How Congress Can Speed Scholl Integration
AUERBACH, CARL A.
By Carl A. Auerbach How Congress Can Speed School Integration Much progress has been made in the border stales since the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling outlawing segregation in the public...
...It should be recalled that about 200,000 Negro pupils are attending integrated classes who were in segregated schools prior to the Supreme Court's decisions...
...In refusing to postpone the start of integration in Little Rock, a unanimous Supreme Court made clear "that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids states to use their governmental powers to bar children on racial grounds from attending schools where there is state participation through any arrangement, management, funds or property...
...Public school teachers in Norfolk have themselves set up "tutoring groups" in Sunday school buildings, but have agreed to stop this instruction at the end of the current semester...
...By contrast, the nine youths who committed acts of violence against colored persons during the riots in the Notting Hill section of London were each sentenced at the Old Bailey to imprisonment for four years...
...To this end, bills were introduced last year to make it a Federal offense to transport explosives across state lines with the intent to use them against churches, schools, commercial buildings or private dwellings...
...There are thousands of school districts," it argued, "that have not made a step toward desegregation...
...But it is very doubtful that any of these attempts will survive judicial scrutiny...
...A professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, he is now at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California...
...It can make contributions to private schools which practice racial discrimination subject to federal income tax, even when the schools are operated by churches...
...In any event, the opportunities for delaying the progress of public school integration seem to be limited only by the ingenuity of Southern legislators...
...Not until such orders were actually issued were the local school officials required to take the specified steps toward integration, lest they be held in contempt of court...
...Congress can do a number of things...
...and the District of Columbia, were being deprived of their Constitutional rights by being forced to attend segregated public schools...
...Fifteen Senators, Republicans and Democrats, joined Senator Douglas in sponsoring the bill...
...In the long run, too, the race problem in the South may be mitigated by the increasing migration of Negroes to the North, where they feel they have a better chance for a better life...
...Such Federal action will, of course, be attacked as an invasion of states' rights, but it will secure the rights of children to an education which the states have ignored...
...The teachers may also be relied upon to urge acceptance of integration in preference to destruction of the public school system...
...Some additional Federal legislation is needed for this purpose, too...
...In time, if the public schools remain closed, even the parents will come to regard an integrated public school as a lesser evil than neglecting their children's proper education...
...the Negro children of high school age living in Prince Edward County, Virginia...
...Of these, 9,659,090 were white and 2,970,344—23.5 per cent of the total student body—were Negro...
...But even if all of them ultimately share this fate, they will have succeeded in diverting NAACP resources to a defense of its existence and delaying the time when court integration orders have to be faced...
...Delaware...
...Is there anything the Federal Government can do directly to reopen public schools on an integrated basis...
...Sentiment in the student body of Little Rock's Hall High, to which only one Negro sought admission, was reported overwhelmingly in favor of reopening school on an integrated basis...
...It is difficult to know whether the present Administration would be willing to go this far...
...It is shameful to learn that the Government provided all the money to build the Little Rock Air Force Rase Elementary School on land adjoining the base to serve Air Force families living on the base, yet takes the position that it is powerless to prevent the County School Board from operating the school on a segregated basis...
...The crucial question is whether the churchmen will succeed in persuading the churchgoers to follow their Christian duty...
...Although several ministers called for the defeat of segregation in Little Rock, and were joined by 61 prominent Little Rock lawyers who accurately predicted that Governor Faubus's plan for "private" school operation would be declared illegal, the vole was 19.4707,561 against integration...
...Nevertheless, it would be well to speed this process...
...I have often wondered whether the situation today would be different if James F. Byrnes had felt the obligation to lead the fight inside the South for public school integration...
...Enlarging the overall area of effort to integrate the public schools will facilitate the success of individual efforts in particular localities...
...It is impossible to say to what extent, if at all, this was responsible for the 12,340-8,712 vote on November 18 against integration...
...Time and again, the press has reported that Attorney General William P. Rogers is hoping that the South will come to realize that compliance with the Supreme Court's anti-segregation decisions is inevitable...
...A suit filed by Governor J . Lindsay Almond J r . himself to test the validity of Virginia's "massive resistance" legislation under the State, as well as Federal, Constitution is also pending in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals...
...Vfrgil T. Blossom, Little Rock's ex-Superintendent of Schools, explained to the Court that determined opposition to integration developed only after Governor Marvin Griffin and newspaper publisher Roy V. Harris of Georgia, and the Reverend J . A. Lovell, who calls himself a Texas radio minister, agitated against integration in Little Rock during the summer of 1957...
...The school conducted by the Private School Corporation is not yet accredited...
