Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JUNE, 1964—PAGE 5
ma_ryland
Wallace Hits School Issue, Gets
43 Per Cent of Votes
B '.LTIMORE
H eavy emphasis on the alleged
threat of forced school de
segregation to overcome racial
unbalance was a key part of the
almcst-successful campaign of
Gov. George C. Wallace of Ala
bama in Maryland’s Democratic
Presidential primary.
In the two weeks prior to the May
19 vote, in which Gov. Wallace got
42 7 per cent of the total, he repeat-
gdly stressed that under the civil-
ri^hts bill before Congress, the fed
eral government would “take over
vour schools” and “transport your
children across the c ty of Baltimore
from this section to that section.”
Gov. Wallace found a ready audience
among members of the Taxpayers’
Interest Le-gue, composed of North
Baltimore and East Baltimore white
parents who organized last fall to
protest the t anspo-tation of Negro
children to p eviously white schools
The announced purpose of the
transportation was to get children off
double shifts in overcrowded inner-
city schools, rather than to promote
desegregation, but the Baltimore
school board had set the transporta
tion policy at a time when its mem
bers were under pressure from the
NYACP and a biracial parents groups
to end de facto segregation. Some
parents at the receiving schools had
! exp essed the conviction that deseg-
egation was the hidden purpose.
Gov. Wallace also had a ready audi
ence in Baltimore County, where a
chanter of the pro-segregationist
Maryland Petition Committee had
been demonstrating against a proposal
to close down the four remaining Ne-
■j gro elementary schools as a means of
ending de facto segregation in the
la ge suburban school district. Wallace
only barely failed to carry Baltimore
County, receiving 46,660 votes against
46,978 for Sen. Daniel Brewster, who
ente ed the Presidential primary as a
stand-in for President Johnson after
Wallace had filed.
Sun Opposition
The Sun of Baltimore, which opposed
I Wallace, said editorially that the civil-
dghts bill at that time before the U.S.
senate specifically stated that “ ‘deseg
regation shall not mean the assign
ment of students to public schools in
! R » er to overcom e racial imbalance.”
u Wallace gave his version of the
1 m personal appearances and ex
tensive television appeals, for which
e had purchased prime time. No
mpar a ble advertising effort was
e on behalf of Brewster, who got
I te ; ' ■ . .....
Tennessee
(Continued from Page 3)
plan W ° r u abillt y the grade-
^ontArTk 1011 tbe board volu:
Vte g t k eginning in the fal1 °
dent,® * e past year > 19 Negr
at thr Wera enr °lled in biracial
three schools.
newsletter stated:
Itel,,? 6Very member of the I
C °mmittee who urge
more f mtegration, there is a se
^ientio 6qUally inte kigent, equal
ly ml ’ equally educated and
Ur ge t -- ed P eo P- e both rac<
Policy ' ,e b ° ard to continue the i
NAAcp
★ ★ ★
jj ~ Asks Nashville
Segregation Speedup
\{ a ^ as bville NAACP spokesman
son p as ked the Nashville and Dav:
cauonT* Tran sitional Board of Ed
the r ° extenc ^ desegregation throu
maiI dng five grades this fall
C. ^finest was presented by IV
e<l Uca .. yes > representing the NAA
d ems ° n committ ee, who said “si
c °htin, are being granted transfers
the v se § re Sation in the schools a
E C re ® ards this as illegal.
hoa rc j ‘ barman, vice-chairman of
the r ’ and other school officials s
**-tnah 6St wou ld be referred to
’’hich nt Metropolitan School Boi
of botk° n ./ Uly 1 assumes jurisdict
Cogm, _e Nashville and David:
■jT ty schools.
kst y e trans H ; lonal board was nan
OOftiplg, 3 ^, f° serve while plans w
^hooi 6 tor consolidation of the t
systems under Metropoli
re gated 6nt ' The systems have desi
er al Cou S w ades 1 through 7 under f<
10 e *tenH , orders and are schedu
1 r ade thi s jj^lregation to the eigl
Wallace in Maryland
Receiving the returns.
n unofficial state total of 265,712 to
/allace’s 214,002, with another 20,000
otes going to an uninstructed dele-
;ate and a minor candidate.
