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PAGE 2—SEPTEMBER, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS ARKANSAS Eight More Desegregated Districts Bring Total to 21 LITTLE ROCK W ith eight more school dis tricts beginning desegrega tion this fall, and some others expanding their desegregation, Arkansas will have 21 desegre gated districts this year with an estimated 898 Negro students in desegregated schools. Last year the 13 desegregated districts had about 362. The districts and the anticipated number of Negroes in desegregated schools this year compared with list year follow: District 1964 1963 Bentonville 3 3 Charleston 18 18 Dollarway 2 2 Fayetteville 56 56 Fort Smith 268 31 Gosnell 20 20 Hot Springs 7 6 Hoxie 1 4 Little Rock 229 123 Mansfield 12 14 Pine Bluff 12 5 Pulaski Co. 53 25 Van Buren 75 55 Atkins 29 0 Danville 12 0 Dardanelle 14 0 Havana 13 0 Ola 25 0 North Little Rock 9 0 Russellville 35 0 Texarkana 5 0 Total 898 362 Pine Bluff At Pine Bluff, 11 Negro children had been assigned to the first four grades of three formerly white elementary schools but one of them requested reassignment to a Negro school because of transportation problems. Then two were added. Texarkana At Texarkana, which is beginning desegregation this year, the school authorities released no information in advance about the number of Negro requests or assignments to the white schools. Supt. E. D. Trice said, “The people involved have been notified and our board feels this is the best way to handle it—with as little fan fare and publicity as possible.” After the first day of classes Aug. 31, Trice announced that five Negro children had been assigned to the first two grades of two schools. He said the opening day was normal and routine. Texar kana is using the Pupil Placement Law in which school attendance areas are not one of the criteria for making as signments. Little Rock, North Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Hot Springs and Dol larway also use the placement law and not attendance areas. Mrs. Ermer Woods, president of the Texarkana Branch of the NAACP, said that 24 more Negro students, in grades three through 12, had ap plied for assignment to white schools and that all 24 had been turned down, because the board wants to start its plan in the first two grades. In con nection with those 24, their parents have asked the NAACP for assistance, she said. Texarkana will have about 6,500 stu dents all told this year and about 34 per cent of them are Negro. Pulaski County In the Pulaski County (rural) School District (all of the county outside of Little Rock and North Little Rock), an increase in the number of Negro students in desegregated schools occurred because the district in tends to comply, reluctantly, with the new Civil Rights Act. Last year the district’s desegregation con sisted of 25 children of Negro men stationed at the Little Rock Air Force Base attending three formerly white schools near the base. The district had intended to continue restricting its desegregation to the children of Negro airmen at the base, but the civil rights law requires an end to racial segre gation if federal aid is to be received. Of the district’s $5 million budget last year, $1 million came in federal aid, and the board has been unable to figure out how to get by without the federal money. The board has discussed this at length and has put off adopting the resolution required, that it will abide by the law, but Supt. E. P. Dunn has let it be known that the board will do it. It has until October when the district will make application for its federal aid. In the meantime Dunn let the word circulate unofficially that Arkansas Highlights Federal Judge John E. Miller ruled against the plaintiffs in the Fort Smith desegregation lawsuit but he required the school board to revise its desegregation plan to eliminate the voluntary transfer provision. Two Negro students filed suit to have the University of Arkansas end racial segregation in housing teacher employment, varsity athletics and “all other” activities. Ouachita Baptist College at Arka- delphia, privately owned by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, opened its undergraduate classes to Negro students. With 21 districts to be desegre gated this year, Arkansas will have an estimated 898 Negro students in desegregated schools, compared to 362 last year. Negro applicants would be accepted at white schools. After the first day of classes Aug. 31, Dunn said that 53 Negro students had enrolled in six schools. Ten entered Fuller High School, three entered Fuller Elementary and seven, David O. Dodd Elementary, all of which had previously been all-white; 27 are in the Little Rock Air Force Base ele mentary school, four in Jacksonville Junior High and two in Jacksonville Senior High. North Little Rock North Little Rock, like Texarkana, is starting this year with a olan to desegregate the first two grades and has assigned nine Negroes. This plan has provoked a good deal of protest among Negroes, including the Southern Mediator Journal, Little Rock Negro weekly newspaper. Fort Smith At Fort Smith, the number of Negro students in desegregated schools will increase because of elimination of the voluntary transfer provision, as ordered by