SCHOOLS, SUBSIDIES, AND SEGREGATION
Neuberger, Richard L. & Lehman, Herbert H.
Schools, Subsidies, and Segregation A DEBATE ON THE POWELL-LEHMAN AMENDMENTS The attempt to amend federal school aid legislation so as to withhold funds from states which fail to comply with the...
...But the bell likewise tolls for us...
...Where the Powell amendment might be far more justified is in the case of segregated hospitals and segregated highway usages, where no Supreme Court decision has yet been rendered...
...Two children out of five have been attending school in structures which do not conform to minimum fire-safety requirements...
...Those rules make it possible for a minority—namely the Dixiecrats from the South—to prevent passage of a school-aid bill carrying an anti-segregation amendment...
...Therefore, the liberal opponents of the amendment are, in effect, not only urging that the amendment should not be adopted, but that it shouldn't even be offered...
...These are harsh choices for somebody who detests segregation and discrimination as much as I do...
...Indeed, it can scarcely be denied that the question of segregation in education more and more dominates the question of federal assistance to education...
...Yet I believe that somewhere, if only in Abou Ben Adhem's book of life, there is a mark honoring Stevenson's singular act of political valor...
...Plauche has been far from alone in the South in his definition of the moral values involved in this issue...
...The one ultimate solution, unless we are to default on our duty to the children of America, is federal aid to education...
...And what if organized labor insisted that the new schools be constructed only by men belonging to trade unions...
...He said: "The problem of changing a people's mores, particularly those with an emotional overlay, is not to be taken lightly...
...The federal government bears the responsibility for the manner in which the money is spent and the uses to which it is put...
...It would mean that Congress was deliberately refraining from taking a stand not only on the question of segregation, but more directly on the question of how the Executive should dispose of public money for the support of local education in cases where that education was being conducted in overt defiance of the laws of the land, and in overt violation of the Constitutional rights of those to be educated...
...The important challenge before us all is to secure some adequate measure of federal aid for our schools, without jeopardizing local control of education...
...In other words, schools are the realm where the Powell amendment is needed the least...
...The federal government is responsible to the tax-paying public, to the general public, to the school children, to the future of the nation, and to the rest of the world...
...Let us see how many will join in the grinding test of the filibuster on this issue of law and order—which is quite different from FEPC...
...If the Powell amendment is tied to the school bill, a Senate filibuster by Southern extremists and by decent Southerners frightened politically by extremists, is as inexorable as tomorrow's sunrise...
...Sen...
...What of the rest of the world...
...An argument can be made for filibusters, but I believe they generally do more harm than good...
...Yet, through fiat of our highest judicial tribunal, the federal district courts throughout the South have been empowered to work out obedience to the school-case decision...
...It is important, I know, to build more school buildings for our school children...
...But it should give us pause to consider that there are men actively involved in the struggle for the Powell amendment who do not have Herbert Lehman's long record in behalf of equality and fairness...
...Jefferson said that our young people come this way but once...
...Let the Socthern opponents of this amendment bear the burden of challenge to law and order, and to orderly procedures in the Senate...
...It is a problem which will require the utmost patience, understanding, generosity and forbearance from all of us...
...In addition, why make the children the pawn in this controversy...
...What do we tell our school children, in these fine new buildings, about the sanctity of law and order, and the dignity of American citizenship...
...I do not propose, in this amendment, either to supplant or supplement the courts in wrestling with the grave, overall problem of resistance to the law and the court rulings...
...Schools, Subsidies, and Segregation A DEBATE ON THE POWELL-LEHMAN AMENDMENTS The attempt to amend federal school aid legislation so as to withhold funds from states which fail to comply with the Supreme Court decisions on segregation has created a greater storm of controversy and cut more deeply across party and ideological lines than any issue in recent years...
...To slow down this discouraging schedule by the inevitable complications of the Powell amendment is to venture a grim risk, indeed, with the destiny of America's most precious resource, its children...
...But is our moral purpose so much weaker than theirs that we should not even hazard the attempt...
...It is happening in the United States of America, a nation where corporate profits stand at an all-time high, where $40,000,000,000 is spent annually for armaments, and where the stock exchange creates new bonanzas and new millionaires almost each day...
...Therefore, we are confronted with the alternative: 1. To pass the federal-aid-to-education bill, without the Powell amendment...
...This is 1956...
...It teaches them "separateness" and "dif-ferentness," so utterly repugnant not only to law but to life...
