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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—NOVEMBER, 1964—PAGE 5
ARKANSAS
Desegregation Suit Filed
Against El Dorado Board
LITTLE ROCK
4 new desegregation lawsuit,
only the sixth ever filed in
Arkansas, was filed Oct. 15 by
Negro plaintiffs against the El
Dorado school district. It was
brought in the El Dorado division
of federal district court by the
parents of six Negro students as a
class action in behalf of all Negro
students in the district.
El Dorado, with a 1960 population of
25,292, is the county seat of Union
County, bordering Louisiana in south-
central Arkansas, and is the center of
the Arkansas oil industry. The enroll
ment there this year is 4,982 white and
2,204 Negro students, all attending
segregated schools.
The lawsuit (Kemp v. Beasley)
asked the court to enjoin the school
board from operating a segregated
school system and from assigning stu
dents, teachers or principals on the
basis of race. As an alternative it asked
the court to order the school board to
submit a plan for the reorganization
of the school system on a “unitary
nonracial basis.”
The plaintiffs are Mrs. G. L. Kemp
for her three children, Dossie Wayne
Kemp, Marjorie Kemp and Betty Lou
Kemp; Mrs. Exie Lockhart for her
daughter, Loretta Joyce Lockhart; and
Judge Dortch for his children, Mary
Lee Dortch and Johnnie Lee Dortch.
The defendants are the six school
board members, Lee Roy Beasley,
president; W. M. Paul, vice president;
Mrs. Kenneth Wimer Jr., secretary,
Mrs. Jack Clawson, Dr. Paul G. Henley
and William A. Stark, and the superin
tendent, G. A. Stubblefield.
Arkansas Highlights
The parents of six Negro children
sued in federal court to have the El
Dorado school system desegregated.
The one Negro student admitted
this year to a white school in Forrest
City has withdrawn and returned to
a Negro school.
The white member of the Dollar
way School Board who lost to a Ne
gro candidate in the school election
Sept. 29 filed an election contest suit
seeking to nullify the Negro’s victory.
If Pine Bluff and the state high
way department go through with a
plan to build a new expressway
through the middle of a Negro neigh
borhood, the Negroes have threatened
to seek complete desegregation of the
Pine Bluff schools, to avoid having to
cross the expressway.
district but had been assigned to Ne
gro schools. Their complaint had raised
for the first time in the Little Rock
case the assignment of Negro teachers,
principals and staff members.
Schoolmen
Incumbent Member
Of Board Files
Election Contest
Applied in July
The parents said in the complaint
that their children applied last July 6
to be transferred from Washington
High School, for Negroes, to El Dorado
High School, for whites. They said that
the white school was closer to their
homes than the Negro school. They said
they were notified Aug. 25 that their
requests had been refused. They said
that the El Dorado policy of maintain
ing segregated schools violated their
rights guaranteed in the equal protec
tion and due process clauses of the 14th
Amendment. Their complaint did not
mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
George Howard Jr. of Pine Bluff,
Arkansas president of the NAACP, is
the attorney for the plaintiffs, assisted
by Jack Greenberg, Derrick A. Bell Jr.
and John Walker, all of New York,
with the NAACP Legal Defense and
Education Fund. Howard led the com-
plaint and asked for a speedy hearing.
The case is before Judge J. Smith Hen
ley.
Dr. Henley and Stark were elected
to the El Dorado board in the school
election Sept. 29, replacing two mem
bers who did not seek re-election, and
Beasley was elected board president
Oct. 14. Beasley said that the facts in the
eomplaint about the transfer applica-
°ns and segregated school system
seemed to be correct, but he had no
other comment.
