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PAGE 6—JUNE, 1965—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS ARKANSAS 41 More School Districts Pledge Compliance; Plans Of 27 Approved LITTLE ROCK Dy the end of May, all but 84 -U Arkansas School districts, all of them biracial, had been heard from as to their intentions to com ply with the Civil Rights Act by desegregating. This was getting close to the pre diction that state Education Commis sioner A. W. Ford has been making that 350 to 375 of the 411 districts, or all but a few as he sometimes puts it, would comply with the law. It was thought likely also that many of those 84 either were working on compliance plans or had sent in compliance plans but had said nothing publicly about it. At least 27 biracial districts had re ceived approval from the U. S. Office of Education for their desegregation plans, and at least 10 had had their original plans rejected. It was obvious when the government finally announced its guidelines April 29 that not all of the Arkansas plans known up to that time would meet the requirements. Many Arkansas plans do not cover as many as four grades of desegregation in 1965 and several more School Districts Seeking to Comply With Rights Law Following are the latest Arkansas districts which have pledged their attempts to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, listed with their white and Negro enumerations (all persons aged five through 17): District White Negro De Queen 1,073 63 Plum Bayou 189 233 Marianna 1,369 2,548 Morrilton 2,066 313 Chicot County 104 40 Searcy 2,376 165 Prattsville 227 71 Blevins 257 309 Vanndale 496 179 Sherrill 166 433 Altheimer 302 991 Watson Chapel 1,819 1,511 Harrisburg 1,317 54 Weiner 622 42 Cherry Valley 310 48 Hughes 819 1,973 Palestine 314 283 Prescott 782 620 Kensett 423 114 Wabbaseka 180 664 Ozark 1,293 9 Brickeys 143 536 Moro 314 435 Haynes 71 318 Paris 1,368 15 Gurdon 771 510 Glenwood 369 4 Arkadelphia 1,725 894 Lepanto 1,065 109 Emerson 269 444 Marked Tree 1,411 467 Stuttgart 1,991 1,031 Bay 1,180 20 Okolona 123 169 Osceola 2,040 1,412 Brinkley 1,327 1,120 Horatio 402 27 Shawnee 490 679 Wilson 657 644 Luxora 598 428 Bryant 1,416 25 go beyond 1967 in covering all 12 grades. Arkansas schoolmen, who had been pressing hard for some message from the government as to what they had to do to comply, were a little surprised but not too dismayed at the stiffness of the requirements, according to a sur vey by the Arkansas Gazette. ‘Tough Plan’ Ford said: “It’s been my feeling all along that the districts would be in bet ter position to develop their own plans without demanding guidelines. How ever, there was mounting pressure and this is the answer. It is a tough plan. Many districts could have received ap- w— proval of plans not as tough as will now be nec- ess ary,” Ford said. ' vllSlll& Plans that have been rejected in Arkansas are those of Benton, Foreman, Pocahontas, Jonesboro, DeWitt, Arkansas City, Watson, Desha-Drew, Desha County and Desha Central. Plans that have been rejected in Arkansas are those of Benton, Fore man, Pocahontas, Jonesboro, DeWitt, Arkansas City, Watson, Desha-Drew, Desha County and Desha Central. Jonesboro’s was the first rejected. Dick Cole, president of the school board, announced May 3 that he had received the rejection letter from U. S. Commissioner Francis Keppel. It did not say in what way the plan was de ficient. The plan had been sent to Washington long before the guidelines were announced. Cole said the board would revise it in an effort to meet the new guidelines. Officials from the other districts, all in Arkansas County or Desha County, flew to Washington the week of May 11 to talk it over with federal officials. Benton, Foreman and Pocahontas re ceived their rejection letters from the government late in May. Rejected Plans Benton, which has 3,554 white and 254 Negro students, had planned to de segregate the top six grades and apply freedom of choice to the lower six grades. The elementary schools are lo cated so that there would have been no desegregation in the lower grades un less Negro children requested schools outside their present attendance areas. Foreman had published notice that it would use the freedom-of-choice system but without specifying grades. After the rejection, Supt. Ramy Gar land proposed that Negro high-school students be admitted to the white high school this fall but the school board declined. Instead, the board hired John Stroud Jr., a Texarkana lawyer, to help draw up a plan. Foreman has 532 white and 275 Negro students. The Pocahontas plan for full desegre gation of the upper four grades and freedom of choice in the lower eight was rejected. After that the board adopted a new plan of full desegrega tion of all 12 grades. The district has 1,766 white and 16 Negro students. It has been sending its high-school stu dents to school in Newport and has maintained a one-room one-teacher for the lower Negro grades. The board said the Negro teacher, Mrs. Eddie Mae McDonald, would be retained in the system. None of the letters of rejection said what was wrong with the rejected plans but a set of the U. S. guidelines was enclosed with each. All Provided Choice All of the rejected plans were free dom of choice. Some of them made no mention of faculty desegregation. The Warren Eagle-Democrat re ported a telephone interview with G. W. Foster Jr., consultant to the Office of Education, in which he mentioned