...But, as Justice Frankfurter recently said in his concurring opinion in the Little Rock school case, it was expeoted that each locality would make "constructive use of time" to "achieve what an advanced civilization demands and the Constitution confirms...
...A similar suit brought by persons reputedly friendly to Governor Faubus is now pending in the Arkansas Supreme Court...
...The Little Rock School Board charged that these few were guided by adults...
...A special three-judge Federal court in Norfolk has been asked to pass upon the constitutionality of the public school closings in a suit brought by white pupils and their parents...
...it seems generally agreed that the institution it provides is inferior and its physical facilities are completely inadequate...
...The choices available to the South are progressively narrowed, and the judiciary is given the opportunity to remind state officials of their Constitutional duty and to educate the people to their responsibilities...
...And it is equally inconceivable that the Federal Government will simply stand by while recalcitrant Southern states proceed to destroy their public school systems...
...More and more, anti-integration extremism is becoming the springboard for political success in the South, as the defeat of Representative B?ooks Hays of Arkansas by Dr...
...What has happened since then...
...Certainly the task of the courts would be lightened if the Congress took active measures to discourage desegregation in American life...
...Reports from other Southern localities faced with integration orders invariably say that the students would accept them...
...Congress may deter states from closing their public schools in order to avoid integration...
...Also, by indicating through legislation precisely what it is prepared to do...
...Georgia's Governor Griffins, for example, has said that he will never permit Atlanta's public schools to be desegregated...
...The Douglas bill, for example, would have authorized the Government to assist localities in desegregating their public schools by making available to them trained specialists in race relations...
...This seems to be the typical pattern...
...That it probably had some effect is evidenced by the report that the citizens of Front Royal were ready to ask Governor Almond to permit the school there to be reopened on an integrated basis, until they learned that they would then be cut off from State aid...
...and Louisville, Kentucky...
...The lower Federal courts have not erected barriers to integration...
...INTEGRATED SCHOOL: A START HAS BEEN MADE All such approaches are useful...
...But it is a mistake to suppose that Federal intervention can do nothing to encourage a change of heart, or that it will only harden hearts against integration...
...No amount of Federal intervention, it may be granted, will be as effective as a change of heart in the people of the South...
...The Protestant Episcopal Church and the United Presbyterian Church have taken essentially the same public stand, the latter going so far as to endorse the use of "troops and tanks" if necessary to enforce school integration...
...Italics supplied...
...If this fails, they hope to mass so much popular opposition to integration that either the Supreme Court will be forced to retreat or the public school system can be destroyed...
...But Federal court orders to reopen the closed public schools will raise very grave questions of enforcement...
...But the inconceivable has happened...
...It is ironic that many Southern states, which are fighting the battle against the Supreme Court in the name of states' rights, have refused to countenance local autonomy on the public school integration question...
...BEHIND YOUTHFUL TROUBLEMAKERS: ADULT INSTIGATORS The Southern judiciary will shortly be given an opportunity to play a crucial role in the whole picture...
...The clergy in the South is beginning to assume moral leadership in the fight to preserve the public school system by accepting its gradual integration...
...Even if it is agreed that nothing in the Constitution requires a state to maintain a public school system, it does not follow that a state may, with impunity, respond to a Federal court order to admit Negroes into particular schools by abolishing the public school system...
...It can provide that such educational institutions shall not themselves be entitled to exemptions from Federal taxes...
...When national AFL-CIO headquarters objected, they voted to make individual voluntary contributions of $1 a week...
...The court thought that much of the turmoil and strife within the school would have been eliminated if "more rigid and strict disciplinary methods had been adopted and pursued" in dealing with the ring leaders...
...In this, with few exceptions, he is supported by the South's press...
...Everyone else may ignore the particular decision without incurring any official sanction...
...More drastic Federal action, however, is necessary to get at the core of the problem...
...Accordingly, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the attempt to lease the four high schools closed by Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus to the Little Rock Private School Corporation...
...Most drastic measures are necessary to deter the bombings which have sought to terrorize communities in the South that are prepared to accept gradual integration of their public schools...
...If these efforts fail, nine Southern states have laws to close the public schools...
...It may be that time consumed in litigation attacking successive schemes of evasion is not entirely wasted...
...The Senator predicted that this would cause many Southern localities to reject Federal aid altogether and thus halt the great progress which has been made "in providing decent housing for minority groups, notably for Negroes in the South...
...Virginia's Congress of Parents and Teachers defeated by a tie vote (557-557) a resolution supporting "massive resistance" and instead resolved, 515-513, to give each locality the option to operate integrated public schools...
