About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1965)
This Is Last Issue Of SSN; Magazine To Succeed It T ins is the final issue of Southern School News launched in September of 1954 as “a unique experiment in journal ism.” In the fall, Southern Educa tion Reporting Service will pub lish the first issue of Southern Education Report, a bimonthly magazine. Once a month for almost 11 years, Southern School News has reported facts about school desegregation in the 17 Southern and border states and the District of Columbia. Last October the newspaper editors and educators who comprise the SERS Board of Directors concluded that the agency had substan tially accomplished its original purpose. That was to provide a reliable, central source of information on developments in education arising from the United States Supreme Court decision declar ing compulsory racial segregation in the public schools to be unconstitutional. The board reasoned that passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended the ma jor period of transition from segregated to desegregated schools. Members agreed that the information SERS had been collecting and disseminating had become available from other sources. Rather than disband the organiza tion, the SERS directors decided to ask the Ford Foundation for a grant to support a new publication to report on programs for the education of the cul turally disadvantaged in the Southern and border states. The Ford Founda tion, which had made grants totaling approximately $1,800,000 to SERS since 1954, in March approved a new grant of $456,000 for two years, starting July 1, 1965. At a meeting in Atlanta on May 13, the SERS board adopted the name Southern Education Report for the new publication and made other plans for it. The board also elected officers and members. Chancellor Alexander Heard of Van derbilt University is the new chairman HEARD POPHAM of the board, succeeding C. A. Mc- Knight, editor of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. John N. Popham, managing editor of the Chattanooga (Term.) Times, replaces Heard as vice-chair man. Reed Sarratt of Nashville remains as executive director. The board elected two new members and re-elected four whose three-year terms expired. The new members are Supt. John W. Letson of the Atlanta schools and Ben F. Cameron Jr. of Se- wanee, Term., vice president of the Col lege Entrance Examination Board. Those re-elected are McKnight, Presi dent Felix C. Robb of George Peabody College for Teachers, President Ste phen J. Wright of Fisk University and John Seigenthaler, editor of the Nash ville Tennessean. The same basic policies that have governed Southern School News will apply to Southern Education Report, the board decided. That is, the report ing will be factual, objective and with out advocacy. The new publication will be directed to educational decision makers, both lay and professional, official and unof ficial. Its goal will be to afford a ready source of information about what com munities are doing to improve their schools. The price of an annual sub scription will be $2, the same as for Southern School News. Education of the culturally disadvan taged will be the principal, but not the only, subject that Southern Education Report will cover. New ideas that point to important breakthroughs in any phase of education will be reported. At least one article in each issue will sum marize major developments in school desegregation. Southern Education Report will use the journalistic techniques of Southern School News, but the approach will be different. The new magazine will be Index To Come An index to Volume 11 of South ern School News (July, 1964, through June, 1965) will be mailed to all subscribers. selective, rather than all-inclusive, in reporting developments in its field of interest. Each issue of Southern Education Report will contain comprehensive ar- (See THIS IS, Page 8) Factual SOUTH! Tfc AT VOL II, NO. 12 Title VI Compliance U.S. Office of Education—June 2, 1965 Totalt Agree To Comply Accepted Districts No. %* No. %* Alabama 118 112 95% 15 13% Arkansas 411 325 79% 204 50% Florida 67 67 100% 17 25% Georgia 195 195 99% 11 6% Louisiana 67 5 7% 1 1% Mississippi 163 66 40% 0 0% North Carolina 170 159 94% 9 5% South Carolina 111 96 86% 7 6% Tennessee 152 152 100% 20 13% Texas 1,420 1,220 86% 661 47% Virginia 137 155 99% 12 9% SOUTH 3,011 2,530 84% 957 32% Delaware 78 54 69% 16 21% Kentucky 205 196 96% 158 77% Maryland 24 24 100% 10 42% Missouri 678 678 100% 670 99% Oklahoma 1,092 1,055 97% 930 85% West Virginia 55 55 100% 48 87% BORDER 2,132 2,062 97% 1,832 86% REGION 5,143 4,592 89% 2,789 54% *Percentage of state’s total districts. fTotal number of districts varies from SERS figures in some states. THE REGION Negro Teachers Losing Jobs In Several States T he increased pace of Negro students transferring into desegregated schools for next fall is causing the dismissal of Negro school teachers in several South ern states. Reduced enrollments or complete ; losure of all-Negro schools for the ■965-66 school year already has cost ftme Negro teachers their jobs in Ar ansas, Florida, North Carolina, Texas *d Virginia, and reportedly threatens J lher teachers as additional desegrega- occurs. Public education officials civil rights leaders agreed that job In This Issue Monthly Reports Alabama 9 Arkansas 6 Florida .... 10 Georgia 2 Louisiana 12 Mississippi 15 ^orth Carolina 16 ^•uth Carolina 18 Tennessee 13 Texas . . 5 v h-gim a 4 Washington 1 t 'pecial Articles Last Issue 1 yie Region 1 u®4-65 Statistics 1 ® Facto Moves South 3 arr fing in Missouri 20 % "ext Go vernors’ Statement 2 losses would result from student de segregation, but they disagreed on the extent of the losses. Jack Greenberg, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Edu cational Fund, expressed concern on May 24 that a trend of “wholesale dis missal of Negro teachers was emerging throughout the South.” Greenberg said that at least 500 Negro teachers in North Carolina would lose their jobs this year because of desegregation. He reported receiving other protests of dismissals from Florida, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Estimates Questioned North Carolina’s school superinten dent, Dr. Charles Carroll, said it was too early to tell how many Negro teachers would be affected and ques tioned the estimate of 500 dismissals. A spokesman for the Negro teachers organization in Texas said the state had some problem of displaced teachers “but nothing of the proportion which Mr. Greenberg says exists in the South.” Greenberg, in a telegram to the U.S. Commissioner of Education, Francis Keppel, demanded immediate action