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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