federal district court during the summer. That provision meant that a Negro child assigned to a white school or a white child to a Negro school could request and receive as signment to a school where his race was not the minority. Except for the attendance areas of three Negro ele mentary schools, the voluntary transfer provision no longer applies in Fort Smith, and after this school year it will not apply even to those three schools (see Legal Action). To cope with this and also as part of a general reorganization of the junior and senior high schools, the school board is abolishing its only Negro junior high school in two steps to take two years. This year, grades seven and eight will be dropped from the Lincoln Junior-Senior High School, for Negroes, and the 185 Negro children in those two grades will be assigned to the white junior high schools nearest their homes, the Darby and Kimmons junior high schools. Next year the tenth grade will be eliminated in the same way. In addition, the school board expects 50 to 100 Negro children in the elementary grades to enroll at four or five of its 21 elementary schools for whites. Last year Fort Smith had 30 Negroes in the Parker and Duval Elementary schools and one in Darby Junior High. The change at Lincoln Junior High What They Say Negro Vote A Negro speaker told the Little Rock Civitan Club at its luncheon meeting Aug. 27 that the Negro now has reached the point in seeking his freedom that only the Negro, and no one else, could choose who would represent him in public office or at the conference table. Ozell Sutton of Little Rock, Negro associate director of the Ark ansas Council on Human Relations is now on leave to direct the Arkansas Voter Registration Projects. Sutton cited the runoff primary Aug. 11 between Everett Tucker Jr., mem ber of the Little Rock school board, and state Rep, Jim Brandon of Little Rock, for a position in the state Sen ate. “The regular Negro politicians supported Tucker, but Brandon carried the Negro boxes by two to one,” Sut- has not cost any Negro teacher a job so far, according to Supt. Chris D. Corbin. Last year it had 20 Negro teachers, this year 15. Four of the teachers left during the summer for other jobs elsewhere, Corbin said, and one other was transferred to a vacancy in Howard Elementary School. The developments at Fort Smith are causing some uneasiness in the white community where a grade-a-year de segregation plan has proceed without public protest since 1957. About 200 white residents of the north side of town met Thursday night, Aug. 13 to express their unhappiness. The tenor of their meeting was to lay the blame on the school board. Buck Jones, the moderator, decried the plan to change the school attendance areas, which is part of the procedure of abandoning Lincoln Junior High and of reorganiz ing all the secondary schools. “We are here to try to protect the property the Fort Smith School Board is trying to destroy. The federal government said we will have integration, so I guess we’ll have it, but under the school board proposal one section of Fort Smith will bear the brunt,” he said. The following night there was a mass meeting at Ramsey Junior High School to choose candidates for two positions on the school board to be up for election in September, a pro cedure that no other Arkansas city uses as far as known, and the two nominated were Jones and Virgil Sel lars, also a north side resident. Jones was nominated for Position six now held by Bruce Shaw, board president, and Sellars for Position five, now held by Dr. Edgar F. Paul. In the following week three more candidates filed. Mrs. Ray Hooten and Felice (Babe) Cialone filed for Position six, and Dr. Ted Skokos for Position five. The filing deadline is Sept. 8. West Memphis At West Memphis, two llth-grade Negro boys, L. T. Gates and Arthur Williams, went to the white high school, obtained transfer forms from Bill Kessinger, the principal, filled them out and returned them to him. Kessing er said the school board would con sider them. He said the boys asked for 40 more forms but he told them that other students wishing to transfer would have to apply in person. The two students were accompanied by B. J. Yarbrough of the NAACP and the Rev. S. L. Henry, a Negro minister. Little Rock A contest for a school board seat also developed at Little Rock. Jim Coates Jr., 38, insurance man and former state representative, and George B. Brittain, 37, insurance adjuster, both have announced for the seat now held by Ted Lamb. Lamb announced Sept. BRITTAIN 4 that he would not seek re-election. Lamb is the only outright integrationist on the Little Rock board of six members and also disagrees, usually publicly, with the board on other matters, such as bank deposits, buying insurance and College Students in Summer Program Kenneth Robinson, 17, senior in Little Rock High School; Jean Balfour, 19, senior in Ouachita Baptist College; Robert Price, 21, senior at Columbia University, ani Carolyn Smith, 17, senior at Jones High School in North Little Rock. They comprise one of the interracial groups organized in Little Rock by the Student Educaliono Exchange Roundtable, headed by Price. SEER was organized last year by Irving Spitzberg Jr. of Little Rock, then a Columbia senior, to