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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