...It teaches them to accept segregation and discrimination as a way of life...
...The Republican member of Congress from the Second Oregon District said on this occasion that he felt it necessary to support the Powell amendment, in order to be consistent with his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States...
...Abraham Flexner ACOMMITTEE of the Senate has reported: "Millions of children still attend schools which are unsafe or which permit learning only part time or under conditions of serious overcrowding...
...Others are so strapped for funds that their credit is gone...
...Only the federal government has the fiscal resources to end the school crisis...
...But we live in a world where the rules of the U.S...
...If it is wrong for federal funds to go to places where there is segregation in the schools, then what of the federal funds that help to build hospitals in which the races are segregated...
...I hasten to explain that while my amendment is somewhat different in its scope and mode of operation from the Powell amendment in the House, the general intent and philosophy of both amendments are the same...
...But how about the argument that the amendment is irrelevant to the legislation...
...As an American I submit there is no acceptable moral alternative to the condemnation of segregation of the Negro and the acceptance of integration of the races in public and semi-public institutions and agencies...
...It might even be argued by the defiant states and school districts that such an action by Congress constituted a repudiation of the Supreme Court's rulings...
...Why, then, are its sponsors splicing it only to the bill for federal aid to schools...
...Ill Yet this discussion would be incomplete without some reference to the overwhelming difficulties faced by the courts in pursuing their present course...
...Herbert H. Lehman WHY DO men of good will differ on the question of an anti-segregation amendment to the federal school aid bill...
...When the money authorized under the school aid bill is expended, the program will be over...
...I cannot believe this...
...My amendment would authorize and direct the President to put in escrow the funds which would otherwise be paid to those states and school districts which are known or found to be actively defying the Supreme Court mandate to give all school children within their states that equal protection of the law required by the Constitution...
...I shall refer to the anti-segregation rider in the remainder of my argument as the Powell amendment since the proposal is best known to the public by that title...
...The fact is, however, that the President has not proclaimed any such intention, despite repeated appeals that he do so...
...But the magnitude of the problem may not nullify the principle...
...I make no defense of Dixiecrat Senators who would use the existing rules of the Senate to filibuster into oblivion a school-aid bill, if it includes the Powell amendment...
...Public-power advocates may want to deny federal aid to school buildings that burn kilowatts from private utilities in their light bulbs...
...Elementary teachers in cities of medium size are paid less than railroad switchtenders, Sen...
...The amendment is unnecessary because the President has the power to do everything the amendment proposes...
...A school building is not the only factor in the training of our young...
...Furthermore, the Congressman also eventually admitted to the school group that he doubted if federal aid to education were really necessary or desirable...
...I for one am not at all willing to concede that the consideration of this amendment will mean the death of the school aid bill...
...This is not happening in Russia or the Congo or Malaya...
...Today the school segregation issue, and all it implies, dominates all our thoughts and conditions almost all our actions...
...I could be misjudging the temper of my colleagues in the Senate...
...He could proclaim, consistent with his oath of office—"to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution"—that he intended to withhold school aid funds from those states and school districts which publicly undertake to evade and defy the rulings of the Supreme Court prohibiting unconstitutional and unlawful discrimination in education...
...In my opinion, Senator Lehman was right early in 1955 when he proposed a fight by liberal Senators to reform archaic Senate rules...
...We of the North hope and pray that some of the politicians of the South will resist their extremists and fomenters of hate...
...I want to test the opposition to it...
...I rank this as a primary obligation of the 1956 session of Congress...
...We can circulate a cloture petition...
...Some might wish it weren't so, but the Supreme Court's decision of May 17, 1954, made the one question an inseparable part of the other...
...I also know the Senate rules cannot be changed immediately...
...How do we explain to them that Congress provided the money for these buildings, but didn't bother even to consider the question of the evil practices of racial discrimination in some states and some school districts...
...Such men are dominated by bigotry rather than reason...
...That is another and much larger problem which must be separately and prayerfully considered...
...More than a million children are going to school in buildings not designed originally for school use...
...In general, no two of the resisting states are following exactly the same course...
...What will the great majority of mankind think if we, in Congress, insist on pretending that the issue is not before us, even when we are considering school legislation...
...Shall Congress act as if the historic event of May 17, 1954, had not taken place...
...Congress, like the rest of the country and the world, has taken cognizance...
...Nothing could be further from the fact...
...By starving education, we merely prepare the sod for more seeds of intolerance in the future...
