THE SOUTH'S NEW RESISTANCE

...It also tends to contain and minimize the extent of desegregation...

...This peaceful acceptance of the inevitable is in striking contrast to the turbulence and violence in Clinton in 1956, in Nashville and Little Rock in 1957, and in New Orleans just a year ago...

...In a 1959 decision concerning Norfolk, Virginia, a Federal district court found that initial assignments were on a racial basis, that the practice places burdens on Negro children not imposed upon other children and is therefore a denial of the equal protection of the laws...

...Most change has been symbolic, or token, rather than real...

...He is then carefully tested to ascertain whether he qualities...

...Despite the emotional tension which has accompanied school crises in many Southern communities, there have been only seven cases of significant violence or disorder in eight years- Mansfield, Texas...

...On several occasions the President has publicly commended state and local authorities for achieving some desegregation without incident...

...If token desegregation is allowed only as a temporary, transition measure, it may prepare Southern communities for more substantive progress in the years to come...

...In a brief submitted in the St...

...It is possible, however, that tokenism will effectively evade meaningful school desegregation for many years, and that it will create the necessity for eight—or eighteen—more years of litigation, more political conflict, more traumatic readjustment in the South before the promise of the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision can become a reality...

...Below the border states, school segregation remains virtually intact despite eight years of litigation and clear rulings of the Federal courts...

...Token desegregation is becoming the new Southern pattern...

...Little Rock, Arkansas...

...and New Orleans, Louisiana...

...They are becoming increasingly skillful at devising plans of "desegregation" that are non-racial on their lace, but which effectively keep all but a handful of Negro students in segregated, all-Negro schools...

...Helena Parish, Louisiana, and tried to intervene in the Prince Edward County, Virginia, case...

...that a state cannot close some schools while operating others...

...By contrast, the executive branch of the Federal government has taken a stronger and more constructive role during the past year...

...Louisville, and Washington, but it provides lor more desegregation than later plans developed further South...

...Prior to 1954, there were seventeen Southern and border states and the District of Columbia maintaining public school segregation...

...It indicates a desire to maintain "law and order...

...Southern communities accept school desegregation when compelled...

...What "responsible affirmative action" exists is in behalf of order and stability, not in support of school desegregation...

...In the "difficult" states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, Southern School News reports only 2,400 Negro students in desegregated classes, out of more than one and a half million Negroes enrolled in the public schools of these states...

...In recent years white citizens groups in support of "open schools" have been active in Virginia, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana...

...It usually represents, also, a more successful effort to avoid significant change...

...After a year of court litigation school desegregation came calmly to Lynchburg...

...There are now only three states without some desegregation: Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina...

...are going to school under at least partially desegregated conditions in the South...

...But the possibilities of executive action are limited...

...Even when communities have closed their schools to avoid desegregation, they have acted under the authority of state law...

...Sometimes the transfer applicants are subjected to a series of special tests and personal interviews...

...Negro students have been denied entrance to predominantly white schools because their grade averages are below the median of students in the white school, because there were disciplinary problems in their old schools, or because their older brothers and sisters are attending Negro schools and it was thought unwise to divide the family...

...Little Rock showed the willingness of the Federal government to use force to support the Federal courts...

...Many factors have contributed to this change in the Southern climate...

...Opposition to the theory of school desegregation is losing most of its emotional intensity...

...In Day-tona Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and West Palm Beach, Florida, and in Jackson and Memphis, Tennessee, some desegregation took place without final court orders, almost without public notice...

...But below the border states, compliance is almost always minimal or token...

...Fort Worth is under court order to desegregate in the fall of 1962...

...Clay and Sturgis, Kentucky...

...The maintenance of law and order is of vital importance, but the absence of violence does not necessarily mean progress toward desegregation...

...Both cities operate under plans that open one more grade each year, but only to individual Negro students who can be strained through the pupil placement criteria...

...While massive resistance tactics have proven useless and are being abandoned, the tactics of "tokenism" have been successful and are being more widely applied...

...Eight years after the 1954 decision, there are still more than 1,900 Southern school districts serving children of both races which maintain absolute segregation...

...RILLING is Director of Field Activities for the Southern Regional Conference...

...From 1954 to 1956, there was sweeping, voluntary, good faith compliance with the Supreme Court decision in the border states...

...Attorney General Robert Kennedy, in a report to the President on the progress of civil rights during 1961, said: "The fact that an increasing number of children went to school under desegregated—and peaceful— conditions in the South is evidence of the responsible affirmative action taken by an increasing number of officials and civic leaders...

...After four years there are forty-nine in formerly white schools in Norfolk, Virginia, and thirty-five in Charlottesville...

...Petersburg area...

...Virginia's example of orderly and peaceful change was followed by Georgia in 1961...

...Louis, and Washington...