...The real choice before it, he has observed, is between gradually integrated public schools and no public schools at all and it "seems inconceivable that a state or a community would rather close its public schools than comply with the decisions of the Supreme Court...
...Delay, however, will be tolerated more sympathetically by the nation as a whole only when the South accepts the policy of desegregation and uses time to carry out this policy in a sensible and humane fashion...
...As of this writing, the District Court has not issued its decree...
...It is unlikely, therefore, that the courts will permit any state to lease its public school facilities for "private" operation without requiring the state to ensure that its lessee operates the schools on a non-discriminatory basis...
...It was encouraging, therefore, to see it hold such a public investigation in Montgomery, Alabama...
...Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur S. Flemming announced that under existing law the Federal Government would have to cut off the funds that a school, closed to avoid an integration order, would otherwise receive under this program...
...Such grants will be held to constitute "state action" effecting racial discrimination, and the institutions receiving them will be held to be exercising the governmental function of providing education for the state's children and therefore required to abandon discriminatory practices...
...While a number of rural clergymen continue to denounce integration as contrary to what they claim is the Bible's approval of segregation, recent polls show that the overwhelming majority of ministers in the South favor compliance with the Supreme Court's decisions...
...Although churches of all denominations in Little Rock opened their doors for the private instruction of the locked-out white high-school students, the churches in Virginia have generally refused to allow the use of their facilities for this purpose...
...The Court directed that it take place "with all deliberate speed," and left it to the Federal district courts and local authorities to implement this direction in the light of local conditions...
...In the ordinary situation, individuals will be guided by a court decision, even if they were not involved in the case that gave rise to it...
...PUBLIC EDUCATION IS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT' of some states, like Virginia's, provide that state aid shall be cut off from the local school districts voting for integration...
...At the end of September 1958, 12,629,434 children enrolled in public schools in the 17 Southern and border states and the District of Columbia...
...Companion bills were introduced in the House by a number of Representatives...
...This would provide that a two-thirds vote of the Senators present and voting is sufficient to close debate after two days, but only a majority of the full Senate membership (50, counting Alaska's two Senators) is necessary after 15 days...
...They seem to have been given the dubious advice that no violation of the integration order covering Norfolk will occur until a Negro pupil requests and is denied admission to a tutoring group and the group continues to operate...
...It is safe to predict that the courts will hold that a state which maintains public schools in some localities but not in others is depriving the displaced children, both Negro and white, of equal protection of the laws...
...on the contrary, they have, on the whole, been courageously firm yet understanding in effectuating the Supreme Court mandate...
...Many of the laws have already been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and other Federal courts...
...Almost five years ago, the Supreme Court decided that a state which requires Negro children to attend segregated public schools deprives them of the equal protection of the laws to which they are entitled, by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution...
...The elimination of discriminatory practices is a first step toward the elimination of prejudice against the Negro as a Negro...
...But even if private schools are in no way supported by a state which has closed the public schools in a locality faced with an integration order, the state's difficulties are by no means at an end...
...During the second session, Senator Douglas introduced a bill, S. 3257, which would have authorized the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to prepare desegregation plans for localities which the Secretary was not able to persuade to proceed on their own motion...
...Here Carl A. Auerbach suggests some steps that Congress can take to hasten integration...
...The race issue is manipulated to make the Southern electorate forget all other issues...
...Should Federal legislation be passed to reopen the public schools...
...The Attorney General also has stated that the Justice Department will assist any school board in bringing an injunction action to restrain any private persons from interfering with the board's duty to comply with a court decree ordering integration...
...The Douglas bill contained a provision authorizing the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to appoint local, state, regional and national advisory councils to assist localities in complying with school desegregation orders...
...So, for example, the Supreme Court in 1957 held that it was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment for the Board of Directors of City Trusts of the City of Philadelphia, an agency of ARKANSAS STUDENTS: N O PLANS TO PROSECUTE RIOTERS the State of Pennsylvania, to operate Girard College as trustee under the will of Stephen Girard and to exclude Negroes from admission, even though the will provided that the college was to admit only "poor white male orphans...
...Secretary Flemming has said that the perpetuation of public education L'is a state and local matter...
...Another category of state "massive resistance' laws seeks to evade integration by some form of "private" school operation...
...It becomes difficult to prove, in a particular case, that school officials whorefuse to admit a Negro child to a white school are not applying these criteria in good faith, but are...
...In its petition for a postponement of integration in Little Rock, the School Board complained that the Federal law enforcement agencies had not prosecuted even one of those identified as being in the mob which kept the Negro children from entering Central High after Governor Fauhus obeyed the Court's order to withdraw the National Guard...