...A briefer and more readable summary appears in the April 3 issue of Look magazine, where Professor Fred Rodell has listed some of the possibilities of evasive action and consequent delay...
...Of the 17 states and the District of Columbia in which school segregation was officially sanctioned and practiced prior to May 17, 1954, only a handful stand today in attitudes of open defiance...
...And aid to schools must be provided long before these slow-moving political changes ever occur, unless our educational plant is to decay shamefully...
...It is not designed to implement or enforce the Supreme Court decisions on segregation...
...Monsignor Charles J. Plauche, Southern-born Chancellor of the New Orleans Archidocese, recently declared that "racial segregation is a shameful blot on our national escutcheon and can no longer be ignored and set aside for future consideration...
...The defiance of the Court's decision by inflammatory and lawless groups in the South has dramatized the school situation...
...Now, for the argument that the amendment is unnecessary because the President has the inherent power to do what the amendment would direct him to do: True, the President has the power...
...Should federal navigation locks accommodate boats which force separate quarters on Negro crews or passengers...
...The least Congress can do in this connection is to restrain the Executive from abetting defiant states and school districts in the very performance of their acts of defiance...
...It is mistakenly maintained by the opponents of my amendment that even segregated education works in the direction of desegregation...
...The extent of such application of the Powell-amendment theory is virtually endless...
...Msgr...
...I believe the amendment is not only sound but absolutely essential for the sake of the integrity of this legislation...
...How can we in Congress say that we benefit anybody, whether white or black, by refraining from posing the law-and-order issue in connection with this legislation...
...I should like to see before us bills to remove the poll tax, to assure fair employment practices, and to end discrimination in such public places as hotels and restaurants...
...Let us keep the two issues separated...
...What I propose is simply a "law-and-order" amendment, designed only to restrain the federal government from aiding and abetting recalcitrant states and school districts in their defiance of the law and the Constitution...
...Part of the answer may be found in the confusion over the nature of the question...
...Let us avoid these side shows, which endanger the safety of the main tent...
...My own state, not a realm of great industry or wealth, has saddled itself with the highest state income tax in the land in order to carry its educational responsibilities...
...If the President were to do this, it might not be necessary to press the amendment—although I think it would still be preferable for Congress to establish the standards for withholding, as well as to provide specifically for the holding of these funds in escrow, pending the time of compliance...
...I think it is disgraceful the way we have allowed our school facilities to deteriorate, in a country as rich and mighty as the United States...
...Nothing must be permitted to form a barricade between this country's boys and girls and an adequate education...
...Even forgetting the Powell amendment, the schedule for federal aid to our schools is all too tardy, at best...
...To those who are interested in reading a comprehensive summary of the various legal means which are being invoked to thwart the Supreme Court decision, I commend the study by Professor James Nabrit in the symposium on Racial Desegregation and Integration published in the March, 1956 Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences...
...But the likelihood of large scale integration in these states is remote, until the state laws themselves have been legally attacked and disposed of in the courts...
...Indeed, some of the backers of the Powell amendment have been more identified with antagonism toward federal aid for schools than in support of integration for the races of mankind...
...It is a restraint only on the federal government which, in the school aid legislation, is launching not only a new program, but a one-shot program...
...Shall we take no notice of the mighty pageant of events which has occurred since that day...
...We can invoke the rules of the Senate which permit one Senator no more than two speeches on the same proposition...
...I fear that failure of Congress to take cognizance in the school aid legislation of the overt defiance being offered by a few will encourage, and even force, others into the ranks of the resistors...
...I cannot see how it can even be argued that states and school districts strenuously engaged in resisting the Court's prohibitions against the practice of racial discrimination in the schools should still receive federal funds collected from all taxpayers, for the construction of the very instruments of legal defiance and racial discrimination...
...Ill On top of all this, coupling the Powell amendment to the school bill is on the shakiest kind of moral and ethical ground...
...Strikingly symbolic of the division is this debate, prepared especially for readers of The Progressive, between Senators Lehman of New York and Neuberger of Oregon...
...No, the victims of the debate will be the school children of America...
...In educational budgets, haste often is of the essence...
...the two riders have somewhat different approaches but their basic objective and philosophy are the same.—The Editors...
...If anything, it is more inherently evil to turn away a sick or injured man from a hospital erected with federal aid than to deny a child schooling in a classroom built with federal aid...
...My own guess is that on this issue there will be less than an all-out filibuster...
