Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JUNE, 1964—PAGE 7 ARKANSAS At Least LITTLE ROCK the Arkansas River valley l in Northwest Arkansas, where the Negro population is sparse, a t least three school districts will desegregate next fall instead of sending Negro students by bus to a nearby town. They are Russellville (SSN, May) Danville, which announced its decisior y a y 22, and Dardanelle, which made its decision May 25. Ola, Havana and \tkins also have been sending their high-school students to the L. W. Sul livan Negro School at Morrilton. The Morrilton superintendent, Terry Hum ble, said May 22 that Ola would not send students to Morrilton next fall and those two probably will desegre gate, though nothing official has been announced. Havana and Atkins have not announced their intentions. The problem for these districts has been to continue segregation when they have few Negro students, usuallv too few in a single district to warrant having a separate school. All six towns have been sending their hieh-school sudents to Sullivan High at Morrilton by bus. Atkins is 14 miles from Mor rilton, Russellville 31, Dardanelle 35 Ola 50, Danville 54 and Havana 63 Russellville and Atkins operated their own buses. Danville furnished the bus used by the other four. Morrilton has been charging tuition of $190 a year per student but is going to raise that to $240 next fall. Negro parents have complained about the long journeys involved. High Schools I Russellville announced April 28 that it would admit its 35 Negro high-school students to its white high school in September, and Danville followed suit May 22. Supt. S. C. Tucker of Dan ville said he would have four Negro students in the high-school grades in September. Danville also will desegregate the fight lower grades. The board ex plained, “Since the high school class rooms are located in the same build ing with elementary classrooms, we dc not feel that we can justi'y admitting four Negroes to grades 9-12 and oper ating a separate school for eight Ne groes in grades 1-8.” Danville will close a one-room schoo it has been operating for the eigh osroes in the lower grades. Dardanelle will admit about 10 Ne gro students to its white high schoo m September but will continue Doug fementary School for Negroes ii e ower grades. The school boart ■ ade this change in a resolution adop e May 25. The resolution said the °o d had been asked to provide higl "0°! facilities within the district “fo i 6 a j n students” and that it hac °nnd the request worthy. I } resolved not to send students bi to schools outside the district am c °, e an d also that it was not e'onom , to provide another high schoo th y 1 district Beginning next fall oar< f decided, it would “admit a] sch \ en e D§ifd e to attend the higl r_ 00 , ^ v i n S within its boundaries sardless of race of creed”. ★ ★ ★ ^ r> 6 R°ck school board mat closed assi 8 Tlrne nts for 1964-65 at the s' meetang Ma Y 6 "dth three closed* mem ^ ers present. This was dii M ap 2i at regular board meetir from m Provoked a strong prote j^Ted Lamb, a member. latiom P roce chire was a vit act t of fl 16 state pupil assignme: ^ainst^i an £ d f H ' Cottre ll Jr. vot< A. jj au °f the assignments. Dr. tele-v rre ' J r - gave his approval l 6 meet' 116 '^ le °ther three at the M; Eve retj m | were Russell H. Matson J aid. f ucker Jr. and W. C. McDoi "■ere T dle Tattle Rock assignmen 198 jj ounced May 29, they showi Sc hool s eSr ° stu dents assigned to at th e ’ c ° m Pared to 121 in 15 schoc kred l®d3-64. They are sea °f th e n ° U ^ 12 grades. One pha 0 bjeeti o ass *S nm ent drew strenuo East g:j S from the Neg o communit j*ad jg a Junior High School, whit “vipg , e Sro students this year, 'hose 19°f ed ’ an< l the board assigni a *?hs { 0 a ll'Negro junior or seni Aid thp 0r lo nex t year. Negro leade 'Howed * 9 from East Side should ? con tinue with their clas Se &eg at , tea< f °f being sent back thp Q s °hools. School officia u,l de r nQ ® assignments were mac nila l assignment procedure. The * ★ ★ *hkh Little Rock school boar start desegregation vo Three Northwest Districts To Desegregate Arkansas Highlights Danville and Dardanelle decided to desegregate in September, 1964, instead of sending their few Negro high-school students 54 miles and 34 miles respectively to a Negro school. The Little Rock PTA Council re ceived a resolution to bar all Coun cil offices to Negro members, but a vote was postponed until next fall. untarily next fall, assigned nine Negro children May 26 to the first and second grades in three white schools. Five were placed in Clendenin School, three in Riverside and one in McRae. Three other requests were turned down, one from an elementary pupil because it was too late and two more because they were from secondary- school pupils. The North Little Rock Ministerial Alliance adopted a resolution May 4 pledging co-operation with the school board in its desegregation plan and urging the community to co-operate. The alliance is composed o' white min isters. The Hot Springs School Board voted May 27 to extend its desegregation next fall to the third and fourth grades. It also assigned two more Negro pupils o desegregated schools, one in the ourth grade and one in the first grade. Hot Springs ended 1963-64 with five degro pupils in the first and second grades of three white schools, a sixth laving dropped out during the year. T his means there will be seven Ne groes in three desegregated elementary schools in September. A reassignment -equest from a third Negro pupil was efused. ★ ★ ★ Pine Bluff, which this year had five Negro children in the first and second grades of three formerly white ele mentary schools, has assigned six