Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 12—OCTOBER. 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Tennessee
(Continued From Page 10)
been granted this fall as the district
complied with Brown’s earlier order to
desegregate three additional grades.
VIRGINIA
Two Colleges Desegregate Winter Programs
★ ★ ★
Negroes File Objections
To Monroe County Plan
Negro plaintiffs filed objections Sept.
30 to the Monroe County Board of
Education’s gradual desegregation plan.
The objections were filed in U.S. Dis
trict Court at Knoxville by Nashville
attorney Avon N. Williams Jr.
In response to a directive by U.S.
District Judge Robert L. Taylor, the
board presented a plan calling for de
segregation on a gradual basis in var
ious grades and schools over the next
four years or sooner. (SSN, Septem
ber.)
An estimated 36 Negroes were en
rolled in previously all-white schools
this fall as a result of the court litiga
tion and the board’s proposed plan.
Williams said plaintiffs objected to
the plan because it did not provide a
complete desegregation program and
that it did not show the basis for re
quiring the proposed length of time to
carry out the plan.
No hearing date for arguments on the
plan has been set.
In The Colleges
Carson-Newman
Enrolls Negroes
Carson-Newman College at Jefferson
City enrolled three Negro freshmen on
Sept. 7 as the Baptist-affiliated institu
tion lowered racial barriers.
A spokesman in the college regis
trar’s office said a Negro junior student
was expected to enroll in January.
The college, which had announced
previously that students would be ad
mitted without regard to race begin
ning this fall, has 1,557 day students.
South Carolina
(Continued From Page 11)
The procedure for desegregation was
similar to that originated by the
Charleston school board and followed
in other areas. The plan, which out
lines several criteria for transfers other
than race, has been attacked in the fed
eral courts by Negroes.
Aiken County schools Supt. Charles
Kneece said, while announcing the
unanimous action of the school board,
that transfer applications would be ac
cepted through April 1, 1965
Aiken, South Carolina’s most pop
ulous county, contains the bulk of the
vast Savannah River Plant of the
Atomic Energy Commission. Last year,
it had 15,172 whites and 6,390 Negroes
in average daily attendance.
During the present school year, 16
of the state’s 108 school districts, invol
ving 14 of its 46 counties, have
Negroes and whites in the same class
rooms. A year ago, only School District
20 of Charleston County was desegre
gated.
Legal Action
Two Negro Teachers
Seek Reinstatement
Two Negro teachers, dismissed from
their jobs last year for engaging in
civil rights activities, have filed suit
for reinstatement in U. S. District
Court in Columbia.
Separate actions were entered by
Mrs. Gloria P. Raekley of Orange
burg and Mrs. Irene Williams of Sum
ter. Both complaints were received
Sept. 15.
Mrs. Raekley, a state vice-president
of the NAACP, has taken a leading part
in many civil rights movements in the
Orangeburg area. Her daughter was a
plaintiff in a successful desegregation
suit against Orangeburg city schools.
In Demonstrations
A teacher at Orangeburg’s Whittaker
Elementary School since 1959, she was
discharged in the fall of 1963 after she
had been arrested while participating in
street demonstrations in downtown
Orangeburg. Her dismissal set off a
brief boycott of schools by Negro stu
dents.
Mrs. Williams was active in demon
strations in the Orangeburg area. She
taught in the schools of Sumter District
2, which, like Orangeburg, was de
segregated by court order this semester.
The suits, filed against the respective
school boards and district superinten
dents, charged the officials with prac
ticing discrimination by refusing them
RICHMOND
ary Washington College at
Fredericksburg and Virginia
State College at Petersburg this
fall have desegregated student
bodies for the first time during
regular winter sessions.
A Negro girl, a resident student, at
tends classes at Mary Washington, a
state-supported institution for women,
along with about 1,750 whites. Negroes
previously have attended the school as
summer day students.
“A few” whites are attending Virginia
State College at Petersburg this fall,
according to a college spokesman. This
is the first time whites have been en
rolled as students during the regular
winter session. There have been whites
attending special summer programs.
The head of the physics department
at Virginia State this year is a white
person, marking the first time a white
professor has headed an academic de
partment at the institution.
The college says it does not keep
records by race and therefore cannot
give an exact figure as to the number
of whites in the student body. One re
port was that there were “about three.”
They are day students and do not live
in the dormitories.
Total enrollment at Virginia State is
about 1,700.
★ ★ ★
Virginia’s attorney general has told
the Amherst County Circuit Court that
the will of the founder of Sweet Briar
College is “conclusive and binding” in
directing that the school educate “white
girls and young women.”
The will is “plain and unambiguous”
and needs no judicial interpretation,
according to papers mailed to the court
Sept. 4 by Attorney General Robert Y.