improve race communica tions and provide cultural and educational growth. taking bids on supplies. Both Coates and Brittain in their announcements re ferred to their desire to see mo r ^ co-operation and less dissension on the board. The other position up for election this year is held by J. H. Cot trell Jr., a state representative. ★ ★ ★ The Little Rock School Board hired its first Negro administrator Aug. 27. She is Mrs. Sylvia Caruth, a teacher at Rightsell Ele mentary School, who was appoint ed a supervisor of elementary educ ation. This is a new position and she is the third elementary su pervisor in the system. The use of qualified Ne groes in admini strative and staff jobs is one of several demands the local Negro community has been pres sing on the board. CARUTH ★ ★ ★ District Threatens Use of Federal Aid All but two of the 415 school districts in Arkansas have used the National Defense Education Act at one time or another since its enactment in 1958. But some of them now threaten to pull out of it because the new Civil Rights Act requires desegregation if federal aid is received. This was reported at a staff meeting of the State Education Department, Aug. 3, but state Educa tion Commissioner A. W. Ford said that no district had actually quit and he discounted reports that any of them would. In 1963-64, 264 Arkansas districts re ceived $967,416 under the act. The total since the program was started is $5,821,257. Influence Declared Higher ton said, and Brandon won the nomina tion. Sutton said this demonstrated that no longer could a Negro politician lead the Negro community into sup port of a candidate; only the candidate’s own record could do that. Brandon has a record of support for Negro aspira tions while Tucker, because of the gradual desegregation program of the Little Rock school board, has become scorned in the Negro community as the creator of “Tuckerism.” It is unusual for one of the down town civic clubs, which are all white, to invite a Negro speaker. ★ ★ ★ When reporters asked Gov. Orval E. Faubus what he thought about the desegregation lawsuit by two Negro students against the University of Arkansas, he said he could not help but believe that they were more in terested in trying to create disorder than they were in getting an education. It had been his impression that all the Negroes wanted was an opportunity to get an education, so this proves “you can’t depend on what the leaders of these radical groups say.” “I don’t think it will ever stop. If they have everything, they start dem onstrating like they have in New York, Rochester, Chicago and elsewhere. The goal of some is just disorder,” he said. And there is financial gain for some in such strife, he added. Legal Action Fort Smith Drops Voluntary Transfer Provision In Plan In the Fort Smith desegregation law suit, Rogers v. Paul et al, U.S. District Judge John E. Miller refused on Aug 19 to order the Negro plaintiffs, Janice and Patricia Rogers, admitted to white Northside High School because the school board’s grade-a-year plan has 1 not reached their grade yet. Judge Miller did require the board to He , a revised desegregation plan, which was like the original plan except that the provision for voluntary transfers by students was eliminated. A voluntary transfer had allowed a student assigned to a school where his race was in the minority to trans fer to a school where his race would be in the majority. Such transfers were held unconstitutional June 3, 196$ t. the U.S. Supreme Court in Goss Board of Education, a Tennessee case Mrs. Corine Rogers filed the fta Smith lawsuit Sept. 12, 1963, for he daughters. The complaint also con tested the school board’s alleged as signment of faculty, staff and rnone; on a racial basis. The Fort Smith board had a voluntary desegregation plan in 1956 and this was the first time it had be* taken to court. The plan began wiih LcUVtril LU UUU.Il. 111C pan o .1- the admission of Negro students to first grade in 1957 and proceeded ward one grade a year. In the 19 school year, 31 Negro students a' tten de* 1 formerly white schools in the 2* seven grades. That year the d had 12,002 white students Negro students. and Pre-trial Conference on & At a pre-trial conference lawsuit, June 13, 1964, Judge held that the voluntary trans er ^ vision of the desegregation P invalid, and the board filed a r plan July 17, 1964. The plaint s , ^ sented by George Howard Jr- 0 Bluff, state NAACP president, ed July 23, 1964, saying that ^ original and revised plans jf- represent a good faith and pro fort to desegregate. 10, 196*- The case was tried Aug- ,-jth Much of the testimony had to ^ three Negro elementary & Howard, Dunbar and Washmgto^ the revised plan, these three ^ the got a one-year exemption ^ d 1964-65 school year) from “f is , & the voluntary transfer; tna ^ ^ voluntary transfer can s i at those schools only for ^ year. This is for the benefit■ 107 white pupils who live m Qther w^ attendance areas and o ^ th**' would have to be assign Negro schools this year. ^ In the revised plan th pUP'.' says that to require the 7** ^ to attend the Negro ® ^ imp 3 ’: cause “an intense psychology “p«f£ and it asked for * e v'b 1 . of adjustment and tra^ ^ w^ - the court approved s a‘d stand, Supt. Chris • white s t0