...State governments have run out of sources of revenue to tap for school purposes...
...Whatever disguise is given the legally-enforced practice of segregation, it remains the defensive shield for the concept of white supremacy and the drawn sword for the enforcement of that concept...
...Why not similarly penalize districts which fail to take advantage of the school-lunch program...
...The segregated schools are one of the prime training grounds for the acceptance of the practice of segregation...
...For Congress to fail to consider an amendment to the school aid bill dealing with the situation that has developed as a result of the Supreme Court decisions would constitute, in itself, a negative action of powerful eloquence and tremendous significance...
...It is pure word-mongering to pose the question of whether Congress should take cognizance of these events, in connection with this or any other legislation...
...This is a time for political courage on both sides of the Mason and Dixon line...
...My wife, Maurine, who once taught physical education in the schools of Oregon, has reminded me that some health "nuts" like herself could conceivably suggest a restriction of federal aid to those schools where physical education, modern dance, or gymnastics are required subjects...
...Both are mil-itantly liberal Democrats, share common convictions on almost every issue, and are warm personal friends—but they are poles apart in this historic controversy...
...While the political argument goes on over the Powell amendment, a whole generation of young Americans can lose out educationally...
...The short title—"anti-segregation amendment" —might be one of the factors in the confusion...
...But if the President were to indicate quite clearly and rather specifically how the executive branch would take care of this problem, I think the Congress would be justified in leaving it to his discretion...
...The schools are one of the few places where all children come into direct contact with the authority of government...
...The ruling of the Supreme Court already has begun to operate, albeit slowly, in the field of education...
...aiding education is likewise a noble cause...
...Sen...
...There are four states—Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina—which have proclaimed their determined defiance of the law, and have, each in a different manner, staked out a course designed to resist compliance...
...This is not 1949...
...This would prevent Southern states from securing Congressional representation as a result of Negro residents who are denied the right to vote...
...In any event my amendment is going to be the one offered and I assume will be the one considered in the Senate...
...Over 75,000 teachers quit the profession each year...
...They are dispersing their devices, as if by design, and running down different alleyways in their determination to escape from compliance...
...It probably will take years to confront each one of these devices in the courts and place it under the ban of the Constitution...
...II Notice that most of these arguments really flow from the first—that the amendment will kill the school aid bill...
...That would be like trying to stop a rampaging elephant with a pea-shooter...
...The rest of their arguments, I am afraid, are largely rationalizations for their fear that the amendment, if offered, will be adopted and thus provoke a filibuster...
...The result will be the defeat of the school-aid bill...
...There is no thought of requiring that the states should have completed the desegregation of their schools as a condition precedent to receiving federal aid—only that, in accordance with the Court decree of May 31, 1955, they are proceeding to "make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance...
...After all, one might validly add an amendment to the school bill denying federal aid to any state or district which failed to pay its teachers properly or which throttled academic freedom...
...It is this proposed Lehman amendment that I want to discuss here...
...A note of clarification: The Senators refer to both the Powell and Lehman amendments...
...I am one Senator who is quite willing to see the civil rights issue fought out on the floor of the Senate...
...Both the Lehman and Powell amendments—they are similar in purpose if somewhat different in emphasis and language—would imperil early authorization of school construction funds...
...The Powell amendment, good though may be the intentions of its principal author, Representative Powell, would make the school systems a mere baton to be passed back and forth in a political marathon...
...I am not referring to the children in the segregated schools, but to all our school children...
...The school-aid bills are only authorizations...
...Shall we imperil the fate of both by tying them together legislatively...
...But I also believe strongly in education...
...Withholding the funds from the defiant states and school districts will retard rather than advance the cause of desegregation in those states, and will not help but rather harm the Negro children in those states and districts...
...I believe legislation ought to be passed allocating seats in the House of Representatives not on a state's census population but according to the number of people who participate in elections...
...This is a defeatist assumption which accepts in advance, without the test of trial and opposition, the blackmail threat of the filibuster...
...Of course, I could be wrong...
...IV In addition, I should like to see the rules of the Senate modified so that a simple majority of Senators can shut off debate...
...Two states—Virginia and North Carolina—while they have moved in a complex manner to evade the Constitutional requirements—have enacted legislation which may make it possible for localities to integrate their schools if they so desire...
...I think most Americans are aware of this, as demonstrated by the March 21 Gallup Poll showing a 2-to-l majority against any effort to tie conditions to school-aid legislation...