The specter of forced school deseg-
egation was only a portion of the
heme on which Wallace dwelt in a
■■et speech which previously had won
lim large votes in the Wisconsin and
Indiana primaries. Under the civil-
•ights bill the “central government,”
be said, would “take over” homes,
schools, businesses and farms, “tell
you to whom you may sell or rent a
louse,” “take your job away and give
it to someone else,” “destroy union
eniority,” and force farmers “to fire
half their Chinese Lutherans and hire
Japanese Methodists” (or vice versa).
Gov. Wallace evoked a sizable pro
test vote among white Marylanders
who had not previously had an occa
sion on which to express their senti
ments since school desegregation and
civil-rights demonstrations began in
Maryland and elsewhere. No statewide
candidate of any stature in Maryland
over the past decade had ever made
the outright appeal to segregationist
sympathies that Wallace made, and,
in a contest in which neither Wallace
nor Brewster was looked upon as a
erious Presidential contender, it won
for him in 16 out of 23 Maryland
counties, including all of the Eastern
Shore and most of Southern Maryland. !
Gov. Wallace lost out in the city of
Baltimore, where there was an un
usually heavy primary turnout of
Negro voters; in Baltimore County, in !
the two predominantly white subur- |
ban counties that border the District j
of Columbia, and in the four Western j
Maryland counties which have only j
small, scattered Negro populations and
complete or nearly complete school
lesegregation.
The Wallace vote did not carry over
'o the other races in Maryland to a
significant extent. All of the incumbent
Maryland members of the House of
Representatives, all of whom had
voted for the federal civil-rights meas- j
ure when it was before the House,
were renominated, as was Sen. J. Glenn
Beall, a strong advocate of the federal I
bill.
On the Eastern Shore, the head of I
the Maryland Petition Committee, j
Samuel Setta, ran as a Wallace sup
porter in a five-way congressional race j
and came in third to State Sen. Harry I
R. Hughes, who had voted for a state
public-accommodations bill. In the
Second Congressional District, which
Maryland Highlights
Gov. George Wallace of Alabama
stressed forced federal desegregation
of schools in his Maryland campaign
that brought him close to 43 per
cent of the votes in the Democratic
Presidential-preference primary.
Racial disorders broke out anew
in the wake of Gov. Wallace’s cam
paign appearance in Cambridge,
where dissatisfaction with the pace
of school desegregation has been
one of the complaints of Negro ac
tivists.
Legal action was taken in Har
ford County to speed up a four-step
plan to empty the county’s two all-
| Negro schools.
The Baltimore County Board of
Education put aside a proposal to
eliminate all-Negro elementary
schools in the fall.
Baltimore’s school board dismissed
a charge that its elimination of dis
trict lines has caused high schools
to go on double shifts.
includes Baltimore County, Joshua
Cockey waged a Wallace campaign and
lost to Rep. Clarence Long (D.), 55,465
to 16.781.
“You Had Better Hear My
Protest, Senator! You and
Anybody Running for Office”
out of 840 at the St. Clair school, in
contrast to 165 absent the previous
Friday when no boycott was in
progress. At Mace’s Lane there were
151 absent out of 913, in contrast to
129 out the previous Friday. A similar
me-day boycott in February was a
partial success.
School desegregation, which began
in 1956 with the 12th grade in Dor
chester County and worked downward
a g ade a year, was accelerated last
summer to include the three lowest
grades as well as the scheduled fourth
grade. The acceleration had been
sought by the CNAC group and was
one of the Negroes’ most tangible
gains out of the temporary peace set
tlement.
