement on its four-step program to eliminate separate Negro classes by fall, 1967. The board defended its four-year plan as the county NAACP sought complete integration by this coming fall. Describing its program of “directed integration” as one requiring the move- Georgia (Continued from Page 7-A) segregation was sought as a start in any particular school system. “We feel that once a start has been made, then the following year the whole system should be desegregated,” she said. Pending the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision on Atlanta’s gradual desegrega tion plan, she said, “we are saying that the six grades or the four grades we are asking is a minimum.” Mrs. Motley also sought an interim order pending the high tribunal’s de cision on Atlanta’s grade-a-year plan expected this spring. She said she be lieves the Supreme Court will require that all dual systems be abolished, in cluding separate teaching staffs. Briefs explaining the Atlanta plan in more detail were presented to the Supreme Court April 15. court that the transfers would be granted. The trustees formalized this action in a closed meeting on April 14 in which the statetment of policy was unanimously agreed upon. The board then submitted to the court the statement of policy and a formal resolution accepting the trans fer applications. No public announce ment was made. At a closed pjretrial conference on April 22 in Judge Mar tin’s chambers, attorneys for the Ne gro plaintiffs moved for a summary judgment granting their petition. Since all issues of fact were agreed upon between both parties, Judge Mar tin ruled that the plaintiffs were en titled to the judgment. Judge Martin held a closed meeting with newsmen in his office April 25 explaining details of the order. He filed the order on the following Monday at which time the first news of the step reached the general public. The only difference between the Greenville and Charleston plans is that in Greenville, because of the size of the big district, area superintendents are authorized to handle transfers and assignmemnts. The district superintend ent is responsible in Charleston. Similar desegregation suits in South Carolina are pending in Darlington, Orangeburg, Sumter and Clarendon Counties. Applications for transfers of Negro students to white schools are under consideration by school officials in Rock Hill. No court action is as yet pending. ★ ★ ★ Charleston’s School District 20, the state’s only desegregated district, has received federal court approval for a pupil assignment and transfer plan de veloped since 11 Negroes first entered its previously all-white schools last September. When U.S. Judge J. Robert Martin ruled in favor of the Negro plaintiffs in a Charleston case (Brown et al v. Charleston School District 20) last Au gust, he ordered not only that the plaintiffs be admitted immediately, but also that the district completely de ment “of white pupils into two Negro schools and the transfer of many of the Negro children in these schools into other integrated schools,” the three- man board said an adjustment period was needed for “both white and Negro parents whose sons and daughters will be directed to attend certain schools.” The board’s program, adopted in April, 1963, would close two small schools, one white and the other Negro, this June and reassign the pupils to a new elementary school in the fall. Next year, two more Negro elementaries would be closed and their pupils shifted to predominantly white schools. By the fall of 1966 the board expects to have converted the county’s one all- Negro secondary school to a predom inantly white junior-senior high, re built to double its present capacity. The one remaining Negro elementary would become integrated in the fall of 1967. Following the meeting on April 7, the NAACP delegation indicated that it did not plan to act against the four- year timetable until after June 1, when state legislation takes effect and en larges the county school board to five members. Howard County has about 8,570 white and 1,220 Negro children in its school system. Under its voluntary desegre gation program, begun with the first five grades in 1956 and a grade a year thereafter, only 194 Negro pupils by last fall had shifted to white schools. ★ ★ ★ The use of racial identification on University of Maryland student appli cation forms was made an issue in April by the Maryland Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations. The state interracial agency asked the university’s Board of Regents to elim inate from the application form a ques tion concerning the race of the appli cant’s parents. The agency quoted the university’s admissions director as say ing the only purpose of the question was to provide guidance in the off- campus housing of foreign students. The Board of Regents was scheduled to take up the issue at its May meet ing. S. C. Highlights Greenville County, biggest school district in South Carolina, plans to desegregate in the fall. A State Segregation Committee spokesman predicted the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision will be modi fied. Orangeburg plans private schools in the event of desegregation. A federal court has approved Charleston’s assignment and transfer plan. segregate by September, 1964. There would be no deadlines for ap plications or other regulations or re