Newspaper Page Text
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)