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PAGE 4-B—MAY, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS TEN YEARS IN REVIEW ARKANSAS Faubus, Only Governor to Serve For Decade, Shifted With State LITTLE ROCK A rkansas accepted the 1954 desegregation decision with some protest but the mood gener ally was one of resigned accept ance. The governor, Francis A. Cherry of Jonesboro, commented, “Arkansas will obey the law. It always has.” Four school boards decided voluntarily that summer to desegregate or to begin planning for it and 17 school districts received NAACP petitions asking im mediate desegregation. A month after the decision, Gov. Cherry said in a statement endorsed by the State Board of Education, “Our present state law provides for segre gation in the public schools and any decision for integration of the races is premature, as the Supreme Court in its decision stated that further argu ments would be heard and a decree entered.” The State Board of Edu cation adopted the policy that the local boards should continue to work toward equalization of facilities and that de segregation petitions by the NAACP were out of harmony with that policy and with the Supreme Court decision. Nevertheless, Little Rock decided to work on a desegregation plan pending the 1955 decree. Charleston and Fay etteville desegregated quietly but Sheridan met local opposition and dropped its plan. Bill Failed In the regular legislature of January- March, 1955, Gov. Orval E. Faubus, making his first inaugural address, did not mention the race situation. A pupil asignment bill introduced failed in the Senate. After the 1955 decree, SSN surveyed Arkansas school superintendents and found their reaction to be that major trouble was not expected and that de segregation probably would be rapid in districts with small Negro populations but would be longer drawn out in oth ers. Seven more school districts acted on voluntary plans leading to desegre gation, and Little Rock gave the de tails of its plan to be started in 1957. The state attorney general informed the state-supported colleges that the Su preme Court ruling applied to them too, and four of the seven admitted Ne gro students in September, 1955. (The University of Arkansas had desegre gated in 1948). Hoxie, admitted all 20 of its Negro students to schools with about 1,000 white students and all went well for three weeks then a very strong pro test movement developed, guided from outside the district and from outside the state. Hoxie experienced protest ral lies, threats, obscene phone calls, and the like. This lead to a unique law suit. The Hoxie School Board went to fed eral court for a restraining order against the dissidents and for a decla ratory judgment of its duties and re sponsibilities. Federal District Judge Albert L. Reeves ruled that the Su preme Court rulings had nullified the state laws on school segregation and that the Hoxie board would have left itself open to both civil and criminal actions by failing to desegregate its schools. When the defendants appealed, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened (for the first time in a desegregation case) for the school board and the State of Georgia intervened on the side of the segregationists. In October, 1956, the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the defendants, who included the Citizens’ Councils of Arkansas. First Suit While that was going on the first Arkansas desegregation suit was filed and concluded. Twenty-four Negro children sued the Van Buren School Board in October, 1955. In January, 1956, Federal Judge John E. Miller told the board that there was no ques tion about the law, that the board would have to produce a desegregation plan. The board did and the suit was dismissed without a court order being issued. Gov. Faubus had stayed out of the desegregation issue. When the Hoxie situation developed in August, 1955. Faubus had said that the state would not intervene there or in any other lo cal district. Five months later, he made his first formal statement on the sub ject. He had determined, he said, that 85 per cent of the people of Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus Center of Controversy were against school integration and added: “It should be obvious that centuries- old customs and regional traditions can not be changed overnight—even by court edict. I cannot be a party to any attempt to force acceptance of a change to which the people are so overwhelm ingly opposed.” In the same months that Faubus was disclosing his change, the Little Rock school case developed. Mrs. L. C. (Daisy) Bates, of Little Rock, state NAACP president, took 27 Negro chil dren to four white schools on Jan. 25 and they were refused admission. On Feb. 8 they filed suit in federal court to overthrow the board’s announced plan of gradual desegregation in favor of immediate desegregation. Campaign Differed Faubus’s second term campaign of 1956 differed from that of 1954. This time it was all about desegregation. Faubus said, “Since I have been your governor, no school board has been forced to desegregate its schools against its will” and no board will “be forced to mix the races while I am your gov ernor.” He swamped his opponents. All eight