another kind of barrier to getting a plan accepted. It was that some dis tricts in Southeast Arkansas with the h ghest proportion of Negro students, such as Gould, Dumas, Lake Village and Eudoia, have decided to desegre gate all 12 grades the first year, while other districts with lesser proportions of Negro students, such as Rison, War ren, Monti cello and Pine Bluff, want to spread desegregation over three or four years. Speedy compliance in the districts where the problem might be expected to be the most acute is going to make it “a hell of a lot harder” for slower plans to be accepted in other districts, Foster was quoted. And if any districts are waiting for a softening of federal policy, they might as well stop, Foster said, for “there won’t be any late sum mer sale prices.” Charges ‘Lousy Job’ Supt. Ned W. Moseley of Warren laid the blame on the government for plans being rejected. “They’ve done a lousy job of giving us advice and guidance,” he said, and let schoolmen flounder around with a minimum of information, until the guidelines were finally an nounced. The Crossett News Observer, the Benton Courier and the Blytheville Courier News all reported on their school boards after the guidelines came out and the general attitude seemed to be one of resignation. Crossett had not even got its first plan in the mail when the guidelines came out; that plan was scrapped and the board went to work on a new one. Board President William Wyatt of Blytheville said he felt that the Blythe ville plan would be rejected but the board decided to wait and see before starting on another one. Supt. A. D. Parsons of Benton said his board had decided to go ahead with pre-regis tration this spring under the plan sub mitted, instead of waiting to see whether it would be approved. When the Prescott plan was approved May 18, the Pine Bluff Commercial thought it could detect a softening of government policy already. That was because Prescott’s freedom of choice will apply to grades 1 through 6 this year, while the federal guidelines had said that at least grades 1, 7, 10 and 12 should be included in the first year. Keppel’s letter of approval to the Prescott School Board noted that the plan submitted did not specifically pro vide for freedom of choice for pupils in the desegregated grades every year, and said that this would have to be made a part of the plan started in 1986-67. Some Confusion Newport’s plan was approved May 19 amid some confusion. Gov. Orval E. Faubus had been in Washington the day before with other Southern gov ernors to talk to their congressional delegations about relaxing the Office of Education guidelines. On the morning of May 19 in Little Rock, Faubus told What They Say Arkansas Highlights Forty-one more Arkansas districts pledged to try to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act by desegregat ing their schools. This left 84 of the 411 districts not heard from. State Education Commissioner A. W. Ford still said that all but a few districts would comply, but so far only 27 plans had been approved for biracial districts and 10 had been rejected. At least 10 Negro teachers had lost or were about to lose their jobs be cause of the new wave of desegrega tion, and many were expected to be affected. Again reversing their course, the professional teacher organizations, Arkansas Education Association (mostly white) and Arkansas Teach ers (Negro) Association, decided to start work anew toward a merger. Some state school aid funds must be withheld from local school dis tricts that fail to comply with the rights act, the state was told by the U. S. Education Commissioner in an swer to a question. Plaintiffs in the Little Rock deseg regation case filed an attack on the new freedom-of-choice plan. Testimony was heard from the plaintiffs in the West Memphis de- his news conference he had heard in Washington that the Newport plan originally had been disapproved but now, with the implication that pres sure was responsible, had been ap proved. This turned out not to be ac curate. During the afternoon, the Newport school officials said that, after the guidelines came out, they had submit ted a revised plan without ever hear ing from the government on the first plan. The first plan called for free- dom-of-choice desegregation of the first three grades this year and three more each year to cover all 12. The revised plan covers the first four grades this year and will reach all 12 in three years instead of four. The Hope and Arkadelphia plans, both covering the first six grades this year, were approved May 18. Fayette ville, Texarkana and Gillett won ap proval May 13. Texarkana began de segregation voluntarily in September, 1964, and Fayetteville started volun tarily in 1954. By this year, Fayette ville had desegregated everything ex cept a single Negro elementary school with about 65 students; under the new policy all elementary-grade pupils will segregation suit opposing that board’s freedom-of-choice plan. The Eighth Circuit Appeals Court at St. Louis upheld the Fort Smith School District in its revised desegre gation plan. A Negro professor at Pine Bluff retained his seat on the Dollarway School Board by winning an elec tion contest filed by his defeated white opponent. A consent judgment filed in fed eral court bound the University of Arkansas not to discriminate in any of its programs. After agreeing to the North Little Rock desegregation plan expansion, Negro leaders changed their minds