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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JUNE, 1964—PAGE 9
LOUISIANA
New Orleans and Baton Rouge
Register Under Court Orders
NEW ORLEANS
O rleans Parish public schools
registered pupils for the 1964-
65 school year June 1 and 2, with
single nonracial attendance zones
designated for kindergarten and
grades one through three.
In East Baton Rouge Parish, 107 Ne
gro pupils applied for transfer to four
desegregated schools at the 11th and
12th grade levels, and 61 of the Negroes
were approved for transfer.
Extension of desegregation to kinder
garten in New Orleans represents a
modification of the school board’s
grade-a-year desegregation plan. The
action was taken by the board May 25
after Negro plaintiffs had filed a motion
in federal court, requesting additional
relief in the case of Bush v. Orleans
Parish School Board.
On that date the board resolved, by a
vote of 4-1, to register kindergarten
children, along with pupils for the first
three grades in compliance with last
year’s court order. But the board speci
fied that the actual enrollment of
kindergarten children in desegregated
classes would await further decisions of
the court, which has scheduled an Aug.
10 hearing.
Administrative Procedures
The Orleans Parish school board on
May 26 approved administrative proce
dures outlined by Supt. O. Perry Walk
er to govern registration. Children to
be registered in the kindergarten or the
first grade will be presented by their
parents or guardians at the school of
their choice. If this is the school as
signed to the attendance zone for the
area in which they live, an “Applica
tion for School Assignment” form will
be executed. If it is a school other than
the one designated for the zone in
which they live, “Application for
School Assignment” and an “Applica
tion for Permit” will be executed.
After verification of the data con
tained in the application forms, assign
ments for first-grade enrollments will
be made. However, enrollment in
kindergarten will be deferred until a
later date, after the Aug. 10 hearing.
Applications for transfer to schools
outside the designated attendance zones
will be approved if room and teaching
capacity are available.
“In accordance with existing admin
istrative procedures,” Supt. Walker
^d, “children presently enrolled in
Ihe first and higher grades in the New
Orleans public schools will be assigned
to their present schools for the 1964-
55 session. Applications for transfer will
given careful consideration by the
superintendent, when good cause there-
kr is shown and when transfer is prac
ticable and consistent with sound
school administration.”
‘Financial Solution'
The board reached its decision relat-
to kindergarten registration after
eated debate in which board member
tills
RITTNER
®1 A. Ellis offered an unexpected
0 j., ^ent calling for discontinuance
tial c kindergarten program “as a par-
* nnancial solution.”
jjjjj**ntered board President Lloyd
H Uc j^ r ' “You obviously don’t know
ubout the equalization formula
by 1*®®. you’d save very little money
ty^t y^ing kindergarten. Now if you
cay^tn do away with kindergarten be-
Uiattep se gregation that’s another
Eir
niodjc re gistered the only vote against
to Ca t*°n of the desegregation plan
^ c lude kindergarten.
Puling to the board’s statistical
On Catl °n “Facts and Figures,” New
kiod e S October, 1963, had 99 white
and ioQ rten c ^ asses with 2,462 pupils,
With o ^' e 8 I ° kindergarten classes
■j, 4/34 Pupils.
api enc j koard s May 25 action also
l ' a ti I1 „ ed K its decision of May 11 desig
nee 2q C nnges of some school attend
ee es - At that time kindergartens
deluded from the single, non-
Louisiana Highlights
The Orleans Parish school board
prepared to extend court-ordered
desegregation to kindergarten and
the third grade, registering pupils for
next fall on the basis of single unit,
nonracial attendance zones.
Sixty-one Negro pupils of the 107
who applied were approved for
transfer to the 11th and 12th grades
of four Baton Rouge high schools in
the second stage of East Baton
Rouge Parish’s reverse stairstep de
segregation plan.
A federal district court suit was
filed on behalf of Negro plaintiffs
seeking enrollment in undergraduate
divisions of Louisiana State Univer
sity at Baton Rouge. One Negro has
been accepted for enrollment in the
arts-and-sciences and pre-law curri
culum at LSU in Baton Rouge.
The Louisiana legislature convened
May 11 with several proposals in the
hopper bearing on the segregation-
desegregation issue, but with no new
packages designed to obstruct school
desegregation.
tend schools outside the school zones
where they reside. Four appealed the
initial rejection of their applications;
and upon reconsideration two of them
were finally approved.
★ ★ ★
The Iberville Parish school board on
May 12 deferred consideration of a
| bond issue to improve and replace pub-
; lie schools because of, among other
[ reasons, “this integration problem
staring us in the face.” A suit to de
segregate the parish public schools is
pending in federal district court.
This is not a good time to talk of
bond issues, said a board member, Mrs.