under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “The U.S. Constitution and Title VI require integration of teach ing staff as well as of pupils,” Green berg’s telegram said. “Staff integration means hiring as well as dismissal with out regard to race.” A spokesman for the U.S. Depart ment of Health, Education and Welfare commented in Washington that there was no legal basis under the act for (See DESEGREGATION, Page 20) noi s - 090£ fcnurtL News 09oe . A. 1 Objective U,G Uoaoio Jo Vss 'i A I Nt) WASHING i^i x ■JUNE, 1965 JUfU DO 54 Per Cent Of Compliki ace Data Accepted By Federal Officials WASHINGTON EDERAL OFFICIALS have accept- ed Civil Rights Act compli ance data from 54 per cent of the local school districts in the South ern and border states, according to an official tabulation issued by the U.S. Office of Education on June 2. Acceptable assurances of nondiscrim ination have also been received from 16 of the region’s 17 state education agencies, the Office of Education re ported. Alabama’s State Board of Edu cation was listed as the sole exception. The federal agency’s hastily recruited Equal Educational Opportunities staff worked heavy overtime hours to review compliance plans by the June 30 dead line set by U.S. Commissioner of Edu cation Francis Keppel. Federal funds for the new fiscal year must be allocated by that date. Under regulations issued in January by the Department of Health, Educa tion and Welfare and policy guidelines announced by Keppel on April 29, local school districts have three options for complying with the civil rights law’s Title VI, which bars federal financial assistance to racially segregated activ ities: • They may file HEW Form 441, an assurance of nondiscrimination. • They may submit the final deseg regation order of a federal court. • They may offer a voluntary de segregation plan providing for full de segregation by the fall of 1967 and a “substantial good faith start”—normally desegregation of at least four grades— this September. Officials reported that 141 Southern school districts not yet in compliance with Title VI had certified that they would submit acceptable desegregation plans by June 15. Notice To Subscribers Subscriptions to Southern School News will be carried over to its suc cessor, Southern Education Report, and expiration dates will be adjusted according to the SER publication schedule. The subscription rate for South ern Education Report will be $2 a year—the same as that for Southern School News. Group rates also will be unchanged. (See masthead on Page 4.) Should an SSN subscriber not de sire to continue as a subscriber to SER, he may request a refund for the time remaining on his current subscription. Back-issues of SSN will continue available at 20 cents each, or at 15 ents each for 10 or more copies of any one issue. A Little Slack Would Be Appreciated ’ ‘ ■... - . // Jim Kennedy, Arkansas Democrat The June 2 tabulation showed that 4,592 of the 17-state region’s 5,143 school districts—89 per cent—have sub mitted some form of compliance infor mation to the Office of Education. Of the 4,592 districts offering data, 2,789 —61 per cent—have had their plans or assurances accepted as meeting the re quirements of Title VI. The percentage of districts submit ting compliance information ranged from seven in Louisiana to 100 in Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Tennes see and West Virginia. The number of accepted compliance plans ranged from none in Mississippi to 99 per cent in Missouri. Assurances of nondiscrimination (Form 441) were submitted by 3,273 school districts in the region, the Office of Education reported, and 2,631 of these were accepted. Voluntary Plans Voluntary desegregation plans came from 1,235 school districts, and 107 were accepted. Another 410 desegregation plans were described as “negotiable”— requiring relatively minor modifica tions to meet federal criteria—and 459 were rejected as unsatisfactory. The re maining 259 voluntary plans had not been reviewed by June 2. Eighty-four school districts sub mitted court desegregation orders to comply with Title VI, and 51 of these were listed as accepted. In the entire nation, some 22,500 school districts had submitted assur ances of nondiscrimination under Title VI, and about 21,000 had been ac cepted, officials reported. Top priority was given to the compliance data from Southern and border states. Outside the South, only Alaska’s state education agency had not filed accept able compliance information by June 2. Assurances of nondiscrimination had been received from 2,093 of the nation’s colleges and universities, including all of the major state institutions in the South. However, federal funds for 14 state colleges and public junior col leges in Alabama were imperiled by the State Board of Education’s refusal to execute an assurance of nondis crimination, since the state board is the (See VICE PRESIDENT, Page 3) Desegregation Increase Was Slight During Year P ublic schools in the South ern and border region ex perienced only a slight increase in desegregation during the 1964-65 school year. A special survey by Southern School News correspondents at the end of the school year found that 10.9 per cent of the Negro students in the re gion were in public classrooms with whites, compared to 10.8 per cent last fall. The region had 380,054 Negroes in desegregated schools when school closed, the May survey found. The number of desegregated districts reported in the Southern and border states increased from 1,282 last fall to 1,476 this spring. Both the increase in desegregated districts and the number of Negroes in biracial classes resulted primarily from the discovery of unre ported desegregation that had occurred in Texas last fall. Only a small portion of the statistical increases came from new desegregation occurring during the school year. Last November, Texas reported 291 desegregated districts with an esti mated 25,000 Negroes in schools with whites. The latest survey reports an estimated 450 desegregated districts for the state, with about 27,000 Negroes in desegregated schools. Total Enrollment The 17-state region has more than 11 million white students, and 3.5 mil lion Negroes. At least 6.7 million of the whites are in desegregated districts, as are 1.9 million of the Negro students. In the South, over half of the white students and slightly less than half of the Negro students are in desegregated districts. Of the 1.4 million Negroes in these desegregated districts ef the South, 66,135 actually attend schools with whites. The border area has a much higher percentage of desegregation than the South. Almost two million of its three million white students and all but (See BORDER, Page 11)