more to the same schools for next year. One additional Negro will be in the first and fourth grades of each school. Negroes in those schools during the 1963-64 year will be in the second and third grades next year. The Pine Bluff plan calls foi deseg regation of two additional grades each year. ★ ★ ★ Ten white boys, students at Little Rock Central High School, were ar rested on charges of night-riding last month following an attempt to bum a cross at the home of a white youth who had been friendly with Negro pupils and eaten lunch with them. A few days earlier, the same white boy was attacked and knocked down MARYLAND W allace (Continued from Page 5) the merger of the white and Negro teachers associations, the presence of a Negro on the comity school board since 1956, the 24 Negroes in predominantly white county schools in the 1963-64 school year and the fact that the coun ty’s civil-defense training program, conducted at Cambridge High for all adults, had been under the leadership of a Negro teacher since 1960. Miscellaneous Baltimore Board Dismisses Protest A representative of a Baltimore pro test group told the city’s Board of School Commissioners in May that it had “failed miserably” in preventing overcrowded high schools and should return to the practice of drawing dis trict lines around schools that are taxed beyond their capacities. The practice was discarded as of Oct. 1, 1963, in re sponse to the contention of a biracial parents group and the NAACP early last summer that previous districting and transfer policies tended to foster de facto segregation. The school board dismissed the charge, brought by Mrs. Estelle Badg er, of the Taxpayers’ Interest League, after Supt. George B. Brain cited en- in the school building. His attacker was suspended from school. Community Action PTA Council Asked To Bar Negroes From Its Offices When the final meeting for the school year o' the Little Rock PTA Council was nearly over, May 12, a resolution was proposed to bar Negroes from any office in the council. It was fought on the ground that it was out of order, that it would constitute a change in the constitution, and that the delegates had not been instructed by their local PTAs on how to vote on it. No vote was taken. Hie resolution was introduced by Mrs. Philip Greening, president-elect of the West Side Junior High School PTA, who finally withdrew it on con dition that it be brought up for a vote at the first meeting of the next school year in September. The council is made up of delegates from the PTAs of the all-white and the desegregated schools in the sys tem. A Negro PTA Council serves only the all-Negro schools. What provoked the proposed resolu tion was the appointment of Mrs. Ozell Sutton, a Negro, to a special council committee on education which works with culturally deprived children or those with learning difficulties. She is a first-grade teacher at Rightsell school, for Negroes, but her own children at tend Mitchell Elementary and West Side Junior High, both desegregated schools, and she is a member of both the Mitchell and the West Side PTAs. Her husband is an officer of the Ark ansas Council on Human Relations. Mrs. Sara Murphy, chairman of the special committee, said Mrs. Sutton had been selected 'or the committee because of her training and background in the work the committee does. Action Disclosed It was stated that Mrs. Sutton’s ap pointment had caused a lively round of behind-the-scenes discussion and telephoning before the PTA Council meeting. Mrs. Greening said she intro duced the resolution for the presidents- elect of seven schools, which she de clined to name. Other members said the resolution had not been considered by any local PTA unit, and it was not mentioned a week later when the West Side PTA held its final meeting of the year to install Mrs. Greening and other new officers. As introduced, Mrs. Greening’s reso lution would have barred all offices to any person “who is not a member of the Caucasian race.” She was asked if Revisit to Central High Gen. Edwin A. Walker. this would exclude Jews and Oriental persons, and she later changed the res olution to read “who is a member of the Negro race.” Mrs. Frank N. Gordon, council presi dent, objected to the resolution. She said it was her understanding that a school patron whose PTA dues are paid is eligible for any PTA office. Mrs. Gordon later wrote to Mrs. Clif ford N. Jenkins of New York, national PTA president, about the resolution, and received a reply saying that the resolution was “completely contrary to national policy.” PTA membership is all-inclusive and “the question o' race, color or religion must not enter into parent-teacher work,” Mrs. Jenkins wrote. ★ ★ ★ General Walker Visits Central High Again Edwin A. Walker, the former major general who was commander of the Arkansas Military District in 1957 and thus was in command of the 101st Para- troop Division when it was sent to en force desegregation at Little Rock Cen tral High, returned to Little Rock as the guest of the Capital Citizens’ Coun cil in its 10th anniversary observance of “Black Monday,” the day the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its de segregation decision in 1954. Since his resignation from the Army, Walker has declared that he was on the “wrong side” at Central High in 1957. The Citizens Council announced that Walker would have a press conference Sunday afternoon, May 17, on the steps of Central High and would speak at a Citizens’ Council “rally for civil peace” Monday night at the municipal audi torium downtown. The school board re fused to let him use school property, however, so the press con'erence was held at the Arsenal Building in Mac- Arthur