...Governor Leroy Collins of Florida has proposed setting up a commission in every state (to be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Governor) to work out a program and timetable for ending school segregation...
...But the slates in the deep South, and even some border communities, have stubbornly resisted complying with the Court's decision...
...Should legislation be passed to extend Federal intervention into other civil rights areas...
...Should Federal legislation be passed to minimize the delay involved in litigating the various schemes to evade desegregation...
...or whose parents work on Federal installations but live in the local community...
...It is difficult, at the moment, to be optimistic about the chances for progress in public school integration in the South...
...To accomplish the latter purpose, the American Jewish Congress has suggested that the President convene a national conference of leaders to rally the American people against bigotry and lawlessness...
...The line of would-be martyrs to the cause of segregation may be distressingly long...
...By Carl A. Auerbach How Congress Can Speed School Integration Much progress has been made in the border stales since the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling outlawing segregation in the public schools...
...And the President answered the request for Federal aid to rebuild the bombed-out Clinton...
...Taking the South as a whole, the progress toward public school integration has been slow...
...However, if the local officials refused to put the plan into effect, the bill would have authorized the Attorney General, on behalf of the United States, to resort to the Federal courts to enforce compliance with the approved plan—or any substitute plan which promised to make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance with the Brown decisions...
...Serious question remains, however, whether these Federal sanctions will succeed in their objective...
...But in the main, Southern officialdom has flouted its Constitutional obligation actively to support Supreme Court decisions and thereby, as Justice Frankfurter warned, has threatened "the maintenance of our Federal system as we have known and cherished it for one hundred and seventy years...
...and the Negro children of elementary and high school age living in Clarendon County, South Carolina...
...The Fourteenth Amendment, it should be recalled, prohibits only a state, not private individuals, from denying "to any person within its jurisdiction theequal protection of the laws...
...In Norfolk, 60 Protestant ministers joined in urging the reopening of schools on an integrated basis, as did a group of 13 ministers in Front Royal...
...The Virginia Education Association, composed of teachers and principals, resolved to ask Governor Almond to reconvene the Legislature in order to pass legislation permitting the public schools to be reopened on an integrated basis...
...But it is intimately tied up with the problem of school segregation, because segregated housing produces schools which are segregated in fact, even in Northern states which would not tolerate any legal requirement of segregation...
...In some cases, local school boards honored their oath and took steps to integrate the public schools under their jurisdiction without waiting for a court order requiring them to do so...
...The State, presumably, would no longer be effecting the discrimination...
...Some are in the high school run with private facilities by the Little Rock Private School Corporation, others are in neighboring public high schools, and still others are in schools operated by the Protestant and Catholic churches in Little Rock and in University of Arkansas correspondence courses...
...None are in the deep South where about 60 per cent of the Negro children of school age live...
...It is conceivable, at the moment, that some Southern states may prefer to destroy their public school systems rather than permit their gradual integration...
...Only some 200,000 Negro children, however, actually attend integrated classes and most of these children live in Washington, D. C. ; Baltimore, Maryland...
...But the fundamental changes which racial integration in the public schools and other public facilities of the South entails cannot be effected rapidly...
...Little Rock, Norfolk and Arlington are all "Federallyimpacted" areas receiving this type of aid...
...To take advantage of this Constitutional position, attempts have been made in both Arkansas and Virginia to operate "private" schools...
...Our legal system affords great possibilities for such delaying tactics...
...In addition, it has produced an avalanche of state laws and investigations against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People...
...There appears to be a better chance for success in the next Congress of a proposal like that embodied in the Douglas bill...
...Consistent with this objective, Congress should also pass a Federal fair-employment practices act, modeled after the state laws which have proved to be successful in achieving their aims with a minimum of official coercion...
...Congress can be of great assistance in encouraging localities to accept integration in order to preserve their public schools by automatically making available to any locality willing to make a start toward the elimination of segregation the amount of money which would, as a consequence, be withheld by the state...
...And on November 13, the Commission on Civil Rights announced that it would call a national conference to be held in Nashville, Tennessee in February to study "the problems involved in the transition from segregated to non-segregated public schools...
...Unfortunately, all the efforts of the Southern politician are strained to sharpen the dilemma...
...The attempt at such enforcement, moreover, might be most unwise...
...and Jacob K. Javits (R.-N.Y...
...The important thing is to strive for the ideal of racial equality on a broad front and not let the fact that we still fall far short of its full attainment distract us from patient efforts to remove obstacles in its path...
...But the Administration will have occasion to reconsider its position...