] John Supple. “People will say, ‘We
built schools for them (Negroes) the
last time we had a bond election, and
now they want to go to school with us,
so why build them a school?’ ”
Legal Action
Negroes File Suit
To Enter LSU
As Undergraduates
racial attendance zones applying to
grades one through three, and were
lis-ed as part of white and Negro
elementary school zones.
★ ★ ★
East Baton Rouge Parish
Approves 61 Negro Transfers
In East Baton Rouge Parish, School
Supt. Lloyd Lindsay on May 15 an
nounced appropal of applications for
transfer to desegregated high schools
for 61 Negro juniors and seniors.
Baton Rouge High School, which last
Sept. 7 had a total enrollment of 1,547,
including 14 Negro seniors, is sched
uled to receive 17 Negro 12th graders
and 200 Negro 11th graders.
Glen Oaks High School, which last
fall enrolled 1,129 pupils, including six
Negro 12th graders, is due to have one
Negro senior and 12 Negro juniors next
fall.
Istrouma High School, where four
Negro seniors were among the 1,673
registered last September, is scheduled
to enroll two Neg o 11th graders this
fall.
Robert E. Lee High School, which had
four Negro 12th graders in its 931 regis
trants last fall, is due to have five Ne
gro seniors and four Negro juniors in
September.
The transfers were approved under
terms of the school board’s court-ac
cepted desegregation plan whereby one
grade a year, beginning last year at the
12th grade, will be desegregated.
One-hundred-seven Negro students
applied for transfer from Negro high
schools to the desegregated high
schools, Supt. Lindsay said. Forty-six
were rejected because of their academic
standing or because they applied to at-
U.S. District Court at Baton Rouge
has been asked to prohibit exclusion
of Negroes from the undergraduate
departments of Louisiana State Uni
versity’s main campus. A suit was filed
May 25 on behalf of seven named
plaintiffs and “all other Negro resi
dents in the State of Louisiana
similarly situated.”
The case (Anderson v. LSU Board
of Supervisors) lists as plaintiffs Freya
Sandra Anderson, Carlice Carrere Col
lins, Mason Ingram, Oliver Ferlon
Mack, Clifford Ray Smith, Adam Ster
ling III and Albert James Scott. De
fendants named in the petition are the
board of supervisors of the university,
Percy E. Roberts, board chairman;
John A. Hunter, president of the insti
tution; and Ordell Griffith, assistant
registrar.
In the complaint, prepared by A. P.
Tu eaud Sr. of New Orleans, chief
counsel in Louisiana for the National
Association for the
Advancement of
Colored People, it
is alleged that the
plaintiffs, all resi
dents of Baton
Rouge and New
Orleans, are grad
uates of Louisiana
high schools and
“are in every re
spect qualified and
eligible for ad
mission” to LSU TUREAUD
“except as its policy, practice, custom
and usage limits admission to the
unde graduate departments to white
persons.”
“A speedy hearing” was requested of
the court. “Plaintiffs are in need of
immediate relief because registration
Legislative Action
Bills on School-Race Issue
Louisiana’s legislature convened in
legular session in Baton Rouge May 11.
The 1,141 bills introduced in the two
houses by the end of the month in
cluded several bearing on the school
segregation-desegregation issue.
However, there were no new anti
desegregation drives under way in this
session. In the past 10 years, the
Louisiana legislature has enacted 131
measures dealing with the subject.
Bills introduced in the current session
for the most part would merely alter
existing laws.
House Bill 193 would reinstate the
compulsory school attendance law,
which was modified in 1958 to make
it inapplicable in desegregated school
districts, then was repealed outright
in 1960.
House Bill 192 would limit to $300
the amount paid to any single applicant
attending a private non-sectarian school
under the grant-in-aid program. The
law now provides up to $360 per pupil,
more than most public school districts
have to spend per pupil.
Another bill, proposed by Sen. Fred
erick Eagan of Wards 10 and 11 in New
Orleans but not introduced at month’s
end, would disal
low grants for
pupils attending
schools where the
tuition exceeds
$425 annually. A
study last year
found that 2,186
of the 5,923 pupils
in Orleans and
Jefferson paris re
ceiving tuition
grants were en
rolled in nine
of the areas oldest and most exclusive
private schools.
House Bill 614 would abolish the
Louisiana Financial Assistance Com
mission, which administers the tuition
grant program.
House Bill 538 would designate the
Orleans Parish superintendent of
schools as ex-officio treasurer for the
parish school board and would eliminate
Louisiana Legislative Account No. 1
authorizing the treasurer to sign
checks and warrants. This, in effect,
would undo the fiscal strings with
which the legislature bound up the
EAGAN
k
Gov. McKeithen on Inaugural Day
In background, the state capitol.
for the summer session commences on
or about June 8, 1964,” it stated.
