Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—JUNE, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Faster Action
To Be Sought
By NAACP
(Continued from Page 1)
Fund for some years to come,” Green
berg said. The organization has in
creased its budget to $1% million for
each of the next two years, and to $2
million for 1966.
The Legal Defense and Educational
Fund is sponsoring a series of six Civil
Rights Law Institutes this year to keep
its attorneys abreast of legal problems
in the areas of protest demonstrations,
state action, state criminal procedures
and school desegregation.
‘Spiritual Father’
As one of the first convocation speak
ers, Greenberg described the 1954
Brown decision as the “spiritual father
of the freedom riders and the sit-ins
and the state house marchers and the
kneel-ins and the freedom walkers.”
But, he added, the decision’s effect has
gone beyond the race issue and has
become “a dynamo that may help pull
society out of a mire in which we have
been trapped, immobile, for genera
tions.”
“Brown is an engine of social change
for many of our unsolved social, politi
cal, and economic problems which have
shown no sign of moving until this
civil-rights revolution,” he said. “So
it is no accident that as we enter this
phase of the civil-rights struggle it is
coupled with a broader struggle con
cerned with the economy as a whole
and with poverty as a generality.
Surely, there never was this recognition
before.”
Greenberg said the Supreme Court
decisions also caused a “sharp awaken
ing” in education. “To merely average
things out in an integrated system
would mean raising the appropriation
for Negroes and lowering that for
whites . . . And so we have found that
quite apart from integration in ordinary
tangible and measurable terms, there
has been a drive to improve education
generally.”
Another speaker on the May 27
luncheon program with Greenberg was
Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the
National Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People, which is a
separate organization from the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Wilkins said those “who measure the
effectivenes of Brown by ‘X’ number
of Negroes desegregated, know not the
significance of this long fight.” He de
scribed the importance of the decision
as being a “reaffirmation of right” under
law.
U.S. Circuit Judge Thurgood Marshall
received a silver tray at the luncheon
in recognition of his previous legal
service with the Fund, including win
ning the original School Segregation
Cases before the Supreme Court.
Side Issue
A Wednesday afternoon session on
“The Right to Participate in an Open
Community” only touched on education
as a side issue. Former U.S. Attorney
General Herbert Brownell called the
Brown decision “one of the most im
portant in the history of American
constitutional law.” Discussing the sec
ond decade after the decision, Brownell
said:
“Two legal problems yet remain. First
we must give to federal law enforce
ment officials power to enforce directly
each and every federal civil right. Sec
ondly, we must modernize our federal
procedural law to help vindicate each
and every federal civil right.”
Also appearing on the panel with
Brownell were James Farmer, national
director of the Congress of Racial
Equality, and Eugene V. Rostow, dean
of Yale University Law School. On
Thursday morning, “The Right to an
Open Economy” was the theme of talks
by Edwin C. Berry, executive director
of the Chicago Urban League; Michael
Harrington, an author; and Jacob S.
Potofsky, general president of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America.
At the Thursday luncheon, the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., president of
the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, told the convocation that
“all too many people have distorted
reality by defending the legal approach
and condemning direct action, or de
fending direct action and condemning
the legal approach.” He continued:
“Direct action is not a substitute for
work in the courts and the halls of
government. Bringing about a passage
of a new and broad law or pleading
cases before the courts of the land,
does not eliminate the necessity for
bringing about the mass dramatization
of injustice in front of a city hall. In
deed, direct action and legal action
GREENBERG MOTLEY
complement one another; when skill
fully employed, each becomes more
effective.”
At the final convocation session on
Thursday afternoon, the U.S. commis
sioner of education, Francis Keppel,
offered six measures “to meet our pur
pose—the right to equal education now.”
The commissioner said it is vital to
“move decisively and at a far more
accelerated pace toward integration in
our schools.” “But integration alone
will not assure true equality, nor can
we assume that the mere intermixing
of races is true integration,” he added.
Keppel said:
“If education would make up for the
long years of social and economic
discrimination, if it would break the
lock-step of inequality that runs from
generation to generation, we will need
both integration and a broad range of
new, imaginative educational programs
for this generation of children.”
Keppel suggested:
• Lower the age limits at which pub
lic schools assume responsibility for
children. “If we in education begin
our work with three and four year
olds, with nursery school classes, we
have a powerful chance to be influen
tial in canceling out deprivations that
will otherwise affect every aspect of
their lives.”
• Get rid of unfounded assumptions”
about the level of interest and exposure
to the work which children of inequality
bring with them to school. “This is
another new role that the schools should
play—to broaden and enrich these
children’s horizons of experience in
every area—from the world of art and
music to the world of nature and
science and work.”
• Expand the school day and school
year. “If we are to make up for edu
cational inequality of the past . . . then
these schools must be open far more
than they are closed, open for 12 or 14
hours a day, perhaps open for 12
months out of the year.”