...The decision of a court binds only the particular parties involved in the case, in the sense that if these parties do not behave in accordance with the decision, sanctions (fine, imprisonment, seizure of property) will be imposed upon them...
...In November, the Council on Education of the 14,000-member Arkansas Education Association voted to lobby for the preservation of the public schools...
...In Virginia, about 13,000 white children have been put out of schools in Front Royal, Warren County, Charlottesville and Norfolk in order to keep out 51 Negro children...
...The children are another matter...
...Louis and Kansas City, Missouri...
...This is a question on which even Northern liberals favoring integration have differed...
...It must also be recognized that the courts may hold that so long as segregated private schools are not supported by the state "through any arrangement, management, funds, or property," the closing of public schools on a state-wide basis cannot be reached by the Federal power...
...In Norfolk the margin was not so wide, but it was still against integration...
...The School Board also charged that the F B I knew those who were egging on the white students to commit acts of violence and vandalism inside Central High to terrorize the Negro pupils attending the school, yet the Attorney General publicly announced that he had no plans to prosecute the agitators...
...in fact,, influenced solely by the race of the applicant...
...The first session of the Eighty-Fifth Congress defeated an attempt to write into the Civil Rights Act of 1957 authority for the Federal Government to bring injunction actions to enforce civil rights generally...
...Instead of burdening the courts with trying to force the reopening of schools by use of their contempt powers, Congress should do something directly toward this I end...
...Welcome, too, is the Attorney General's investigation to determine whether the three Negro ministers from Montgomery, Alabama, who were arrested while visiting the leader of the Negro campaign against segregated buses in Birmingham, were deprived of their civil rights...
...The Court warned that the Constitutional rights of children "can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers, nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation whether attempted 'ingeniously or ingenuously...
...WHEN THE Eighly-Sixth Congress opens in January, another effort will be made to limit, if not abolish, the filibuster in the Senate...
...This time, its liberal composition is expected to enable the Senate to adopt a rule like that offered in 1957 by Senators Paul H. Douglas (D.-IU...
...But Federal District Judge John Paul has ordered that neither the public school teachers in Warren County and Charlottesville nor any public funds may be used for such private instruction...
...This strategy also operates to encourage resistance to integration efforts being made elsewhere...
...This can be done only by legislation authorizing the Federal Government to institute suits to compel local school officials to implement the Supreme Court's decisions...
...With delay, many Southern political leaders hope to convince the people in the South that somehow public school integration can he legally avoided...
...Dale Alford, the rabid segregationist on the Little Rock School Board, once more demonstrated...
...In Atlanta, 307 clergymen, representing 17 Protestant and Jewish denominations, reaffirmed the stand which 80 of their number took in 1957 in favor of adherence to the Supreme Court decision...
...The recent ballot in Norfolk explained that if the closed schools were returned to local control and reopened on an integrated basis, all State funds would automatically be withdrawn, with the result that parents of children attending Norfolk schools would be charged "substantial" tuition for each child...
...The people, reported Blossom, began to say: "We don't have to do this when the Governor of Georgia says nobody else has to do i t ." Even the Little Rock School Board, which tried to steer a sensible course for so long, was driven to make a similar argument in its unsuccessful petition to the Supreme Court for a two-and-a-half-year postponement of the start of integration...
...Their lawyers will advise them not to waste time, money and energy in litigating a question the courts have already decided and about which they are not likely to change their minds...
...This migration may also adversely affect the South's industrial development, and may itself exert pressure for Southern acceptance of gradual integration...
...Consideration, therefore, should be given to the suggestion of Senator Clifford Case (R.-N.J...
...Congress should, in such case, provide directly for the education of the "Federal" children and, to do so adequately, should open the schools for them to all the children of the Federally-impacted district on an integrated basis...
...There is merit to this objection...
...New Castle County...
...Even then, Congress can do much to discourage racially segregated private school instruction...
...In the meantime, of the approximately 3,000 white and 700 Negro pupils locked out of high school by the closings in Little Rock (to keep 12 Negroes out of Central High and one out of Hall High), about 2,300 white and 200 Negro students are now receiving segregated instruction elsewhere...
...It urges the Government to end racial segregation in all housing programs receiving Federal aid, including urban renewal programs, public apartment house projects and private housing carrying mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration or VeterFAUBUS: SCHOOL-CLOSING VS...
...The children of Negro base personnel must attend another segregated school, also built with Federal money, 8 miles away...
...The Attorney General has brought his first suit under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to stop alleged violations of Negro voting rights in Terrell County, Georgia...
...Will additional Federal legislation weaken or stiffen Southern resistance to integration...