El Dorado has seven elementary
Sc hools, two junior high schools and
one senior high school for whites. The
gh school, which the plaintiffs want
p enter > has an enrollment of 1,231.
or Negro students there are six
oementary schools and one high school
nu “ cludes grades 7 through 12.
ther desegregation suits have been
ed at Van Buren, Dollarway, Bearden,
rattle Rock and Fort Smith. All but
book 311 ^ Ur6n sud ar e still on the
★ ★ ★
f,,f e ? e ^ al Judge Gordon E. Young i
ed Oct. 26 to allow five Negro pup
intervene in the original Little Ro
v T° dese gregation lawsuit (Norwo
bit? V i'i ‘ ier \ * or ^e Purpose of questio
jg the alleged failure of the sch(
tea v t0 ass * gn both students a
achers without regard to race.
e ^ Uc *ge said that since the origii
Wa \ filed as a class action, the
throuvl, er" f ° r ex P andin g the cl;
Plainer 1116 mter vention. He said t
o r 1 s n eeded to file a new lawsi
as “ uld intervene in the old s
ri gh , m , duals seeking to have their oi
adjudicated.
onenf 1 ! 6 ' -Anderson of Little Ro,
talked •?, attorneys for the plaintii
Brant tbe co-counsel, Wiley
s aiH i 0 * 1 °? ^danta, by telephone, a
cicltd 'In Cl 10 t ^ le day dun they had d
ueo to file a new lawsuit.
— ...c a new lawsuit,
five 6 d° n for intervention by
6 ve sSdlr v Wa ? filed Se P t 25
Segregated a PP lled to enter
gated schools in the Little R
The incumbent white member of the
Dollarway School Board at Pine Bluff,
who lost to a Negro candidate in the
school election Sept. 29, filed an election
contest suit Oct. 19 in the Circuit Court
of Jefferson County seeking to have
the results of the election reversed.
Rob W. Bryant filed the complaint
against Arthur H. Miller, the winner,
and the Jefferson County Election
Commission, which conducted the elec
tion. The election commission had
certified the results to be 602 votes for
Miller, 542 for Bryant and 200 for W. C.
Hosman, also a white man.
Bryant contended that 108 illegal or
invalid ballots were cast in the Town
send Park School voting box, where
the returns were certified to be 595 for
Miller, 7 for Bryant and 2 for Hosman.
Townsend Park is the Negro school in
the Dollarway District. If those 108
votes are thrown out, Bryant’s com
plaint said, the final result of the elec
tion will be 542 for Bryant, 484 for
Miller and 200 for Hosman.
Dollarway is a desegregated district
but only two Negroes attend the white
school with about 1,200 whites. The dis
trict is on the northwest edge of Pine
Bluff and takes in part of the city.
Bryant himself did the research for
his lawsuit by checking the list of those
who voted at Townsend Park against
the poll tax list which in Arkansas is
the voter registration list. He said in
his complaint that one person cast three
ballots, that four others cast two bal-
Miscellaneous
Expressway
A possibly unique motive for seeking
school desegregation is developing in
Pine Bluff.
After five years of wrangling, the city
and the state highway department have
settled on the route of a new express
way through town to replace the old
narrow route of U. S. Highway 65. And
for two miles the two new routes will
pass along West Pullen Street, through
the heart of the Negro community,
dividing it in half.
Negroes have protested this route
from the beginning. Since the highway
department decided finally on this route
on Sept. 17, the Negroes have resumed
their protest. In a long statement Oct.
9, sent to the city, Gov. Orval E. Faubus
and the highway department they re
viewed their grievances. The statement
included this:
“That leaves us no alternative but to
request the federal courts to integrate
all of the Pine Bluff public schools to
accommodate the pupils who refuse to
cross the expressway to attend school.
The parents of the children that refuse
to cross the expressway will in all
probability refuse to cross the express
way to attend church and will elect to
WASHINGTON REPORT
Tribunal Refuses Review
Of Race-Balance
Rob W. Bryant
Dollarway complainant.