Since then, one of the points in the
CNAC program which gets periodic
mention is to have the county Board
of Education assign children to the
schools nearest their homes instead of
requiring them to seek transfers. A
newsletter put out by the integrationist
■toup on May 6 said in part: “The
burden of transferring Negro children
; s left to parents rather than to the
Board of Education where it rightfully
belongs. This tactic of course leads to
continued segregation in the school
system. Moreover, Negro parents are
reluctant to transfer the children,
given the high possibility of being
fried ”
Busick Statement
On May 20 County School Supt.
Busick issued a statement which sa ; d,
“There are no pupils who have a re
quest pending for any grade. We have
never had any Negro parent come be
fore the Dorchester board with a com
plaint. No application for any grade
has been turned down. The schools in
Dorchester County are completely in-
teg ated and any child can go to any
school he desires.”
Pointing to the school system’s Ad
visory Committee on Desegregation,
which meets monthly to consider the
prog ress of desegregation, Busick said,
“Anyone can talk with the group con
cerning problems.” He implied, but
refrained from saying, that the CNAC
group h-’d not accepted an open invi
tation to discuss its school program
with the advisory group and also hod
not presented it to the county school
board. The advisory group is com
posed of 12 members, four of them
Negroes.
“As far as the Board of Education is
concerned,” Busick said, “we know we
are not discriminating against any in
dividual and transfers are open for all
people.” In his statement he enumer
ated more than a dozen steps taken to
improve interracial relations, starting
with joint white and Negro use of
school playgrounds for recreation and
progressing through exchange pro
grams to contact sports.
Noting that Cambridge High has
scheduled basketball, football, baseball
and track, all on a home-and-home
basis with Mace’s Lane High, Busick
added, “You can see the planned pro
cedure of individual participation fol
lowed by contact participation has
been arranged very carefully to pro
mote good relationships in the future.”
The superintendent also pointed to
(See WALLACE, Page 7)
Community Action
Renewed Protests
Follow Wallace’s
Cambridge Visit
The appearance of Gov. Wallace of
Alabama on May 11 in racially trou
bled Cambridge, where the Maryland
National Guard has been on duty since
last June, touched off fresh disorder as
integ ationists staged an anti-Wallace
ra'ly that got out of hand. A Negro
school boycott called for the same day
proved ineffectual as attendance was
near normal.
Spasmodic flareups of Negro unrest
continued into the last week in May,
usually following evening protest
meetings. The month also brought
these developments:
The white and Negro teachers asso
ciations in Dorchester County (of
which Cambridge is the county seat)
became a single county unit on May
5, an action that required a two-thirds
vote of the affected white teachers as
well as of the Negro teachers.
County School Supt. James G. Bu
sick reported that the first full year
of desegregation had caused no serious
problems in Cambridge, where 17
Negroes entered four formerly all-
white schools. Busick also reported,
“We have never had any Negro par
ent come before the Dorchester
[school] board with a complaint.”
Games Continue
In contrast to the disorder at night,
baseball and girls’ volleyball games be
tween the predominantly white and
the Negro high school in Cambridge
proceeded by day without incident.
The first Negro was to be graduated
from a previously all-white county
high school. The scheduled June grad
uate was Larry Pinkett, who trans-
“I’m Gonna Rock ’em Better
than Or Elvis!”
Yardley, Baltimore Sun
Knox. Nashville Banner
ferred to the North Dorchester High
School in the fall of 1962 and played
on the basketball and football teams
and also was a member of the track
team.
The Wallace speech in Cambridge,
which drew at least 1,800 Eastern
Shoremen, was arranged by the Dor
chester Businessmen and Citizens As
sociation, a group organized last sum
mer to defeat by referendum the local
public-accommodations measure which
Cambridge officials had suppo-ted as
part of a peace settlement with the
pro-integrationist Cambridge Nonvio
lent Action Committee. An additional
400 National Guardsmen had been
moved into Cambridge for the occa
sion, but Wallace entered and departed
from the white section of the own with
out difficulties arising.
