Newspaper Page Text
SOUTH CAROLINA
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY, 1965—PAGE 15
Officials Stirred by Guidelines
Gov. McNair, Sen. and Mrs. Russell
Announcing successor to Sen. Johnson.
(Continued from Page 14)
J. Robert Martin, in cases involving
Darlington and Greenville districts.
Hemphill’s original order, filed last
Aug. 10 in the case of Randall v. Sum
ter County School District 2, sent 11
Negro children of Shaw Air Force Base
airmen into previously sill-white
schools last September.
It also required complete desegre
gation by this September but did not
spell out the details. It did, however,
allow the district officials to submit
an assignment and transfer plan to the
court for approval.
Parallel Noted
The plan submitted by Sumter Supt.
Hugh T. Stoddard closely paralleled
the Martin directive and plans sub
mitted voluntarily by the majority of
South Carolina school districts to the
U.S. Office of Education in response to
the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The hearing for a modification of
Hemphill’s original order came up
April L Stoddard told the court that
complete desegregation during the
next school year would result in chaos.
He said there were 10,000 children
involved, almost two-thirds of them
Negro, and the administrative problems
would be staggering.
He said the district had complied in
good faith with the 1964 portion of
Hemphill’s order and intended to do
so again this year. But he argued that
the school board needed some flexi
bility and leeway in implementing the
plan.
NAACP lawyers opposed the modi
fication, arguing that the proposed
change “placed all of the burden of
school transfers on Negro parents.”
(The U.S. Office of Education has made
similar objections to the standardized
South Carolina plans, none of which
had yet been approved.)
In essence, the plans set up certain
criteria for transfer and initial assign-
MISSISSIPPI
One-Third
(Continued from Page 7)
Owens, Tougaloo’s newly appointed
Negro president.
The university provided a police
escort to an interstate highway near
the campus and a Highway Patrol car
escorted the group back to Jackson.
Earlier, Tougaloo Professor Raymond
' Rohrbaugh suggested the university
close the festival because of the inci
dents. He said the group left Ole Miss
because university officials would not
i take security measures to prevent
another demonstration against their
Presence.
“They told us they would do the
best they could,” he said, “but they
couldn’t guarantee us anything.”
Rohrbaugh said university officials
refused to move his group to another
I dormitory, and added:
“Everybody knew where we were
staying, and we were informed bigger
and better things were planned for
tonight (April 23).”
Saluted Faulkner
The Southern Literary Festival this
year saluted William Faulkner, the
Mississippi author who died in 1962.
The demonstrations were criticized
® an editorial in the Ole Miss student
Newspaper.
u “Ole Miss students,” the paper said,
have again succeeded in endangering
the future of Ole Miss. Perhaps the
, students from Tougaloo were seeking
Publicity. Perhaps they were looking
for trouble, as some of the demon
strators said last night. We don’t know,
ft makes no difference. We do know
that once again the nation has news
°f a large number of Ole Miss students
Evolved in racial disturbance. Last
‘Pght’s occurences would hardly be
^ossified as a riot, but Ole Miss is
hnown to many people as the riot
school. To them, disturbance equals
r*°t, if the disturbance occurs at Ole
Miss.
But the additional injury to Ole
Miss’ reputation is only part of the
story. The problem goes far beyond the
Presence of a racially mixed group on
Car npus.
The handful of students who were
a *Ually involved in the demonstration
hould try to understand the possible
^sequences. While the University
Medical Center in Jackson is being
^Vestigated for possible civil rights
ac t violations, while all Mississippi
ment but state specifically that race
will not be considered.
Judge Hemphill, in a comment pre
saging his decision, said time was of
the essence and that reasonableness
and good faith would weigh heavily
in his decision. He expressed concern
for the administrative problems in
volved.
In his order, Judge Hemphill said,
“This court will not countenance any
action or practice which will effect
subterfuge, chaos,
avoidance of the
court order or its
abuse or delay.”
He said any ad
ministrative road
blocks could lead
to a contempt ci
tation.
On the other
hand he wrote:
“For ten years
this has generated
a fertile field of
litigation, a sounding board of political
demagoguery, avenue after avenue of
abuse, frequently of some sincerity.”
Says Some Would Destroy
He said there are some who “would
destroy America by destroying her
schools in the name of education or
‘rights’ . . .”
He called this “in-purpose racism
traveling in the vehicle of righteous
ness.” “In such a setting this case
arose,” he added.
He added: “This court endeavors to
follow the law of the land as pro
pounded by the Supreme Court and
nurses the hope of orderly process, or
derly application and orderly cooper
ation.”
Judge Hemphill said he was proud of
South Carolina’s record in race rela
tions.
