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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 *