National Reports
RICHARDS, FOUST & SHELDON, COURTNEY R.
National Reports Churches, Unions Lead Integration Fight By Foust Richards New Orleans Louisiana's battle over school integration has opened with a few preliminary skirmishes which indicate the...
...A few were known to have self-consciously assigned it to a closet...
...This was the demand that Negro troops...
...Recently, too, the Dads Club of Holy Name of Jesus School, in the city's most fashionable parish, did the same thing...
...The Packinghouse Workers, now on strike against Godchau Sugar Company, arc one notable example among the laborer-type organization, and the American Newspaper Guild is another example in the white-collar field...
...Most of the funds that started WGBH-TV on its way came from foundations started by Edward A. and Lincoln Filene of department-store fame...
...What has transpired since has raised the hopes of the most pessimistic and given satisfaction to the optimists...
...Newsdealers immediately began running out of a pocket book which could be used as a textbook...
...Members of the council include Lowell Institute, Boston College, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New England Conservatory of Music, Northeastern University and Tufts University...
...The directors of the museum feel that TV can do for them what FM radio did for symphony concerts...
...They sanctioned a few programs with an uplifting theme, and even though they sometimes forgot to turn the set off after these were over, television never took deep root among the sophisticated...
...Educational TV Invades New England By Courtney R. Sheldon Boston When television first tried to elbow its way into the home six years ago, some cultured New Englanders militantly barricaded their thresholds...
...In Baton Rouge...
...National Reports Churches, Unions Lead Integration Fight By Foust Richards New Orleans Louisiana's battle over school integration has opened with a few preliminary skirmishes which indicate the course this fight is likely to take...
...And, at both Christmas and Easter last year, at least one Negro was served communion at the altar of white Episcopal churches...
...This expectation has already led the Catholic Co-Operative Clubs (a PTA-type organization of parents whose children attend parochial schools) to adopt a resolution urging the continuation of segregation...
...In the CIO hall in New Orleans, there is no segregation at all, and delegates to a recent state convention were treated to the unusual spectacle of a completely mixed audience addressed by both Negroes and whites...
...Archbishop Rummel has announced that integration will not begin before 1956...
...WGBH-TV was formed and went on the air six months ago...
...But the WGBH-TV clientele apparently is satisfied that most of the defects will in time be corrected...
...This came in the form of a petition bearing 179 signatures, which was presented to the board by Rabbi Julius B. Feibelman...
...Archbishop Rummel already has banned segregation in the churches and has stood by his edict despite some rumblings of discontent, the latest being refusal of communicants at Jesuit Bend, a river town below here, to accept the sacrament from a Negro priest...
...TV viewers saw closeups of conductor Charles Munch and orchestra members that they could not hope to see if they were actually present themselves...
...There is some danger that the white heat of television lights may endanger some waxes and paints, but the museum expects eventually to find ways to televise all the treasures in the museum...
...A week later, a petition urging the continuation of segregation, with 14,000 signatures, was also presented to the board...
...The strongest forces fighting segregation in Louisiana are the labor unions and the churches...
...Reviewers agreed that seeing the performance on TV instead of only hearing it over FM enriched it for most persons...
...A Baton Rouge city official, who asked not to be quoted, told the wire services that the city would not act on this suggestion...
...Apparently, the concern of capital merchants and bar owners, who are not against accepting the soldiers' cash, was a strong factor in influencing this decision...
...Henry C. Bezou...
...Generally speaking, the Protestants have lagged behind the Catholics in official action to discourage segregation...
...Msgr...
...Whatever the Catholics do in their schools, therefore, will affect a great many Orleanians and may well, in v view of the Catholic influence here, tend to set a pattern for the rest...
...Nevertheless, the bishop of the Episcopal Church has addressed a fairly strong letter to the diocese urging the faithful to examine their consciences and admit past mistakes...
...On the problem of school integration, however, the Archbishop has moved more slowly...
...superintendent of the Anhdiocesau schools, recently told a group of Catholic laymen in forthright terms that "segregation a- we know it today is dead.' His remarks suggested that voluntary segreation might continue, but he made it clear that mandaltory segregation would be ended by the church schools in the not too remote Inline...
...In addition...
...The Archbishop promptly suspended masses at the church and said he would not permit them to resume until the congregation was prepared to accept whatever kind of priest he was able to send it...
...It drew about 800 persons, among them James M. McLemore, a candidate for Governor...
...Some weighty subjects have been handled a little too uninspiringly for the average person...
...The museum venture was preceded by a telecast of an entire Boston symphony orchestra concert...
...Some shows, too, have appeared amateurish by comparison with commercial stations...
...The Council recently held a second meeting, at which it heard Judge Tom B. Brady of Brookhaven, Mississippi denounce the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as a tool of Communism and praise segregation as divinely inspired...
...Midst these successes there have been continuing complaints that WGBH-TV is too highbrow...
...One customer had asked a waiter to tune in the program so he wouldn't miss his French lesson...
...Educational TV specializes in locally-produced shows...
...Much to their surprise and delight, the idea had wide appeal...
...Seventeen television outlets were established in different wings of the museum and Bostonians have been assured their museum is the first in the world to be equipped completely for TV...
...expected in Louisiana in large numbers soon to take part in Army maneuvers near Camp Polk, be barred from Baton Rouge...
...II est ici...
...The number of people in attendance cannot be reported because its sessions are secret, but one suggestion which emanated from the gathering has been accorded wide publicity...
...The latter was circulated by the New Orleans Citizens Council, a group organized to maintain segregation...
...In a Cambridge restaurant the diners one night began repeating in unison, "Il est la-bas...
...Among the churches, the Roman Catholics arc heading the pro-integration forces...
...It is recognized that the station probably never will truly compete with the overpowering extravaganzas of commercial stations...
...C'est moi...
...In New Orleans, more than half the children are enrolled in parochial schools, which are generally regarded as better than the public schools...
...The public, too, contributed generously, and it will have to continue to do so if WGBH-TV is to survive...
...Several unions, of course, have "no discrimination" clauses in their constitutions and in their contracts...
...Nor have suburban mothers been overly impressed with the programs offered as competition with the highly popular Howdy Doody and Walt Disney's daily show...
...New Orleans, for example, was the scene of the first attempt by responsible white persons to compel the school board at least to announce a plan for eventual integration...
...They are led by the able and courageous Archbishop Joseph Francis Hummel, who endeared himself to working people last year for his strong fight against the "right-to-work bill...
...WGBH-TV has gradually shaken down during a trial-and-error period and is beginning to attract larger and larger appreciative audiences...
...which some have interpreted to mean that it will begin soon thereafter...
...On November 1, the station capped this by beginning a series of weekly open houses at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts...
...They forbade it to themselves and to their children, except in small, selected doses...
...Engineers even made the necessary preparations for the anticipated color telecasting of the future...
...The station initiated a television course in French...
...Long before the last object is displayed on television, the museum hopes to be paid off by an increase in patrons...
...The intelligentsia were quite subdued about the whole matter when the first small voices were raised a few years ago in behalf of an educational TV station in Boston...
...Louisiana's capital, another pro-segregation group, calling itself Southern Gentlemen, also held a meeting recently...
...Fortunately for the station, it has the broad-base support of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council...
...Commercial stations find them largely unprofitable...
...An Alexandria cattleman, McLemore ran fourth in 1952 and is conceded to have a chance this time, with or without the support of the powerful Tunes-Picayune, which backed him last lime and was perhaps responsible in a measure for the healthy vole he received in this city...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 45
