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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.”