• Search out parents as “partners in
our educational enterprise.” “Our hope
for success will be greatly diminished
without the active interest and motiva
tion and partnership of their parents.”
• For active alliances with all com
munity resources, social agencies,
neighborhood groups, labor, business
and civic leaders. “The day when these
schools have been isolated and apart
from the community they serve must
come to an end.”
• Create a corps of teachers trained
and gifted in teaching deprived chil
dren. “We in the civil-rights movement
and in education must look for these
teachers perceptively, recognize their
worth, and support in them the spirit
of challenge and high adventure which
their assignment so uniquely deserves.”
Working Partnership
Keppel concluded by calling for a
working partnership between education
and the civil-rights movement. The
educator said:
“Educators and the public at large
will be wrong if they view school boy
cotts and parents’ marches as indica
tions of a fundamental division between
the schools and the civil-rights move
ment. And civil-rights leaders will also
be wrong if they forget the positive
purpose of such protests, if they allow
these creative tensions to degenerate
into destructive hostility.
“There is a natural alliance among
us. We must preserve it and foster it.”
The final speaker, Mrs. Motley, said
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educa
tional Fund would begin new school
suits in 1964 and would file motions
asking courts to speed up the desegre
gation already commenced. “In addition
to requesting a speedup in the desegre
gation of pupils, we will be asking the
courts to require as the basis for such
a speedup a unitary, nonracial school
zone system,” she said. “In all cases
we will also be asking the courts to
require the assignment of teachers on
a nonracial basis.”
The three proposals for increased
desegregation—more speed, a single
zone and teacher reassignment—“will
continue to meet with resistance,” Mrs.
Motley predicted. She said:
“This resistance will stem from the
fact that in the South the moderate
contention is that the Brown decision
does not require the state to now dis
establish the dual school system which
they set up . . . Resistance will also
continue to flow from the fact that the
| South understands far better than the
FLORIDA
Negroes Charge Schools
Not Really Desegregated
MIAMI
onroe County, stretching
along the Florida Keys to
Key West, is one of the two in
Florida which declare their pub
lic school systems are completely
desegregated. The school board
says officially some Negro pupils
attended all but one school in the
county last year and that some
100 Negroes were in mixed
classes.
But a group of Negro parents
contradicted this sharply in an
unusual petition filed May 27 in
the federal district court at Mi
ami.
The suit (Major v. Board of Public
Instruction of Monroe County) says
Monroe practices “almost total segre
gation” in its schools and complains
specifically of “social segregation” of
Negro pupils.
NAACP officials who helped plan the
suit says it is the first in which this
charge has been included.
The suit contends that in practice
Negro pupils are assigned to Negro
schools nearest their homes and that
if a white school is nearer the Negro
must go through a complicated pro
cess of application and hearing in order
to attend.
White children, on the other hand,
are never assigned to a Negro school
even if it is closer to their homes, the
complaints said, but are automatically
assigned to the nearest white school.
The plaintiffs complained the school
board failed to maintain quality courses
at the predominantly Negro Douglass
High School, which is no longer ac
credited. But they charged that the
board refuses to assign Negroes to a
white high school where higher stand
ards prevail.
The suit also said the plaintiffs “have
North the educational deprivation to
which Negro children have been sub
jected in the separate inferior schools
which have been afforded Negroes . . .
The South therefore views the admis
sion of Negro children to white schools
as inflicting upon white children an
educational detriment flowing from a
required watering down of the cur
riculum to meet the needs of educa
tionally retarded Negro youngsters ....
“The redrawing of school lines is re
sisted in the South because . . . such
a method of desegregation, despite
housing segregation, will bring about
a large measure of desegregation in
the schools.
“The assignment of teachers on a non
racial basis is resisted because in some
Southern communities Negro teachers
have been employed who have not
scored the same score on the National
Teachers Examination as white teach
ers . . . Resistance, therefore, may also
be expected from some Negro teachers
whose prior segregated training has not
equipped them for the job which they
have secured.”
reason to believe” the Monroe school
board plans to have dual, segregated
campuses when a junior college is
opened in the near future.
It asked a permanent injunction
against operation of a segregated school
system and a rule requiring the school
board to submit a plan for complete
reorganization of the school system
without racial bias.
Charges Denied
The suit brought sharp reaction in
Monroe County. School Supt. Horace
O’Bryant said of the charges: “Nothing
could be further from the truth.”
“Anybody who says the school board
hasn’t gone all-out to desegregate
schools in this county is cuckoo.”
O’Bryant recalled that Monroe Coun
ty adopted a desegregation policy two
years ago under strong pressure from
the federal government. Agents of the
Department of Justice notified the
the school officials that unless desegre
gation was begun, suit would be filed
to withdraw all federal funds.