★ ★ ★
The State Department of Education,
schools are coming under close scru
tiny, while officials at all major colleges
and universities in the state are doing
their best to show that we are com
plying with provisions of the civil
rights law so that federal funds will
be continued, a few Ole Miss students
chose to organize a demonstration of
the type which could endanger the fu
ture of this University.
Says U.S. Funds Needed
“Without federal funds Ole Miss
would be closer to a junior college
than to a modem university. Modem
education is simply too costly for the
state of Mississippi to provide. Building
and research programs would be im
possible. Students who need NDEA
(National Defense Education Act) loans
and students with jobs under the
Work-Study Program would lose their
chance for a college education.
“The choice left to the university
under the civil rights compliance law
is, in effect, to operate without racial
discrimination of any type, or to say
forget it and do away with quality
higher education in Mississippi.
“The handful of students who or
ganized the demonstration last night
may have been working to close the
doors of Ole Miss.
“And they probably don’t even un
derstand.”
★ ★ ★
George A Owens, a native of Jackson,
has been named the ninth president of
Tougaloo College.
Owens, who will assume office on
June 1, went to the predominantly
Negro college as business manager in
1955. He is the first Negro to serve
as president in the school’s 96-year
history.
He was graduated from Tougaloo in
1941 and received his MBA degree from
the Columbia University Graduate
School of Business.
Owens, who has served as acting
president since the resignation of Dr.
A. D. Beittel last year, served as comp
troller of Talladega College in Alabama
from 1949 until 1955.
Tougaloo is a coeducational liberal
arts college which has historic connec
tions with the United Church of Christ
and the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ). It is accredited by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools and
is a member of the United Negro Col-
four school districts and parents of
white children attending a private
school used virtually the same strategy
during April in answering an NAACP
suit attacking the state’s tuition grants
program.
In another legal maneuver in the
tangled tuition grants situation, NAACP
attorneys, acting at the request of Fed
eral District Judge J. Robert Martin,
moved to amend their complaint to
include all districts which might at
some future time decide to come under
the program.
At a hearing in March, Judge Martin
said, ‘I would like to get it all out in
one housecleaning.”
Earlier, he had granted temporary
restraining orders against districts al
ready in the program, which offers
state aid to pupils attending private
nonsectarian schools which requested
and received the approval of the State
Department of Education. Districts 2
in Sumter and 5 in Orangeburg had
already paid the first tuition checks
when the injunction was served.
Later the State Department of Edu
cation, the disbursing agent to the
school districts, was brought into the
litigation.
Merits to be Heard
The merits of the case, which attacks
the constitutionality of a state law,
will be heard at a date yet to be set
by a three-judge federal panel, con
sisting of Circuit Judge Clement F.
Haynsworth and District Judges Mar
tin and Robert W. Hemphill.
The defendants in the suits were
given until April 9 to file answers. The
first to do so were the intervening
parents of pupils at East Cooper
School in Mount Pleasant, a Charleston
suburb.
They denied that the school was
established (last September) solely for
the purpose of avoiding desegregation.
They were motivated, they said, by
smaller classes, exceptionally qualified
lege Fund. It also is accredited by the
Mississippi Accrediting Commission and
the National Commission on Accredit
ing.
Miscellaneous
Economic Council
Discusses Program
For Private Schools
Mississippi’s state-financed private-
school program permitting pupils to
attend private schools as an alternative
to attending desegregated public
schools was discussed before the Mis-
sisippi Economic Council on April 5.
“The big challenge in Mississippi is to
upgrade our public schools, not down
grade them,” Editor Oliver Emmerich
of the McComb
Enterprise-Journ
al told the coun
cil’s 16th annual
meeting in Jack-
son during a pan
el discussion on
“Education —
Choices and Con
sequences.”
Emmerich, who
is opposed to the
tuition plan en
acted by a special
session of the legislature last year, also
said:
“Tax-supported private schools
would downgrade public education . . .
The tax money used by private schools
would be money siphoned from our
public schools . . . They are another
negative effort which history will add
to our long list of costly negative
failures . . . The laws which impower
their creation will be declared invalid.”
Attorneys Differ
But attorney Semmes Luckett of
Clarksdale, who assisted the legislature
in drafting the measure providing state
and local funds for children to attend
nonsectarian private schools to counter
desegregation of public schools, said:
“Those who advocate complete re
liance on a public school system must,
in all fairness to those whom they seek
to persuade to their point of view,
teachers, the fact that prayers were not
outlawed and the fact that there was
no governmental control over the sub
jects taught.
The answer admitted that some of
the parents were “interested in sending
their children to . . . the school so as
to avoid the impact of wholesale, un-
selective forced integration of children
in public schools.”