members of the Arkansas con gressional delegation signed the South ern Manifesto and Sen. John L. Mc Clellan (D-Ark.) called the Supreme Court justices “nine men lacking ju dicial capacity.” In November the vot ers of Arkansas approved an inter position resolution and a pupil assign ment act. In August, 1956, Federal Judge John E. Miller ruled against the NAACP and upheld Little Rock’s gradual plan. Hot Springs desegregated a high school class in auto mechanics. About 50 Ne gro students were scattered through the seven white state-supported col leges. The 1957 legislature adopted four segregation laws that were to become part of the basis for Faubus’s actions in the Little Rock school crises. In April the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals also approved the Little Rock plan to desegregate over six years, beginning in 1957. A Chancery Court in August granted an injunction under the new state laws to prevent the start of desegregation at Little Rock, but a federal court over ruled it next day. In September, 1957, Fort Smith and Van Buren desegregated on schedule. Two Ozark Negro students admitted to a high school with whites withdrew after two days of harassment. North Little Rock postponed its start because of the trouble at Little Rock. At Little Rock, Gov. Faubus sur rounded Central High the night of Mon day, Sept. 2, with armed National Guardsmen and announced that he was doing this to keep the peace. But when the nine Negro children arrived for the first day of school next morning, the Guardsmen would not let them in. Faubus kept his Guardsmen there and the Negroes out for three weeks. Under a new federal court order, he removed the Guardsmen and for two two days the Little Rock police tried and failed to handle the mobs that gathered at the school each morning. President Eisenhower then put the National Guard under federal control and sent the 101st Division in. From Sept. 25 through the school year, soldiers patrolled Central High and protected the Negro nine. In Febru ary, one of them was expelled. In federal court months later, school officials testified that during 1957-58, Central High had had 30 fires inside the building, 23 searches for bombs and firecrackers going off constantly, and that 200 pupils had been suspended and three expelled. In the summer of 1958 Faubus won a third term as governor, the second man in Arkansas history to get one. Against two opponents he carried all 75 counties. Also that summer the Little Rock school board persuaded Federal Dis trict Judge Harry J. Lemley to grant a two and one- half-year post ponement in the second year of d e s egregation. But the appeals court cancelled the delay, Aug. 12, though it stayed its order for 30 days to let the U.S. Supreme Court review it. Faubus promptly DELAWARE Central High School, 1957 Gov. Faubus called out the Guard. called a special legislative session that speedily approved a series of laws. On Sept. 12 the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that there could not be a two and one-half-year delay. The school board ordered the desegregated high schools to open on Monday, Sept. 15. Gov. Faubus ordered the high schools closed, under Acts 4 and 5 of the 1958 special session. Act 4 provided a special election in which the voters could choose closed high schools or the immediate total desegregation of all the schools. Little Rock voted for closed high schools. Several private schools for whites opened. Other places also had problems in September, 1958. Ozark had kept three Negro students in its high school dur ing the spring semester. It let them return in the fall and for the second time they were driven out by white harassment. Two of the Ozark board members resigned because of criticism, and Ozark has not attempted desegre gation since then. Van Buren, enter ing its second year of desegregation, briefly had 50 junior high students out on a protest strike. In the November, 1958, general elec tion, Dr. Dale Alford, the only pro- Faubus member of the Little Rock School Board, put on an eight-day HAYS ALFORD Milford Had Only Public Protest DOVER D elaware’s school system, with one exception, has gone through a decade of desegregation without public protest. The one exception, at Milford, came four months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May, 1954, that segre gated schools were inherently unequaL The 11 Negroes who entered the white school at Milford in the fall of 1954 sub sequently were returned to the all- Negro schools, not because of demon strations, but by the Delaware courts. The students were ruled not eligible to attend the white school because the local board had not submitted its de segregation plan to the State Board of Education. But, during the interim, protesting white parents kept their children at home and the Milford school board resigned. Many of the mass meetings were sparked by Bryant W. Bowles, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People. Bowles is currently serving a life sen tence in a Texas prison on a murder charge. While Milford protested, Dover, 15 miles to the north, admitted Negro pup ils in the academy curriculum without incident. But the majority of the local districts, unlike Dover or Milford, tacit