Button.
Sweet Briar’s board filed suit Aug. 17
(Sweet Briar v. McClenny), asking the
court to decree that all qualified appli
cants may be admitted “regardless of
race, creed or color,” and to authorize
the college to amend its charter to
eliminate the word “white.”
The board contended that if the
college is to make progress comparable
to that of other women’s colleges, it
must be permitted to admit qualified
applicants regardless of race, creed or
color.
Sweet Briar was founded in 1906
under the provisions of the will of Mrs.
Indiana Fletcher Williams. The attor
ney general was named a respondent in
the case because the college was estab
lished as a charitable trust.
Legal Action
Court Turns Down
Preliminary Ban
On Tuition Grants
A special three-judge federal court,
at the conclusion of a 90-minute hear
ing on Oct. 1, refused to issue a pre
liminary injunction banning tuition
grants in Virginia. (Griffin v. State
Board of Education.)
The court held that plaintiffs chal
lenging the grants had failed to show
that irreparable damage would be done
if no action were taken pending a full
hearing Dec. 14 on the constitutionality
of the grants.
Fourth Circuit Court Judge Albert
V. Bryan of Alexandria, who presided,
at the hearing in Richmond, remarked
that it did not appear that any “uni
versal rule” could be applied to tuition
grants throughout the state. He said
grants “might be invalid or valid under
different circumstances.”
Virginia Highlights
Two more publicly supported col
leges desegregated their regular win
ter programs for the first time in
September.
A special three-judge federal
court declined to issue a preliminary
injunction against the use of tuition
grants in Virginia.
Negro attorneys asked a federal
court to prevent Prince Edward
County official' from enforcing legal
barriers against civil rights demon
strations.
contract renewals because of civil rights
activities. The complaints allege the
teachers were exercising their right to
engage in peaceful demonstrations
guaranteed them under the U. S. Con
stitution.
District Judge Walter E. Hoffman
of Norfolk drew a distinction, as an
example, between grants in Norfolk
and in Surry County. Extensive de
segregation of the schools has taken
place in Norfolk, but grants are used
by some children at private schools
or at public schools outside the city.
In Surry, only Negroes are attending
the public school; all whites are at
tending a private segregated system.
Nine Localities
The suit attacking tuition grants was
filed Aug. 17 in the U.S. District Court
at Richmond. The defendants, in addi
tion to the State Board of Education,
are the governing bodies of nine Vir
ginia localities—the counties of Amelia,
Brunswick, Powhatan, Prince Edward,
Surry, King and Queen and Warren,
and the cities of Charlottesville and
Norfolk.
The Negro attorneys, in the Oct. 1
hearing, contended that the grants are
used to make possible private segre
gated schools which were established
for the purpose of thwarting court
orders calling for desegregation of
public schools.
The third member of the court hear
ing the case is District Judge John
D. Butzner, Jr., of Richmond.
★ ★ ★
Suit Filed to Reverse
Hopewell Zoning Plan
Attorneys for the NAACP Legal De
fense Fund asked the U.S. Fourth Cir
cuit Court of Appeals Sept. 22 to reverse
a Hopewell school zoning plan approved
in July by District Judge John D.
Butzner Jr. (Gilliam v. Hopewell
School Board.) Under the zoning plan,
assignments to schools are made solely
on the basis of residence.
In their brief, the NAACP attorneys
said, in part:
“The facts in this case clearly indicate
the studied purpose of the school board
to continue without change a school
system which was designed to accom
plish racial segregation. The board has
demonstrated a remarkable ability to
resist and frustrate efforts of Negro
children to attend public schools on a
racially non-discriminatory basis.”
In a cross-appeal, the Hopewell
school board asked for a reversal of
one part of Judge Butzner’s decision.
The judge had directed that 24 Negroes
admitted to white schools prior to ap
proval of the zoning plan be permitted
to finish their education in the schools
to which they had been assigned. The
school board contends that these chil
dren should attend schools in their own
neighborhoods.
No date has been set for a hearing
on the appeals.
NAACP lawyers on Sept. 9 asked for
a federal injunction to restrain Prince
Edward officials from enforcing legal
barriers against civil rights demonstra
tions. (Griffin v. May.)
Among other things, the suit seeks to
knock down an order issued Aug. 14
by County Juvenile Court Judge Wil
liam P. Hay Jr., forbidding Negro
leaders to use juveniles in racial dem
onstrations. Defendants, in addition to
Judge Hay, are the county’s Common
wealth’s attorney, William F. Watkins,
and Police Chief Otto S. Overton of
Farmville, the county seat.