strictions unless the school board itself submitted to him a plan of its own to “complete elimination of discrimina tion” in Charleston schools. The district trustees adopted such a plan April 8 and Judge Martin ap proved it April 13. When he did so, he made it clear that he was not wa tering down the original order. He left the door open for Negro plaintiffs to appeal to the court for further modi fication if it appeared the intent and purpose of his original order of Aug. 22, 1963, were being circumvented. ★ ★ ★ Orangeburg District 5 school board lawyers generally have followed the defense fine laid down in earlier de segregation cases in South Carolina. They answered a suit by saying that intelligence and health differences in white and Negro pupils constitute a “rational basis” for voluntary segre gation of the races. The answer was filed in the case (Adams v. Orangeburg School District 5) in U. S. District Court at Charles ton April 16. It replies to a desegrega tion action brought March 20 on behalf of 23 Negro children. On April 22, seven white parents, acting on behalf of 18 students, peti tioned the court to be allowed to in tervene in the suit as parties defendant. Orangeburg is the latest South Caro lina city in which plans for a private school in the event of desegregation have been announced. Plans to begin financing of a private school were re vealed at an April 3 meeting of the Citizens’ Council. The Citizens’ Coun cil school, under the proposal advanced at the meeting, would qualify under the state’s tuition grants program. Legislative Action School Committee Believes Trend Against Decision South Carolina’s key body in segre gation matters believes evidence is mounting against the 1954 Supreme Court decision on schools, and a spokesman predicted it will be modi fied. The S.C. School Committee—more familiarly known as the Segregation Committee or the Gressette Commit tee-noted the trend in its annual re port to the General Assembly April 2. The report said that the anti-deseg regation position is “rapidly being further reinforced by the mounting evidence that the decrees and orders promulgated under the court’s decision of 1954 . . . can be enforced upon an unwilling people, including a majority of both races, only at the expense of severe and almost certainly permanent damage to public education.” Committee Secretary Wayne W. Freeman, a Greenville newspaper edi tor, said, in presenting the report, that he believes the 1954 decision will be modified through future court action, probably brought in a Northern court against forced mixing. Freeman is one of five gubernatorial appointees on the 15-member special committee headed by Calhoun County Sen. L. Marion Gressette. The group was originally appointed in 1955 to serve as a watchdog over segregation in the state. Among its recommendations, the committee suggested a statewide sys tem of testing and classifying students for placement in grades, curricula and particular schools. It also asked for a study to determine if public school courses are designed for students of varying scholastic aptitudes. The committee also suggested strong ly that local school officials consider closing schools if students miss classes in order to participate in racial dem onstrations. Asked later about this proposal, S.C. Attorney General Daniel R. McLeod said local school officials have the right to close schools under these conditions. ★ ★ ★ Allocations for school building proj ects in South Carolina since 1951 Maryland (Continued from Page 7-A) < DELAWARE l i State University Policy On Faculties Criticized DOVER A Negro educator who teaches during the summer-school session at the University of Dela ware charged April 13 that the regular faculty is “segregated” and that the university therefore cannot prepare teachers properly for work in an “integrated so ciety.” Dr. Earl C. Jackson, principal at Del aware’s Bancroft Junior High School, speaking during a forum on “Equal Op portunity When?” at Temple Beth Sha lom in Wilmington, said the university could find qualified Negro teachers. “They are very worried about pre paring teachers for work in an inte grated society,” he said. “It would be much more impressive if they didn’t have a segregated faculty. I teach there in the summer, and I’m the only Ne gro, as far as I know.” The university agreed it has no Ne groes on its regular faculty, but Dr. Ray M. Hall, dean of the school of education, said there are a dozen or more Negro “co-operating teachers” on the payroll. Co-operating teachers, Hall explained, help train student teachers in their classrooms. “We have white students working with Negro co-operating teachers and Negro students working with white co operating teachers,” Hall said. “We prepare our students to work in an integrated society in the sense that the student body is integrated. And many of our students of education do student teaching in integrated schools.” Sees Little ‘Integration’ Dr. Jackson, during the all-day “workshop,” cited Delaware for prog ress in “desegregation” but little in “integration.” He said there is a prob lem in Wilmington schools in “get ting a two-way movement of students and staff members.” While several Negro teachers and students are now in previously white schools, he said, the schools that were formerly all-Negro have drawn only a few whites. Segregated schools