...Yet I know they probably never will change their basic thought patterns—at least not within the foreseeable future...
...These states, moreover, have enacted legislation which will effectively prevent—and in some cases violently penalize—any attempt by any locality to comply with the court decrees...
...It will be a good occasion for men to stand up and be counted...
...It can be cut off, but its absence will be noticeable...
...Now, I realize this is far from true of a man like Senator Herbert H. Lehman, who has fought all his life for equal treatment of all peoples, and who is one of the kindest and most warm-hearted human beings it has ever been my privilege to know...
...The amendment is unnecessary because the courts are going to take care of the problem...
...And that principle is that we are, all of us, freeborn Americans, with a right to make our way, unfettered by sanctions imposed by man because of the work of God...
...Whether Congress should act directly to implement the Fourteenth Amendment in reference to public school education is quite another question...
...So my own record in this respect is clear, I trust...
...I want to emphasize again that my amendment is not a "penalty" or a "punishment" of anybody...
...IV Now what about the school children...
...What about the argument that the amendment is unnecessary because the courts are going to take care of the problem, and that Congress should not interfere...
...Altogether, the arsenal of proposed means of "legal" evasion of the Supreme Court's ruling is depressingly vast and is growing by the hour...
...The others have either integrated completely or axe moving, unsteadily, and unhappily in some cases, in the inevitable direction...
...Some propose to turn over all authority over the schools to the local school board...
...It is urgently needed now, today, immediately...
...Many local school districts are bonded to the hilt...
...Should they pass in this session of Congress, already more than half over, the necessary appropriations probably would not be enacted until the 1958 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 1957...
...The amount of time it may take the courts to confront and consider all the various devices that are being busily improvised to avoid and resist compliance literally staggers the imagination...
...I had occasion to remember that editorial when the Congressional delegation from our state met at breakfast with a group of Oregon school principals...
...What will happen to our pretense of leadership of free mankind, both colored and white...
...I happen to think it would be a good idea, but that is not the question we are dealing with in the school aid bill, which is clearly not the vehicle for such a difficult, debatable, and comprehensive undertaking...
...Both are wrong, but why pick on one and not the other...
...This is not permanent legislation, but emergency legislation...
...Yet, as a state senator, this same man had cast one of only five votes against Negroes in Oregon trade schools...
...Suppose we proceed to consider the chief arguments of the liberal opponents of this amendment...
...Isn't the integrity of our democratic processes just as vital a factor in the education of the young as the quality of the classroom walls and of the gymnasium facilities...
...And what of federal farm price supports in rural counties where Negroes are intimidated away from the ballot box...
...What does government teach them in the segregated schools...
...This was in the era when the old Northwest Ordinance of 1785 was first establishing the idea of public support of education...
...They can, I believe, be roughly summarized as follows: • The amendment will kill the school aid bill because the Southerners will filibuster it to death...
...II If we lived in the best possible of worlds, I would favor the Powell amendment denying assistance to any state or district practicing segregation in the schools...
...I do not believe that I can be any more eloquent in stating the moral issue involved than a federal judge in New Orleans, Southern-born and Southern-bred Judge J. Skelly Wright, when, on February 15th of this year, he ordered segregation in the schools of Orleans Parish to be brought to an end, and when he overturned the segregation statutes of Louisiana which required this segregation...
...The sufferers will not be the politicians on each side of the issue, those intransigent ones in the North and the South...
...Early last year I served notice in the Senate that I would propose such an amendment...
...It will take at least two full years, perhaps three, for the new school buildings constructed with these federal-aid funds to be transferred from the drawing boards of architects into steel and glass and bricks and concrete...
...Actually, this amendment is not really aimed at the states at all, but at the federal government, and at the integrity of the laws of the nation as a whole...
...How does all of this affect all of them...
...Killing the bill by means of this amendment will penalize all the states and all school children in order to "punish" a few recalcitrant states...
...And what of the federally-financed Salk vaccine that has been going to children during this past year, through distribution in the schools...
...Adlai E. Stevenson resisted this demand, and it may have cost him dearly in terms of political popularity...
...Some propose to lease school facilities to "private" organizations...
...I think a filibuster on this issue can be overcome if the liberals and others committed, politically or otherwise, to the cause of law and order unite in support of this amendment...
...Even while in the Army during the building of the Alaska Highway, I did all that a 2nd lieutenant could to bring about better housing and other facilities for colored troops helping valiantly to hack that great corridor out of the sub-Arctic solitudes...