...Tennessee, high school by informing his press conference on October 15 that if "the Federal Government undertook, every time anything went wrong, from a water faucet on up, to put its funds down there, then we would be doing the kind of thing that all of us condemn, that is, getting the Federal Government's nose into places that it shouldn't he...
...Members of Local 371, Textile Workers Union of America, at the American Viscose Corporation in Front Royal (I do not know whether it is an integrated l o c a l ) , voted 235-49 to assess themselves $1 a week to support a segregated private school for the white children locked out of the Front Royal high school...
...The advisability of having the Government open the public schools must be seriously considered...
...Pursuant to an Arkansas statute authorizing the withholding of state funds from closed public schools and allocation of the money to the displaced students, to be paid directly to whatever accredited schools accept them, the Arkansas Education Department has begun to mail checks to the accredited institutions, including the church schools...
...The Court of Appeals ordered the Little Rock School Board to take positive steps to integrate the city's public schools, but left it to the Federal District Court to determine what they should be...
...What is more, Federally-supported segregated housing raises serious questions of constitutionality which the courts are called upon to decide...
...There were 3,716 school districts in this region in the fall of 1958...
...Thus it would be the height of irony if the Little Rock School District, having made the start in good faith, were denied this postponement at the expense of the entire educational program at the high school level.' Segregationists also are led to think that if they can prevent individual lawsuits from being brought on behalf of Negro children in any locality, the slow march toward integration can be halted before it begins...
...Of these, about 9,600 are attending emergency "private" schools or tutoring groups in basement rooms, youth centers and churches...
...Governor Faubus was publicly supported by 79 pastors in the Little Rock area, representing mainly Baptist churches...
...Is the act of closing the public schools itself in contempt of a court order requiring state officials to proceed with integration...
...It has also been charged that the Civil Rights Commission has not energetically investigated the complaints made to it about the denial of voting rights in the South...
...Furthermore, the assumption made about the Constitution's requirements may be subject to challenge...
...But the pro-segregationists find strong support in the Baptist Church, the largest in the South...
...that Congress try to improve court procedures for handling school desegregation cases and speeding appeals...
...It is important, too, that there be more vigilant enforcement of the existing statutes safeguarding civil rights...
...Virginia's law, specifying five criteria—geographical location, school overcrowding, scholastic ability, phychological problems and adaptability to the new integration situation—has been upheld as applied to refuse 26 out of 30 applications from Negro pupils for transfer to "white'* schools in Arlington County, Virginia...
...Though it cannot be said that they all have been accepted as equals by the white children in their classes, a start in this direction at least has been made...
...It is true that Article VI of the Constitution declares the Constitution to be "the supreme law of the land" and requires Senators and Representatives, members of state legislatures, and all state executive and judicial officers to take an oath to support it...
...Euphemistically described by Arkansas's Attorney General as "the Southern plan for peace," this is designed to cripple NAACP's effectiveness in the legal fight against segregation...
...The Supreme Court has refused to outlaw an Alabama: statute, which requires school officials to use 11 criteria other than race for pupil placement, in the absence of proof that it is being applied to maintain racial segregation...
...Here, too, increased Federal aid for urban redevelopment, public housing, and medical and welfare services, and the reduction of pockets of unemployment, may be a necessary concomitant of any program to reduce racial tensions...
...But it is doubtful whether any kind of moral crusade led by forces outside the South will help matters very much at this juncture...
...Taking such action, in my opinion, would be an appropriate exercise of Congress's Constitutional power to spend to provide for the general welfare of the United States, and to enforce '*by appropriate legislation" the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment...
...But if delay is the sole objective of litigation, it cannot be avoided...
...It may be that LITTLE ROCK, 1957: OPPOSITION FOLLOWED A G I T A T I ON flagrant refusal to start desegregation of the public schools constitutes a violation of this law, even in the absence of a specific court order directing integration...
...The bill proposed an administrative procedure carefully designed to assure that the people in each locality affected would be fully heard before the plan was finally approved by the Secretary...
...The Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church unanimously reaffirmed its support of the anti-segregation decisions...
...Aware, as they are, that the conflict over public school desegregation will jeopardize the South's chances for industrial growth, business leaders may also be expected to urge acceptance of integration as an alternative to destruction of the education system...
...Such funds, for example, could be used for remedial instruction for those Negro and white students found to be below the median of academic achievement for their grades...
...The Government, therefore, must demonstrate a firm determination to secure the Constitutional rights of the Negro citizen, but at the same time promote all avenues to Southern reconciliation with the program of gradual public school integration...
...This might do much to allay the criticism that an integrated class drags down the level of achievement of the class as a whole...