The pleading stated that some of the
parents borrowed money to pay the
$360-a-year tuition and that they had
relied on the tuition agent to help
defray the expense and repay the loans.
It argued the plaintiffs were not in
jured as taxpayers since the payments
simply replace costs which would ac
crue to the school district if the chil
dren were in public schools.
Sumter District 2, which contains a
recognize and acknowledge that they
are talking about integrated public
schools . . . Tokenism is a mirage for
the foolish and ill-informed . . .
“Mississippians cannot be persuaded
to accept integrated schools where the
larger proportion of students are Ne
groes . . . There’s no reason why the
white people cannot set up private
schools to take care of the educational
needs of those to whom a satisfactory
public school is not available.”
Frederick T. Gray, former attorney
general of Virginia, said: “Tuition
grants are important to the mainten
ance of a strong and growing school
system.”
Foresees Disuse
Dr. Henry Hill, president emeritus
of George Peabody College in Nash
ville, also appeared on the program and
said:
“The tuition movement, never widely
popular, continues to encounter serious
questions of constitutionality, and, in
my opinion, is destined ultimately to
fade away or lapse into innocuous
desuetude.”
Emmerich said that “we who oppose
tax-supported private schools are not
so unrealistic as to claim that the alter
native is free from problems.”
“But,” he added, “a program of tax-
supported private schools certainly is
not the answer to these problems and-
or these frustrations.
“We oppose tax-supported private
schools because they would compound
our educational problems; squander our
tax dollars; downgrade our public
schools; and damage the opportunities
for our boys and girls. Political leader
ship has carried Mississippi from one
costly negative failure to another.
★ ★ ★
U.S. District Judge Sidney C. Mize,
who ordered Mfississippi’s first desegre
gation at both the college and grade
school level, died in Gulfport on April
26 after more than a quarter of a cen
tury as a federal jurist.
★ ★ ★
The Mississippi Citizens’ Council an
nounced on April 15 that its “Council
School No. 1,” a private elementary
school in Jackson, had received full
accreditation from the state.
The school was organized after Jack-
son public schools were desegregated
under court orders last fall.
private school formed last year called
Thomas Sumter Academy, answered
next (on April 8).
Its lawyers said that no Negro had
applied to the academy, although no
regulation in its charter prohibits
Negro students.
Question Jurisdiction
They questioned the jurisdiction of
the federal court in the case, argued
Negroes are benefited by the tuition
grants law because they are relieved
of taxation needed for the construction
of additional school facilities in the
district, and insisted that the plaintiffs
had not exhausted their administrative
remedies.
Answers from Charleston Districts 2
and 20 and Orangeburg District 5, filed
April 9, and those of the State Board
of Education and the State Superin
tendent, filed the next day, followed
similar lines of argument.
In the meantime, parents in Claren
don County, still solidly segregated
although one of its three school dis
tricts was involved in the 1954 Supreme
Court decision, mapped plans to build
a private school as an escape valve
against desegregation expected in the
wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
They hope to erect a quarter-million-
dollar plant on a 20-acre site donated
for the purpose. More than 100 citizens
attending a meeting April 8 learned
that $60,000 had been subscribed.
Political Action
Russell Becomes
Senator; McNair
Is New Governor
South Carolina acquired a new gov
ernor and a new U.S. senator April 21,
following the death April 18 of the
state’s veteran Democratic Sen. Olin
D. Johnston.
Gov. Donald S. Russell, during whose
administration all school desegregation
in the state has occurred, all of it
peaceable, announced April 20 that he
would resign the next day. This ele
vated Lt. Gov. Robert E. McNair, 41,
to the governorship, and his first act
was to appoint Russell interim senator.
Sen. Russell, a former president of
the University of South Carolina, is
considered in many respects a moder
ate on racial issues. However, he pro
posed the tuition grants program, now
in effect and under court attack by
Negroes, to provide public funds for
parents to send their children to private
schools.
When the U.S. Office of Education
in March delayed approval of desegre
gation plans and assurances of compli
ance from South Carolina school dis
tricts, Russell urged that school dis
tricts seek a declaratory judgment in
federal courts. No such suits have yet
been filed; no plans had been approved
as May began.
McNair, an urbane, soft-spoken law
yer from rural Allendale County and
longtime chairman of the State House
of Representatives judiciary committee,
promised in his inaugural address to
carry out Russell’s programs. He said:
“As dramatic changes have occurred
in the social, economic and political
fabric of the nation and the state dur
ing the past decade, South Carolina has
met its challenges with logic, dignity
and honor.”
of Districts File Assurances
HEMPHILL