In their petition for an injunction, the
Negro attorneys say “it is and has at
all times been the purpose of the plain
tiffs to conduct all protest demonstra
tions in a peaceful and orderly manner
without causing injury to anyone in his
person, property or liberty.”
The Negroes had announced plans to
demonstrate against the county’s school
policies and against what the Negroes
contend are other evidences of dis
crimination.
★ ★ ★
Change In Ordinance
On Grants Suggested
The Prince Edward County Board of
Supervisors heard a suggestion Sept.
8 that it permit county tuition grants
to be used at any private, nonsectarian
school in the United States. The exist
ing ordinance limits grants to use in
the county.
The proposal for the change was
made by Commonwealth’s Attorney
William F. Watkins Jr. He said the
purpose of the amendment would be
“to clarify the ordinance and to bring
it more in line with the state statute
[on tuition grants].”
Public-School Opening in Prince Edward
White child at Worsham Elementary School is Edith Ann Lewis, 72,
The supervisors decided to wait until
the October meeting to consider the
proposal further.
On Aug. 5, about $180,000 in county
grants was distributed to parents of
children who had enrolled in the Prince
Edward School Foundation’s private
all-white school system. Thirteen addi
tional grants, bringing the total to
about 1,250, were approved by the
supervisors Sept. 8.
The Prince Edward grants have been
challenged by Negro attorneys in the
Prince Edward school case. They have
asked the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court to
cite the supervisors for contempt for
authorizing the payments. (Griffin v.
Prince Edward School Board.) Tuition
grants in general have been attacked
in another suit. (See Legal Action.)
Nearly all the 1,600 Negro children
of the county are attending the public
schools, which opened in September
under court order after a five-year
shutdown to avoid desegregation. About
six whites also are enrolled in the
public schools.
★ ★ ★
Prince Edward Negroes
Told to Demand Equality
A crowd of about 400 Prince Edward
County Negroes, along with a few
whites, were told in a Labor Day ad
dress Sept. 7 that they should see to it
that the county’s public school system
be made equal to the systems in other
parts of Virginia.
The speaker was the Rev. Heslip M.
Lee of Richmond, executive director of
the Virginia Council on Human Rela
tions. He spoke on the eve of the re
opening of the county’s public schools,
by court order, after they had been
closed since 1959,
“Anything short of a first-class sys
tem of education will be giving you one
of less caliber than you deserve,” the
Baptist minister said. He warned his
listeners against “new subtleties” of
discrimination which he said are pos
sible in a state where leaders seek to
go as slowly as possible.”
The State Pupil Placement Board on
Sept. 14 approved the applications of
two Negro students for transfer from
desegregated schools back to all-Neg 10
schools, but it turned down similar re
quests from four other Negroes.
E. J. Oglesby, board chairman, sai
the four requests were denied because
the applications for transfers were nk®
after the May 30 deadline. ,
The board assigned a number o
Negroes to predominantly white schoo
in various localities. In some instances,
the Negroes had recently moved
the neighborhoods served by
schools to which they were as®®®.
In other cases, the Negroes a "^. ,
were attending the schools by P era '7*
si on of local school boards pc®
formal assignments by the placet®
board.
What They Say
Negro Newspaper Criticizes
New Name of Private School
St. Catherine’s, an Episcopal school
at Richmond, which announced some
months ago that a Negro girl would be
admitted this fall, reported later that
the girl had decided to attend a North
ern boarding school.
The Norfolk Journal and Guide, in its
lead editorial of Sept. 26, said that Gen.
Douglas MacArthur had been “dis
honored” by the renaming of Tidewater
Academy as Douglas MacArthur
Academy.
The Journal and Guide, a Negro
weekly, quoted Hal J. Bonney, super
intendent of the private secondary
school in Norfolk, as saying:
“Douglas MacArthur ... is an ex
ample to our youth which deserves
to be kept alive. His life holds in it
countless qualities which young people
would do well to emulate. It will be the
purpose of the Douglas MacArthur
Academy to teach these qualities.”
The newspaper editorial continued, in
part: “What a cruel desecration of &
memory of a great general an
hero! ... be
“Tidewater Academy, it ® h
remembered, was established ^ aS .
yielding segregationists during ^
sive resistance era to pro\i ® c j 1 j]-
where white children—and w * g a te<3
dren alone—could attend se tQ( j a j-
classes. The school is maintain
so that its students can escape jji
to integrated classrooms ope gjjd
compliance with constitute ^ s y C e
universal principles of eq ’
irotherhood . . . honor tb e
bat a grotesque way to ch to
>ry of a man who did *° q( life
rsh a democratic pa* ® trut j J i {
be Japanese people-
rates his memory. ^ fjof'
leral MacArthur is “gpir 1 *"
the city that he called his *