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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.”