...The Douglas hill also enlarges the participation of the Attorney General in civil rights litigation in other respects...
...Rejecting this suggestion, Albert M. Cole, Administrator of the Housing Finance Agency, stated flatly that the Government had no responsibility to promote the ending of racial discrimination in residential accommodations...
...In their repose these districts are conducting educational programs without harassment of any sort, albeit Constitutional rights declared by the Brown decisions are being violated...
...But even this alternative, under the circumstances, raises many legal questions which have not yet been answered...
...To refuse to move until a lawsuit is brought to vindicate the rights of the Negro children in a particular bi-racial school district and culminates, after all appeals are exhausted, in an order to the local school board to proceed with integration, is the principal weapon of delay being used in the South...
...Furthermore, the Supreme Court's supplementary decision in 1955 ordered the Federal courts to issue "such orders and decrees as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases...
...The various pupil placement laws are an example...
...Even where local referenda on the question are allowed, the laws NEGRO CHILDREN IN SEGREGATED SCHOOL YARD: 'FREE...
...Even if the Douglas bill should pass, the possibilities of delay will still be many...
...If the Southern state courts, as they are duty bound to do, strongly affirm that the Constitution expounded by the Supreme Court is the supreme law of the land and hold the state laws flouting this supreme law to be unconstitutional, they may be instrumental in creating the "thaw" in attitudes which is so greatly needed to resolve the present conflict...
...To avoid the impact of such a ruling, the public school system would have to be abandoned on a state-wide basis...
...Furthermore, though Federally financed, such public schools need not be operated by the Government...
...And the church is beginning to speak up...
...Two million white and 400,000 Negro children live in integrated districts...
...Virginia's Attorney General boasted that "we haven't begun to exhaust all our legal resources," and Virginia's Governor announced that he would appoint a commission to study a new anti-integration 'approach if the "massive resistance" laws were declared illegal...
...The poor whites in rural areas, however, who make up the segregationist hard core, seem beyond the reach of the unions...
...The Catholic Bishop of Atlanta called their statement a "splendid and most timely document...
...Their administration can be turned over to a school board elected by the parents who send their children to these schools...
...Only 796 of the bi-racial districts are desegregated, and all but 15 of these are in the border states or the District of Columbia...
...This does not exclude the possibility, however, that in time it may prove wise for Congress to reduce proportionately the amounts of Federal aid which go to the school-closing states to support programs having the lowest priority in terms of need— e.g., the highway program—in order to give these states an additional incentive to maintain their own public schools on an integrated basis...
...The votes in the special elections in Little Rock and Norfolk are not encouraging in this respect...
...In a moving statement, the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States called for action, on moral grounds, to eradicate racial segregation...
...Of course, every court decision has significance as a precedent and it is certain that the Supreme Court will define the Constitutional rights of Negro school children everywhere in the same way...
...In refusing to postpone integration in Little Rock, the Circuit Court of Appeals found that only a comparatively few white students were ring leaders in the troublemaking in Central High...
...Congress can also do much to help make a success of integration in localities which practice it...
...It also would have provided funds for improved physical facilities, public information programs, in-service training of teachers and administrative personnel dealing with the new situation, additional teachers, and other educational measures required by the exigencies of the integration effort...
...So far, no private schools have been organized for the 500 displaced Negro pupils who have been unable to transfer to other schools...
...This encourages the use of economic and physical coercion to prevent Negro parents from instituting lawsuits, and lawyers from taking the cases of courageous parents...
...Such Federal assistance is provided for in the Douglas bill...
...It is possible, too, that the Supreme Court may come to the position that state laws granting such institutions state tax exemptions violate the Fourteenth Amendment...
...But by assuming this burden, people outside the South can demonstrate much more effectively than by exhortation that they stand with the people of the South who are determined to find their way out of an impasse which adversely affects the welfare of the nation as a whole...
...But if the extremist Southern politician must be fought in order to secure compliance with the law of the land, there are some signs that the resources for battle may be found inside the South...
...Thanks to Southern School News, one answer can be stated statistically...
...Instead, time has been used to devise plans to thwart and delay integration and weaken the authority of the Supreme Court...
...Right now, the Government makes payments to local school districts to help pay the cost of educating children who live on Federal installations (military bases, Atomic Energy Commission plants, Government shipyards, etc...
...If nothing can be done about this situation under existing law, Congress should change the law, authorizing Federal condemnation and operation of such a school, if necessary...
...In any case, resort to litigation is necessary and litigation, inevitably, means some delay, which is rarely put to constructive use...
...A two-year study financed by the Fund for the Republic has concluded that Southern workers are moving "gradually, but steadily, toward an effectively integrated labor movement...