Arthur H. Miller
Defendant in election suit.
lots, that 25 of the voters were not legal
residents of the school district and that
78 of the voters did not have valid 1963
poll tax receipts. In Arkansas the pay
ment of the poll tax is a requirement
for voting; the poll tax paid before Oct.
1 qualifies an elector to vote in all elec
tions from Oct. 2 through Oct. 1 of the
following year. Since the school elec
tion was on Sept. 29, the poll tax re
quired was the one paid before Oct. 1,
1963.
Bryant cannot know how the 108
persons he has challenged voted except
by the fact that he and Hosman re
ceived only 9 votes in the box, while
Miller got all the rest. A court order is
necessary in Arkansas for election
boxes to be opened and the ballots ex
amined to determine how a certain
person voted, and this can be done only
in an election contest suit. That is what
Bryant has asked the court to do.
Bryant is represented by the law firm
of Smith, Williams, Friday & Bowen of
Little Rock, which also represents the
Dollarway School Board.
If Miller’s victory holds up, he will
Plan Becomes
attend a white church. Integrating
schools and churches will necessitate
the parents’ moving as near as possible
to the schools and churches of their
choice.”
North of Pullen Street are Merrill
High School with 934 Negro students,
Carter Elementary School with 300 Ne
gro students, a Negro cemetery, a
branch of the public library and a large
Negro Methodist church. Reaching
these, from south of Pullen if it be
comes an expressway, is what bothers
the Negro residents. Pine Bluff is de
segregating voluntarily and has 11
Negro students in the first four grades
of three formerly white schools this
year.
★ ★ ★
Negro Lawyer Endorses
Faubus; Audience Differs
Harold Flowers of Pine Bluff, Negro
lawyer, former state president of the
NAACP and former secretary of the
Jefferson County Republican Com-
(Continued from Page 1)
from housing patterns. Last May 4, the
court left standing a ruling that school
authorities in Gary, Ind., were not con
stitutionally obligated to end de facto
segregation.
Taken together, the Gary and New
York actions appear to point to a Su
preme Court attitude that gives local
authorities broad discretion: they may
take racial factors into account in at
tempting to promote balanced enroll
ments, but are not required to do so.
★ ★ ★
The Supreme Court refused on Oct.
12 to hear arguments on a contention
that school officials should be allowed
to classify children “on the basis of
educational aptitudes because the dif
ference in aptitude is also a racial
characteristic.” (No. 173, Allen v.
Brown).
Counsel for white students in Char
leston, S.C., had used this contention
in trying to overturn an order by U.S.
District Judge J. Robert Martin of
Greenville, S.C., calling for desegrega
tion of Charleston schools. Martin had
refused to make findings on the ques
tion of inherent educational inferiority
of Negroes. (See South Carolina re
port.)
★ ★ ★
The Supreme Court refused on Oct.
12 to review an order for a speedup in
plans for desegregation of public
schools in Mobile County, Ala. (Davis
v. Board of School Commissioners).
(See Alabama report.)
★ ★ ★
Eugene C. Patterson, editor of the
Atlanta Constitution, was designated as
vice chairman of the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights Oct. 19 by President
Johnson.
Patterson was confirmed by the
become apparently the first Negro
elected to a board in a biracial district
in Arkansas in modem times and the
first since the 1954 desegregation de
cision, although there have been Negro
candidates in several districts.
Miller, 50, is professor of industrial
arts at Arkansas AM&N College, the
state college for Negroes at Pine Bluff.
He has a nine-year-old son in the
Townsend Park School for Negroes.
★ ★ ★
State Education Commissioner Arch
W. Ford called for elimination of the
difference in the quality of education
given white and Negro children.
In a speech Oct. 9 to about 300 Negro
educators at a meeting of the Arkansas
School Administrators Association at
Hot Springs, he said: “All boys and
girls, regardless of race, must have
training sufficient to enable them to fit
into a changing pattern of economy. We
have entered an age when we all agree
that education is no longer optional. It
is mandatory for those who expect their
children to succeed in life.”