With large Navy installations in Key
West, the schools are heavily subsi
dized by the federal government for
the cost of educating children of gov
ernment personnel.
The school board officially scrapped
its segregation policy in 1962 and an
nounced last September that desegre
gation had been further extended. On
the day after the latest suit was filed,
Supt. O’Bryant produced a letter from
Burke Marshall, Assistant Attorney
General in the Civil Rights Division,
commending the county r or ending ra
cial discrimination.
“I think you and the school board
are to be highly commended for your
responsible action,” Marshall wrote.
“You have more than fulfilled the as
surances which the board gave this
Department more than a year ago re
garding the gradual elimination of ra
cial considerations in the assignment to
Florida Highlights
An unexpected suit charging that
Monroe County maintains “almost
complete” school segregation was
filed in federal district court. Mon
roe began assignment of Negroes to
predominantly white schools two
years ago and claims to be com
pletely desegregated.
Duval County lost its appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court of a court
order requiring nonracial assign
ment of teachers.
Mayor Haydon Burns of racially
troubled Jacksonville won Florida’s
Democratic nomination for governor
over Mayor Robert King High of
Miami, who campaigned on an all-
out civil rights platform.
Florida school boards began the
assignment process for next fall
with prospects that at least 20 of the
state’s 67 counties will have some
desegregation.
Nominee Burns
Mayor vs. Mayor.
particular schools of dependents of
Naval personnel.”
O’Bryant said again that Negro chil
dren attended every school in the
county except one — May Sands Ele
mentary—and “that one will have some
Negro children next year.”
Shortly after the suit was filed, two
of the four persons whose names ap
peared as plaintiffs declared they had
no knowledge of the suit.
Say Names Unauthorized
Hilson Sweeting and his sister, Mrs.
Violet McBee, both parents of school
children, said jointly:
“We had nothing to do with that
suit. Our names were used without our
knowledge.”
“I am not in favor of this action.’
Sweeting added, “and there is no
reason for me to be involved. I am
satisfied with the integration of the
schools.”
Mrs. McBee said she was “taken by
surprise” when she read of the suit in
a newspaper. “I never voted for the
suit and I don’t go to those meetings,
she said. “I don’t want anything to
do with it.”
The two said they would seek to
have their names stricken from the
list of plaintiffs.
Political Action
Jacksonville Mayor
Wins Nomination
Civil rights was the principal issu®
in a hot Florida runoff primary Ma)
26 which resulted in the nomination
of Mayor Haydon Bums of Jacksonville
as the Democratic candidate for gover
nor.
Bums became a controversial hS’Fj
luring the recent outbreak of raci
/c n nmn a Po op 3'l
MARSHALL wiui.rlS
Discussing Northern schools, Mrs.
Motley said the U.S. Supreme Court’s
refusal to review the Gary, Ind., case
and the issue of de facto segregation
makes it appear “that the only remedy
presently available in such Northern
communities lies in the area of com
munity-political action to secure initia
tion of desegregation plans by school
authorities.”
“But in the North as well as in the
South, the struggle in the next decade
will be inseparably entwined with the
problem of quality education for edu
cationally deprived children of both
races,” she said.
James H. Meredith and Harvey Gantt,
two Negro students who initiated court-
ordered desegregation at the University
of Mississippi and Clemson College,
respectively, spoke on the same pro
gram, relating their experiences and
making observations on the civil-rights
movement.
Legal Action
High Court Affirms Decision
On Assignments of Teachers
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on
May 4 to interfere with a district
court order requiring the Duval County
school board to assign all teachers
without regard to race.
The court’s brief order without com
ment simply affirmed the original de
cision, part of an order under which
Duval County began grade-a-year de
segregation last September.
Attorneys for the school board con
tended in their appeal there was no
evidence that Negro children had suf
fered injury because of the present
system of assigning teachers according
to the racial makeup of the school.
The original order by Judge Bryan
Simpson said in effect that Negro chil
dren were denied full educational
opportunities when they were limited
to instruction by teachers of a single
race.
There was no comment from school
officials on reaction to the ruling. Fred
H. Kent, special attorney who handled
the board’s appeal, said further study
will be made before a decision is
reached.
In the meantime, the school
notified all pupils that applicatio
assignment and transfer for the ^
school term would be received j
10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on June 5, .’^ e pt
10. Requests for special assign 1 ^
after that will not be conside
board said. [
Under the grade-a-year P^ 311 ,__ a( je
last year, all first and secon t0
children will be eligible to to
the nearest school without
raCe ‘ f Negron
A petition by a group of j,ot
however, contends that this th?
worked out in practice and ^s
basic pattern of segregation r
.Tndcfp Simpson to
cotaV^
speed up the process. » ;
Judge Simpson has the matte ^ n yptil
study, having withheld his ^ eclS1 cte< j cfi
after the U.S. Supreme Court
the collateral issue involving