...As part of their program of "massive resistance," most Southern states have enacted a series of laws which can be resorted to one by one in a given progression to delay, if not evade, integration...
...With the filibuster out of the way, the large Democratic majority in the new Congress will assume sole responsibility for passage or defeat of additional civil rights legislation...
...Thus it seems that a state will not circumvent the Supreme Court's pronouncement against all evasive schemes by making tuition grants either directly to private segregated schools on behalf of the displaced pupils or directly to the parents of the pupils, Negro and white alike...
...Readers will recall that his April 29, 1957 article, "Jury Trials and Civil Rights: A New Proposal," supplied the formula for the compromise that led to passage of the Civil-Rights Act by the Eighty-Fifth Congress...
...But since the penalties provided by this law (fine and imprisonment) can be imposed only after a jury trial, it is not likely that the Federal authorities would have much success enforcing it against recalcitrant local and state officials...
...The Supreme Court could hold that the presuppositions of our democracy require it to take the position that the right to a free, public education is so fundamental a human right that when a state denies this to its children, it deprives them of their "liberty" without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment...
...The Commission is also conducting investigations of the alleged infringement of Negro voting rights in Mississippi and Florida...
...The president of Central High's student body stated that he believed most of the white students would have returned to school this fall with the 12 Negro pupils who had applied for admission...
...Congress should authorize the Attorney General, as would the Douglas bill, to -bring such injunction actions in the name of the United States...
...James McBride Dafobs, author of The Southern Heritage and president of the Southern Regional Council, commented in a recent television interview that the Southern conscience begins to work when enough pressure is put around it...
...But when the Pennsylvania Orphan's Court removed the City Board as trustee and ordered the appointment of a hoard of private trustees to carry out the will, the Supreme Court refused to interfere...
...Everyone must share the Attorney General's hope and appreciate the extremely difficult task which is his...
...More may be done by the Federal Government in particular areas, without raising any debatable legal questions or provoking even more anguished cries of Federal intervention...
...Senator John Sparkman of Alahama, the Democratic party's spokesman on housing questions, told newsmen that the entire Federal housing program would be jeopardized if the integration issue were injected into it...
...Of course, the Supreme Court decisions in the Broiort cases of 1954 and 1955 did not require immediate integration everywhere...
...Should Federal legislation be passed to enlarge the area of public school desegregation...
...At the same time, it makes it imperative for Northern communities to solve the serious problems which this migration is causing them...
...I t is of doubtful wisdom to impose such a disproportionate burden in the civil-rights field upon the judiciary alone...
...Given a "thaw" in general Southern attitudes toward the acceptance of gradual public school integration, organized labor can be an additional force for acceptance...
...2,896 had Negro residents in them...
...More than ever before, the Southern states must find the forces for reconciliation within their own borders...
...Serious consideration must also be given to the recommendations of the Commission on Race and Housing, headed by Earl B. Schwulst, president of the Bowery Savings Bank of New York, and sponsored by the Fund for the Republic...
...It is probably like most consciences in this respect...
...There is not much reason to find comfort in adult attitudes and behavior in the South...
...Just as broadening the area of effort to integrate the public schools will enhance its chances for success, so will broadening the area of effort to secure civil rights generally...
...But what kind of legislation, if any, will offer a way out of the complicated crisis caused by the effort to desegregate the public schools...
...It is difficult to know precisely what role organized labor in the South will play...
...It is also true that existing civil-rights legislation makes it a crime willfully to deprive any person of his Constitutional rights under color of state law...
...In this strictly legal sense, the 1954 Brown cases merely declared that the Negro children of elementary school age living in Topeka, Kansas...
...INTEGRATION ans Administration...
...But this does not necessarily mean that a Southern white worker who accepts an integrated local union will also accept an integrated local public school...
...Virginia and Arkansas may soon be faced with this choice...
...Many of them already have been held unconstitutional as patent devices to evade integration, but others have been upheld...
...The Norfolk Teachers' Association described Virginia's "massive resistance" laws as a "secession of the mind," and voted 5-1 to ask the Governor to reopen the Norfolk schools under the School Board's plan admitting 17 Negro pupils...
...It may be protested that the use of Federal funds to help support and even maintain a public school svstem in the South, made necessary by the South's adamant stand against desegregation, will impose an unfair burden upon Federal taxpayers in other parts of the country...
...at the end of October...
...Of the 202 tax-supported colleges and universities in the Southern and border region, 112 in 12 states accepted about 2,000 Negro students in the fall of 1957...
Vol. 41 • December 1958 • No. 47