The predominantly Negro “Freedom
Day” rally, held later the same evening
in the Negro quarter, erupted into a
street demonstration, contrary to the
regulations imposed by the National
Guard following the disorders of near
ly a year ago. Turned back once, the
demonstrators emerged from the Ne-
ero section a second time. Amid a
flurry of bricks and bottles, the Na
tional Guard troops used tear gas and
the gleam of fixed bayonets to dis
perse the mob. About a dozen were
arrested, including Mrs. Gloria Rich
ardson, leader of the Cambridge Non
violent Action Committee.
Di orders Follow
Lesser disorders followed for several
nights thereafter. The 11 p.m. curfew
imposed by the National Guard on
May 11 was lifted on the eve of the
May 19 primaries and then reimposed
briefly the following week when an
other outburst occu red. Gov. Wal
lace scored heavily in Dorchester
County, getting 4,301 votes to 1,107 fo”
Sen. Brewster, the stand-in for Presi
dent Johnson.
The school boycott called as part of
the “Freedom Day” exercises was ex
pected to have its most noticeable
effect at the two Negro schools in
Cambridge: St. Clair Elementary and j
Mace’s Lane Hieh School. On the day
of the boycott, there were 204 absent ‘
Schoolmen
Neutral Stand Taken on Facilities
The Baltimore County Board of
Education moved in May to meet the
issue of de facto segregation by adopt
ing a neutral statement which called
on the county school superintendent to
“continue to plan the construction of
new facilities in such a manner as to
provide the best educational opportuni
ties for the whole school population,
and in a manner that will enhance the
creation of conditions that will en
courage understanding among all
reople.”
The issue had been raised by the
county’s Human Relations Commission,
which had pointed out that about half
of the county’s 4,000-odd Negro pupils
were still in all-Negro schools after
nine years of desegregation. The coun
ty agency in March said it was “most
anxious to see that the problem of
ie facto segregation be solved.”
Without itself adopting a specific
reposal, the human-relations group
resented the county Board of Educa
tion with the recommendations of its
executive director, Edgar L. Feingold,
who proposed that the four remaining
all-Negro elementary schools be closed
out, the children reassigned to pre
dominantly white schools and the
buildings used on a biracial basis
as annexes to relieve overcrowding at
other schools. (SSN, January, March.)
The Feingold proposals were brand
ed as the “Princeton plan” by the
Baltimore County chapter of the Mary
land Petition Committee, which organ
ized a “save-our-schools” movement
and picketed the Board of Education
with s gns decrying “forced integra
tion.”
Chairman Speaks
Following the Boa'd of Education
pol’cy statement of May 21, the Balti
more Evening Sun carried the state
ment of T. Bayard Williams, Jr., chair
man of the board, that parts of the Fein
gold pirn m'ght be reconsidered at any
time, but “as a whole, we are not go
ing to use it.”
Out of the discussion of several
months duration came two definite
moves. The school board announced
that one of the all-Negro elementaries,
Bragg, would cease operations at the
close of the current year. The school
primarily serves a wartime housing
project that is being emptied out and
demolished. As a second move, the
board has given a higher priority to
construction of a new elementary
school in the Catonsville area, which
would eliminate the need for the all-
Negro Banneker school. In addition,
school officials have committed them
selves to eliminate the one all-Negro
secondary unit in the county in 1967.
Those moves would leave two all-
Negro schools serving a concentration
of Negro residences in the eastern,
industrialized section of the county.
School officials have taken the posi
tion that there is no “natural” way to
eliminate de facto segregation in what
are in effect neighborhood schools
whose racial composition derives from
the surounding residential pattern.
The Board of Education has never
considered transporting pupils to
achieve racial balance, and the school
staff has not recommended it.
The Teachers’ Association of Balti
more County early in May called upon
the county Board of Education to
“continue its efforts toward the aboli
tion of racial segregation . . . [and]
toward the attainment of complete
equality in all aspects of the Baltimore
County public school system.” While
upholding a policy of community-
oriented schools, the teachers also
called for continued efforts toward
“the abolition of any boundaries that
are compromises because of previous
policies of segregattion.”