also came under attack by Seymour Komblum, execu tive director of the Jewish Community Center. He said school desegregation cannot wait for desegregated housing. “We acknowledge that de facto school segregation is wrong, but if counter measures mean transporting a child to a school in a different neighborhood, we are doubtful,” he said. “Oddly enough, we don’t have the same con cerns about transporting our child to a private school in another neighborhood to assure him a better education. “We advance the argument that in tegrated schools must wait for inte grated housing, but integrated housing requires economic resources, and eco nomic resources depend on education.” Thus, said Komblum, “we encircle solutions with endless deliberations.” Schoolmen Small Schools Still An Issue The future of small Negro schools continued to dominate meetings of the State Board of Education, which in April voted to add rooms at two schools but stop a building program at a third. The board voted unanimously April 16 to add two rooms each at the Rich ard Allen school in the Georgetown Special School District at a cost of $78,- 000, and at the Du Pont Avenue school in the Lewes Special School District at a cost of $78,900. Both projects were delayed in March at the request of Harry D. Zutz, who questioned whether the schools would fit into the educational pattern under full desegregation. Dr. Richard P. Gousha, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, assured the board at the reached $220,387,440 in April when the State Educational Finance Commis sion approved additional expenditures of $271,284. Over 60 per cent of the money paid out in new school construction in the last 13 years has gone into schools for Negroes, who constitute approxi- mmately 35 per cent of the state’s population. The program was launched in 1951 by then Gov. James F. Byrnes. Byrnes’ avowed purpose was to make the state’s Negro school facilities substan tially equal to those of its white schools under the then prevalent “separate- but-equal” doctrine of school opera tion. Delaware Highlights The University of Delaware ad- i mitted it has an all-white faculty but said it employs a dozen or more Negro “co-operating teachers” who help train student teachers in their classrooms. Additions will be made to two small Negro schools, but a reduc- tin will be made in the building p ro . gram at a third. Dover Special School District, after receiving a letter of protest from the NAACP, said it made an oversight in not putting predominant ly Negro Delaware State College on its teacher recruiting list. April meeting that the schools would fit into the future eduactional needs of the districts. On April 27, the board announced a reduction of some $300,000 in the build ing program at the Shelbyville 210 (Ne gro) school. The board also announced, that the Negro students in the seventh and eighth grades would be given free dom of choice to attend either the Sel- byville 32 (white) school or the William C. Jason Negro school at George town. Small schools should be absorbed by their larger neighbors to bring about more effective desegregation, ac cording to the State Human Rela tions Commission. Consolidation of such schools, most of them Negro, was one of three points proposed by the Very Rev. Msg. Paul J. Taggart of Wilmington, a member of the commission. ★ ★ ★ Five-day Period Set For Nejiro Transfers Negro pupils who wish to transfer to a white school, and Negro first-grad ers who wish to enter a white school, may do so during the May 11-15 period. This special registration has been set by the State Board of Education, in , compliance with an order from the i U.S. District Court in Wilmington. To provide for students who ha\e justifiable reasons for failing to register, applications will be considered if P rc ' sented before June 29, or at a date set by local school authorities. ★ ★ ★ School for Moors Loses One of Two Teachers A one-room school for Moors vn^ >se one of its two teachers but con^ nue to exist, under action taken ae April meeting of the State B f Education. The school at Cheswold, near Dove, as an enrollment of 25, compared 8 last year. ★ ★ ★ Dover Special School District h greed, following receipt of a le e rotest from the NAACP, to pu ominantly Negro Delaware Sta ige on its teacher recruiting 1S , j Dr. Dustin W. Wilson, Dover sen - uperintendent, said the orrussi , ielaware State was “pure oversis* Race Balance (Continued from Page 2-A) ^ e Constitution requires an end* se g. rt o' segregation as well ns ^ #t . gation imposed by law. NAA ^ meys said Negro children arei ^ Ivantaged by de facto segreg r de jure segregation. seb® 0 ' It was contended that the Ga >ard had an “affirmative duty gpd cial balance among its sc ’ at the courts “must deal gild escribe all racial discriminatin' 1 gregation in education. In a decision upheld by 1 e ^ iC 3g c ircuit Court of Appeals in ^e' .S. District Judge Georg e ( , ' b*l" :ld on Jan. 29, 1963, that racw ^ ice in our public schools is" itutionally mandated. He se ff‘ e ' •oblem in Gary is not one se grr ited schools but rather one ited housing.” transit' The district judge said , tr neig hb° r me pupils away from tlie1 ^ “si 1 ®' >ods and leaving ot ^ r ^ lanC ing y for the purpose of b ^f^. ol dd * ces in the various ® ch °° io l a tion ° h y opinion be indeed a ^ ft e equal protection clause