Park, the place where Gen. Douglas MacArthur was bom. Walker was met at the airport and escorted by Claude D. Carpenter Jr., attorney for the state Commerce Com mission, who was acting as Gov. Or- val E. Faubus’s representative. After the press conference, Walker drove by Central High and stopped for a few minutes, commenting only that the school tiger painted on the front of the building looked fresher than it did in 1957. In both his press conference and at the rally the next night, attended by about 275, he discussed the menace of communism and the proposed civil- rights bill and related subjects. Others on the program were Amis Guthridge, president of the Capital Citizens’ Council, and Louis W. Hollis and Dr. Medford Evans from the Citi zens Councils of America at Jackson, Miss. ★ ★ ★ Advisory Group Hears Complaints In Fort Smith The Arkansas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held an open hearing May 23 at Fort Smith and received complaints about school segregation, among other mat ters. Fort Smith started voluntarily a grade-a-year desegregation plan in the first grade in 1957 and this year had 31 of 1,222 Negro students in the dis trict attending desegregated schools. The testimony about schools came from the Rev. Ray Peters, a white Lu theran minister, and Dr. H. P. McDon ald, president of the Fort Smith Branch of the NAACP, whose wife is a member of the advisory committee. Both said the school attendance areas in Fort Smith were drawn in such a way as to keep Negro pupils from living in the attendance areas of the white schools and that the school board’s building program was designed to pro long segregation. Peters said it had become impossible to deal with the school board on de segregation, partly because of the law suit filed last year by two Negro girls who wanted to attend the white North- side High School. The committee was told that hear ings in the suit in federal court had been postponed because of a remodel ing project at the high school. In The Colleges Athletes Reported Expecting Change In the Arkansas Democrat, Little Rock, of May 8, an article on the sports page began, “It’s one of those subjects that just isn’t discussed, at least not openly. It’s tacitly understood that it shouldn’t be talked about, but make no mistakes, the topic of integration of athletics at the University is a live one. The University Board of Trustees has said that the present policy—i. e., seg regation—would continue, but the question is for how long?” The article reported interviews with several members of the Razorback foot ball team and summed up the results as 'ollows: “The opinion of the Razorbacks themselves is that it (segregation) won’t stand long, and furthermore, they don’t mind the racial barrier fal ling.” All other members of the Southwest Conference have dropped segregation of varsity athletics. Several student organizations at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville called on the university authorities to end segregation in athletics and hous ing. The organizations include the Stu dent Bar Association, the Mortar Board, the Charming Club (Unitarians) and the Wesley Foundation Student Council (Methodist). Visit Stirs Cambridge rollment figures indicating swollen en rollments in all high schools and said that the dropping of districting lines had not contributed “whatever” to the overcrowded situations. Board mem bers told Mrs. Badger that double shift in high schools could have been avoided if the schools had received their full construction requests from the city government. The Taxpayers’ Interest League was organized by some white parents in North and East Baltimore last year to protest the transportation of pupils from overcrowded inner-city (Negro) schools to outlying white or predomi nantly white schools. Under questioning by a school board member, Mrs. Badger said that “we women,” but not the league as a whole, had sponsored a rally for Gov. WeI- lace of Alabama while he was car paigning in Maryland. Legal Action New Court Battle In Harford County 0 A fresh legal battle arose during May in Harford County, where the Board of Education in March adopted a four-step program to empty the county’s two all-Negro schools by September, 1967, reassigning some 1,600 pupils to predominantly white schools. A suit challenging the program as too slow was filed in the United States District Court in Baltimore by two NAACP lawyers on behalf of 36 Har ford County children (Christmas v. Board of Education of Harford County). A “show-cause” order was signed by Chief Judge Roszel C. Thomsen on May 3 in response to the NAACP’s contention that Harford County’s schools could be fully desegregated in the coming school year. The county Boar d of Education responded on May 25 with a request that the suit be dis missed. The board’s lawyers said that time was needed to redesign and re equip schools for the change-over and that “school loyalties would have to be nurtured by a substantial and long term period of public information.” The subject of court actions several times in the past, Harford has a fourth of its nearly 2,200 Negro pupils scat tered among 21 formerly all-white schools, while the remainder are in the two all-Negro schools, which house grades one through twelve. The board’s program calls for reassigning ninth-graders at both Negro schools to other schools this September; those in the top three grades in the fall of 1956; the first-graders in 1966, and all remaining children in September, 1967. Legal attention was expected to be focused on the third step, in which only the first-graders would be shifted out. The contention has arisen in the county that the third step is an un necessary one.