and registered a protest, renewing their demands for wider desegrega tion. Freedom of choice is so new that it has not been used for a single school semester in Arkansas but al ready is under widespread attack in Little Rock and West Memphis de segregation lawsuits and in statements of the Student Non-violent Co-ordi nating Committee, the North Little Rock Council on Human Relations, a Memphis official of the U. S. Com mission on Civil Rights and an offi cer of the Little Rock Council on Community Affairs. be assigned to schools according to at tendance areas without regard to race. 113 Approvals Eight biracial districts and 105 dis tricts with no racial differences re ceived approval of their compliance plans May 1. The eight were Benton - ville, Walker, Van Buren, Melbourne, Jefferson County, Gosnell, Alread and Havana. Bentonville, Van Buren, Gos nell and Havana had been desegregat ing previously. Charleston, Danville and Mansfield received approval May 24. All three have been desegregated previously. Commissioner Ford announced May 27 that all but eight of the 191 districts either all-white or all-Negro had been approved and he sent notice to Wash ington urging quick approval of those eight. Many of the districts were receiving freedom-of-choice preference requests during May under their new desegre gation plans, but only a few reports were available on how many Negro re quests were made. Government advis ors have suggested that this is a cru- (See 41 MORE, Page 7) Teachers’ Achievement Gaps Noted At the State PTA Congress May 3 at Little Rock, Forrest Rozzell, executive secretary of the Arkansas Education Association, said there is justice in the Negro demands for equal rights and access to opportunity and the methods they are using to achieve them. On the average, he said, there is a difference in the academic achievement of white and Negro children in Ar kansas and between the competence of white and Negro teachers. This comes not from racial inferiority or superior ity, he said, but from differences in educational opportunity, from the very segregated schools that now are to be eliminated. This first requires compensatory edu cation to help bring the Negro level up, he said, and then it requires the elimination of the circumstances that allow it to exist. Once the dual school system has been eliminated, Rozzell said, the kind of special protection that Negro teachers received from that system also will be gone. If they are then to get and keep jobs, they simply will have to bring themselves up to the standards of the white community, he said. ★ ★ ★ A stiff exchange over Little Rock’s new freedom-of-choice desegregation plan took place May 11 and 12 between Ozell Sutton, secretary of the Negro Council on Community Affairs (COCA) at Little Rock, and Everett Tucker, Jr., member of the Little Rock School Board. Sutton delivered his criticism in a speech to the board of directors of the Little Rock PTA Council and Tucker replied in a statement the next day. Sutton called the freedom-of-choice plan a scheme to frustrate desegrega tion. He said it permits school officials to “escape responsibility” to see that desegregation is carried out and places the responsibility instead on the Negro children and their parents. Sutton said the Negro community would get tired of that and that it now possessed resources to back up its protest. He said Negro voters are num erous enough now to be able to defeat any bond issue or tax proposal the school board might offer. He said the only acceptable alterna tive to freedom of choice would be non-overlapping attendance areas where all the students in the area around a school would attend that school, regardless of race, and where the faculty would be desegregated so that there would be no “white” or “Ne gro” schools. Cites Board Effort Tucker said he believed that most whites and most Negroes in Little Rock still prefer segregation but that the school board had made a real effort to accommodate those who prefer deseg regation. Tucker said that “no court has ever directed any school board to take affirmative action to integrate schools. The courts have merely said the boards shall not discriminate on account of race.” As for using attendance areas. Tucker said this was the surest way to bring about de facto segregation, and another objection was that it would lock sev eral hundred white children into schools that are now all-Negro schools. ★ ★ ★ Federal Appeals Court Judge Thur- good Marshall of New York spoke Ma> 16 in Little Rock. It was his first visit to Arkansas since the Little Rock schoo crisis of 1957-58 when, as NAA ^ counsel, he was representing the Nos* plaintiffs in the Little Rock case 1 federal court. He came back to speak at an racial dinner marking the 80th niversary of St. Philip’s EpiscoP“ Church, a pr dominantly church with f e er than 90 mem bers. Marshall a vestryman o Philip’s m York, the larg h Episcopal ch in the country , The *e3* speech the govf. has and , adn £d doing its his that ment share—through uuiiig iio auaic gjiu istrations of Eisenhower, Kenne y ^ Johnson, through the rulings ® ygb U. S. Supreme Court, and now tn ^ the acts of Congress—and n ° ^gga- main thing holding back T^^ddle tion is simply the apathy of the group of Americans, the ones 0 ^ gt j the the left nor the right. He church in that group. w «raS During the dinner, Marshall ^'^cate- sented an Arkansas Traveler an honorary document, signe Orval E. Faubus. Gc'