ly resisted desegregation or fought it in the federal courts. Curiously, school desegregation, again with one exception, did not become an issue in the legislature. It arose in 1958 with the introduction of a so- called “Little Rock” bill, which would have forced schools to close if fed eral troops appeared on school grounds. The bill was defeated. Both the Democrat who introduced the bill, Rep. Charles P. West, and the Republican who fought it hardest, Rep. George H. Ehinger, that year lost bids to ad vance to the State senate. The main legal battle to force Delaware schools to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court decision of May 7, 1954, was joined in May, 1956, when some REDDING 40 Negro students from seven districts sued to enter white schools. The suits were brought by Negro Attorney Louis L. Redding against Mil ford, Milton, John M. Clayton, Clayton, Seaford, Laurel, and Greenwood school districts, and became known as Evans v. Buchanan. In 1959, after several court decisions affirming that it was the responsibility of the State Board of Education rather than local districts, to desegregate the schools, the state board obtained ap proval of a stairstep, grade-a-year plan from the U.S. District Court in Wilmington. Judge Caleb R. Layton, who held a three-day hearing before approving the plan, said in his opinion that “any thought of a total and im mediate integration of the Delaware school system is out of the question.” Twenty-seven Negro pupils enrolled under the stairstep plan in eight white districts in September, 1959, bringing the desegregated districts to 19 of 94. But the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in Philadelphia, struck down the grade-a-year plan on July 19, 1960, after a hearing by a three-judge panel on April 22. That decision, in effect, opened all Delaware schools to all races, and Ne groes have been admitted as they ap plied without incident. More than half of the Negro school population now at tends classes with whites. The state board, as a matter of course, has ordered a comprehensive study to determine the status of all- Negro schools, in view of either clos ing them or consolidating them with white districts. write-in campaign, based solely on seg regation, against Congressman Brooks Hays of Little Rock, member of Con gress for 16 year. Hays had taken the “moderate” role in Little Rock, trying to get the two sides together. Alford won. Within a week the other five mem bers of the Little Rock Board resigned all at one time, citing “the utter hope lessness, helplesness and frustration of our present position,” later defined by one of them as the harassment from Faubus. A new board was elected Dec. 6, 1958, consisting of three outright segregationists and three moderates who were segregationists but wanted open schools. Before that the legislature met for its regular 1959 session and approved a proposal by Faubus to put his school closing powers into the constitution and also approved 32 of 58 bills relating to segregation. Popular Uprising May, 1959, a popular In May, 1959, a popular uprising against the three segregationists oc curred and STOP (Stop This Outrage ous Purge) was formed to recall them. Segregationists retaliated with CROSS (Committee to Retain Our Segregated L Schools) and all six board members faced a recall election. After three furious weeks of electioneering, with Faubus himself coming out for the three segregationists, the city voted those three off the board and kept the three moderates. Three more moderates were aP' pointed and the new board—as so® 8 as a federal court killed the sta school-closing laws June nounced that it would reopen the hi? 1 schools. i In a surprise maneuver the boart opened the high schools Aug. 12, month early, with three Negro dents assigned to Central and t to Hall High. A mob tried to stop > after hearing a talk by Gov. Faubus the state Capitol. Little Rock P° and firemen used billy clubs an hoses and won a showdown in streets a block from Central Hig&- a stormy night three weeks later, ._ dynamite explosions ripped Little ^ one at the school board office, ^ five offenders were rounded up convicted. Another district, Pulaski (rural), desegregated 1959, but only because all of dren in one of its elementary ^ came from the Little Rock T ^iei Base and the government dem*“ that it be desegregated. Countf in Septemg Fourth Term In 1960 Faubus won a foU ^J a tipf the first in Arkansas history, - jn without a runou four candidates an 11 M' November a school-closing — tc ment he had sponsored wen .^06 defeat. By that time, the ^ district was desegregated. - e fji* admitted one Negro child Th grade under federal court an0 tM : fall of 1960 was notable » i9? way—it was the first time ^gir that no trouble had marre g e pte&' 1 nine of school in the state.^^ nmg or scnwi *** ul „ . ber. 1960, and in March, gri peals court held that Dollarw^ th and then Little Rock were assignment law hlegalV . adj 0 ?^ segregation. Both disV n0 fu- their procedure and have ther legal trouble on tha P In the fall of 1961 notone ^ yd district desegregated. Only this happened before. (See ARKANSAS, Page 6-B) 1 g. g-g'S'g ~ S- g 8 <* g S' 3 g 8 g S-P 8 8 1 g-g-g & S fT8.& s. g-sr a a a x & s