In another case involving a state
college, U.S. District Judge E. Gordon
West gave a Negro plaintiff 60 days to
amend her petition by naming indi
vidual members of the State Board of
Education as defendants. Judge West
dismissed the suit (McCoy v. State
Board of Education) insofar as the
board itself is concerned. In the suit,
Mary Louise McCoy asked for desegre
gation of Northeast State College at
Monroe.
In his opinion Judge West said the
court lacked jurisdiction over the case
in its initial form because consent of
the state to be
sued had not been
obtained and be
cause the plaintiff
had failed to
join indispensable
parties as defend
ants, namely the
individual board
members.
Judge West cited
the sovereignty of
the state and its
immunity to suit
without its consent under the state
and federal constitutions. He cited
U.S. Supreme Court cases upholding
sovereignty of the federal government
and its immunity to suit without its
consent. Then he said:
“If such a suit is permitted, it could
just as logically be argued that suit
may be brought in a federal court
against the Supreme Court of the state
of Louisiana as a body, or against the
state legislature as a body.
“It was just such actions as these and
such actions as embodied in the present
litigation, that the 11th Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution sought to prohibit.
“It seems to me that a rather
anomalous situation is created when,
under the guise of protecting petition
er’s right to equal protection of the
law, the state of Louisiana is deprived
of its right to due process of law by
casting established and well recognized
rules of procedure to the four winds
and by completely ignoring both the
pertinent portions of the Louisiana
Filed
Orleans Parish school system during
the 1960 desegregation crisis.
House Bill 679 would appropriate
$2,397,903 to the State Board of Edu
cation to match federal funds for vo
cational education, and House Bill 692
would repeal state laws prohibiting
pa tlc'pation in the federal-state job
retraining and rehabilitation program.
Louisiana alone among the states has
not taken part in this program be
cause of federal desegregation require
ments.
Prohibit Federal Funds
On the other hand, Senate Bill 119
would prohibit use of federal funds or
commodities by public elementary or
secondary schools.
The legislature also has before it
seven bills to establish vocational
technical schools for white students
and one to establish a trade school for
Negroes. The State Board of Education,
which administers the existing 27 trade
schools, in 1962 resolved under court
pressure to disregard race as a factor
in trade school enrollment, though only
a few Negroes have subsequently en
rolled at white schools.
Constitution and the 11th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.
“Petitioner’s right to equal protec
tion of the law can and must be pro
tected.
“But the established rights of a
sovereign state cannot be run over
roughshod in the process.”
What They Say
Governor Assesses
State’s Resources
Assessing Louisiana’s resources and
potentials, Gov. John McKeithen said
at his inauguration May 12:
“If something is amiss, if we wit
ness poverty and inequity; if other
states are surpassing us in prosperity;
if distrust and dissension appear to be
blocking our aspirations, the fault must
be somewhere within ourselves.
“I submit that it lies in our com
placency, in our self-imposed isolation,
and in our preoccupation with the past.
Like it or not, we live today in a
world of change and turmoil. We are
faced with new realities, new pos
sibilities, and new necessities. We can
no longer subsist on the fare that
nourished our fathers.”
Lt. Gov. C. C. (Taddy) Aycock,
taking the oath for an unprecedented
second term in office, said.
“It is high time for all of us, and
particularly for we here in the South,
to reaffirm and to actively assert, with
urgency and dedication, our belief in
the real meaning of individual rights,
I of state’s rights, of free enterprise, and
our belief in the real meaning of consti
tutional government.
“Let us be ever mindful that the
states created the federation and the
federation did not create the states.
The sovereignty of this and of every
other state is a fundamental guaran
tee.”
In The Colleges
LSU To Enroll
Negro Pre-Law
Student in Fall
Louisiana State University at Baton
Rouge will enroll a Negro pre-law
student next fall, university officials
announced May 12.
Name of the Baton Rouge student
was not disclosed. He will be the sec
ond Negro to study at the undergradu
ate level on the Baton Rouge campus.
The first enrolled under a court order.
LSU has accepted Negro students in
its graduate schools since 1950, and
now has, according to unofficial re
ports, 65 Negro graduate students on
campus. Some 240 Negro undergradu
ates attend LSU at New Orleans. De
segregation at the branch in New
Orleans also occurred under court
order.
“A university spokesman said of the
pending Negro enrollment in the col
lege of arts and sciences:
“The university apparently has no
choice in view of a 1952 U.S. District
Court ruling which opened to Negroes
the combined arts and sciences-law
curriculum at LSU. This does not mean
the university policy against admitting
| Negroes has been changed.”