...Do advocates of the Powell amendment care to withhold Salk vaccine from states encouraging segregation in the school systems...
...Shall we be less outspoken than they...
...I am convinced it is as much a part of the question of federal aid for education as a limb is a part of the human body...
...In the Oregon legislature, my wife and I have been sponsors of legislation to assure equal treatment of all races and creeds in public places, to guarantee fair employment practices and to end a legal ban against mixed marriages, a ban which dated from frontier hostility against the American Indian...
...We, too, must be brave enough to stand against extremists of our own, who would imperil the school aid required by all children, white and black, in order to punish the segregated schools of the South...
...The amendment is irrelevant to the purposes of the school aid bill...
...So Congress has no alternative but to act...
...Furthermore, during the next five years, the number of school children will rise from 30,000,000 to 45,000,000— with no means in sight to provide properly for their education...
...A newspaper as consistently liberal as the St...
...Let us see if they have the strength of conviction and purpose, on the issue of defying the Constitution, to conduct a filibuster...
...This argument is inapplicable to my amendment, which, I repeat, is not designed to bring segregation to an end, or force compliance with the Supreme Court's decision, or interfere in any way with the work of the courts...
...Some thoughtful Southern leaders have already undertaken to grapple directly with this central issue...
...Some have enacted legislation purporting to grant immunity to local school boards from all court orders and decrees...
...Would backers of the Powell amendment apply it to federal-aid highway funds which assist in the construction of roads over which Jim Crow buses travel...
...That is why I oppose adding any amendment, whether Senator Lehman's or Representative Powell's, to the bill which would authorize $400,-000,000 annually, for each of four years, in the form of federal aid to school construction...
...It will be talked to death...
...Louis Post-Dispatch has re-, cently had this to say editorially about the Powell amendment: "There is more than a suspicion that some of the backers of this step are moved by cold cynicism which is quite willing to defeat federal aid to schools, court the Northern Negro vote, and expose the Democratic Party split over segregation, all in one fell swoop...
...The present situation is as incongruous as a father who qualifies for income-tax exemptions because of children he fails to feed and clothe...
...As shamefully inadequate as the cloture rule is, I propose to find out whether we cannot, on this issue, get the 64 votes required for cloture...
...It teaches Negroes that they are, by nature, inferior...
...It is their plight, after all, which moves us to consider this legislation...
...This cannot be put off into the distant and remote future, following a prolonged national controversy over the Powell amendment...
...But stone and mortar do not make a school...
...That is the doctrine which is being defended by the resisting and defiant states...
...What of the Negro children...
...2. To add the Powell amendment and watch the bill filibustered to death...
...The amendment I propose to the school aid bill is not designed to end segregation in the public schools...
...Ending segregation is a noble cause...
...We in Congress can do no less than to accept our responsibility to abide by this principle, and to fight for it when it comes to issue, and to acknowledge it as among the highest principles we know, not to be sacrificed out of timidity or on the altar of expediency...
...He and the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and the Commissioner of Education have replied negatively to inquiries on this point, in a manner that strongly suggests the executive branch would not exercise such an authority unless specifically instructed by Congress...
...I do not expect by this amendment to force unwilling states and school districts immediately to desegregate their schools...
...Indeed, the reaction of the South to the Supreme Court decision has been far from monolithic...
...Will they have reason to be grateful to us for failing to consider that aspect of the segregation issue which necessarily intrudes upon the question of school aid...
...If it dies, so will the hopes of millions of teachers, parents, and children for better and more adequate schools...
...We are disappointed when some Southern liberals find themselves unable or unwilling to do so...
...Senate permit practically unlimited debate...
...It teaches whites that they are, by nature, superior...
...Thereafter the money would be paid to these states and school districts as soon as it is established that they are trying "in good faith" to comply with the Supreme Court decision...
...Now I should like to turn, in answer to the last two arguments against my amendment listed earlier in this article, to a consideration of the moral nature of the issue...
...Under the most favorable circumstances, a child will practically have gone all of the way through high school and halfway through grammar school before the present federal-aid bills now before Congress could contribute affirmatively to the improvement of his education...
...Richard L. Neuberger automobile workers, coal miners, or glass blowers...
...This is being done for the very reason which should discourage such a course—because of the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public-school systems...
...Richard L. Neuberger "The common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man...
...It is in this sphere that applying the Powell amendment can attain the maximum dramatic and political impact...
Vol. 20 • May 1956 • No. 5