(See ARKANSAS, Page 6)
an Issue
mittee, endorsed Gov. Faubus for re-
election at a meeting Tuesday night
Oct. 27 in a Negro
church in Pine
Bluff. The audi
ence groaned in
protest.
“I believe Fau
bus is a changed
man,” Flowers
said. “Under Fau
bus Little Rock
has become the
most integrated
city in the South.”
E. M. Moore, a Negro spokesman for
Winthrop Rockefeller, the Republican
who is opposing Faubus, got up and
asked “How can a Negro stand before
you and tell you you should vote for
Gov. Faubus?” Cheers, clapping and
stamping of feet came after that.
At Little Rock, L. C. Bates, Arkansas
field secretary for the NAACP, said
Flowers had been suspended from the
NAACP years ago. Bates said Flowers
doesn’t stand any better with the Ne
groes than Faubus does.
Washington Highlights
The Supreme Court declined to
review a decision that school officials
may draw boundary lines of a new
school so as to promote racial bal
ance among the pupils.
The National Urban League said
a survey in 68 cities showed that 70
per cent of non-white adults had not
completed a high school education.
A program to prepare Mississippi
“Freedom School” students for col
lege entrance was announced by the
National Scholarship Service and
Fund for Negro Students.
The U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights published its 1964 staff report
on school desegregation.
Senate Oct. 2 to be a member of the
commission. He succeeded Robert G.
Storey as a member and vice chairman.
Anti-Illiteracy
Program Urged
For Negro Adults
A multi-billion-dollar effort to stamp
out adult illiteracy among Negroes was
urged Oct. 31 by Whitney M. Young
Jr., executive director of the National
Urban League.
Young released results of an Urban
League survey of 68 cities that showed
that about 70 per cent of 4,669,000 non
white adults have not finished high
school. Of these, 3,233,000 were classi
fied as dropouts and 142,000 were listed
as having no education at all.
Dropout rates ranged from 88 per
cent in Muskegon, Mich., and 86 per
cent in Memphis down to 54 per cent
each in Denver and Seattle. But Young
said the figures did not reflect on in
dividual school systems, since many of
the dropouts were migrants from other
cities.
He called on cities to light up schools,
churches, libraries, settlement houses,
museums and other community facili
ties at night to reach uneducated
adults.
“Hundreds of boarded-up movie
theaters could be converted also into
lecture halls and cultural centers,”
Young said.
He advocated pre-kindergarten
training for “disadvantaged” children,
expanded guidance counseling services
and “a massive infusion of Federal aid
into both black and white ghetto
schools.”
★ ★ +
Program Announced To Aid
‘Freedom School’ Students
A program to provide higher educa
tion opportunities for promising stu
dents who attended “Freedom Schools”
in Mississippi last summer was an
nounced Oct. 8 by the National Schol
arship Service and Fund for Negro
Students.
The organization said it would at
tempt to identify and test three to five
high-school juniors from each Freedom
School. Those who display a potential
for college work will receive further
training on college campuses next sum
mer and the summer after their senior
year to prepare them for admission to
first-rate interracial colleges.
Aim of the special sessions will be
“to arouse and sharpen the will to learn
on the part of youngsters trained to be
passive and un inquisitive,” the an
nouncement said.
★ ★ ★
Civil Rights Commission
Publishes Staff Report
“Public Education,” a 1964 staff re
port of the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, was published by the Govern
ment Printing Office Nov. 1.
The 304-page report is a summary
of major school desegregation develop
ments in the 17 Southern and border
states for the period between Aug. 1,
1963, and Aug. 1, 1964. Brief addenda
to the state reports also take note of
important developments after Aug. 1,
1964, through the opening of the cur
rent school year.
Appendices to the staff report include
statistical matter from Southern School
News and the SERS Statistical Sum
mary, as well as a list of school de
segregation court cases cited in the
report.
FLOWERS