...Such has rarely been the case, although the Nashville-type plans may fulfill this hope...

...There were thirteen in Memphis, eighteen in Dallas...

...The futility of absolute resistance has become clear...

...The Nashville Plan is more limited than the procedures followed in Baltimore...

...After 1956, as the process of desegregation moved South, Southern response hardened...

...Significantly, of the fifteen urban areas of more than a half million population each in the South, only two still have completely segregated public school systems—Fort Worth and Birmingham...

...Despite emotional outcry and political hyperbole, there has not been a single case of disobedience of Federal court orders...

...The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit declared assignment practices in Charlottesville, Virginia, to be contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment on the same basis...

...New Orleans began at the first grade level with four Negro students in two schools...

...The same idea was included in the 1960 Democratic platform, and legislation to this effect was introduced in the last session of Congress by Senator Joseph S. Clark, Pennsylvania Democrat, and Representative Emanuel Celler, New York Democrat...

...The alternatives have narrowed to the point where it seems that a state might avoid some desegregation only through the closing of all public schools in the state, an action unthinkable to most Southerners...

...The tone and nature of Southern reaction to the Supreme Court decision have altered significantly during the past three years...

...The development of restrictive "desegregation" plans reached new heights in New Orleans and Atlanta where the grade-a-year and pupil placement controls were combined...

...Local school authorities could still develop plans best suited to differing situations, but the pace of change would quicken...

...Governor Almond had previously vowed that he would allow his right arm to be cut off before he would see "one Negro child enter a white school...

...In the Little Rock case, in 1958, the Supreme Court emphasized that state and local authorities are "duty bound to devote every effort toward initiating desegregation and bringing about the elimination of racial discrimination in the public school system...

...In most cases there is little growth in the number of Negro students in desegregated situations from one year to the next...

...From 1956 to 1959, the Southern response was angry, strident, emotional, openly vowing resistance...

...Less than one per cent of Negro students in these states are now going to "desegregated" schools...

...Southern leadership has read the lessons of the past eight years and is now facing the realities of the present...

...The result of pupil placement plans, not surprisingly, has been to limit desegregation to a small number of Negroes...

...As the courts rule on one evasive tactic after another, the precedents pile up and are applied in future cases...

...Not necessarily...

...Unless there is further action at the Federal level, it may well succeed in its purpose...

...According to Gallup polls, the percentage of Southerners accepting the inevitability of change rose from forty-five per cent in 1957 to seventy-six per cent early in 1961...

...Of the thirteen urban centers with some desegregation, six made the change during the last two years: Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and the Tampa-St...

...Does this change in Southern response mean the beginning of a process that will gradually eliminate the dual system of schools in the South...

...There may be other incidents as court-ordered change reaches the black belt of the Deep South...

...Under most placement plans, students are initially assigned to their former, segregated schools...

...There was no violence...

...The South's New Resistance by PAUL M. RILLING When the Lynchburg, Virginia, schools opened for the second semester on January 29, Owen Card-well, Jr., and Linda Woodruff quietly took their seats along with their new, white classmates in the ninth grade of the E. Carter Glass High School...

...This growth of "responsible affirmative action" lauded by Attorney General Kennedy in his recent report should not be misunderstood...

...The Federal government became a party in desegregation cases in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and St...

...In cases arising in Delaware, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, a twelve-year period for gradual compliance was disapproved, and immediate desegregation ordered in all grades...

...This period saw across-the-board desegregation of public school systems in Louisville, Baltimore, St...

...that public officials can be enjoined from interference with the application of Federal court orders...

...It is doubtful that complete school desegregation could be accomplished in these communities after 100 years of tokenism at present rates of change...

...Perhaps the change began in Virginia, the bastion of massive resistance, in 1959, when Governor Lindsey Almond told the legislators that the state had exhausted every means of resistance, and asked for new, local option legislation...

...Tokenism becomes not a first step, but the new pattern, the new status quo...

...Nashville began its plan with nineteen Negro students involved in fust grade desegregation in 1957...

...Groups of business leaders appealed to citizens of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis to uphold law and order during 1961-62 school desegregation developments...

...The experiences of Little Rock, New Orleans, and now Birmingham indicate that racial strife creates a negative public image of a city that may endure for years...

...There have been more public statements and appeals for order by Southern businessmen since 1959 than during the entire period of 1954 to 1959...

...The question is, "responsible affirmative action" toward what ends...

...Tokenism is not likely to be voluntarily abandoned in most Southern communities...

...During 1961 Attorney General Kennedy told a Law Day audience at the University of Georgia that he thought the 1954 decision was right...

...Only nine Negro students went to white fchools in Atlanta last September...

...There is little increase vertically, within communities...

...Within the grades affected, students are assigned to schools on the basis of residence, without regard to race...

...This semester also brought the beginnings of desegregation to three other Tennessee communities, with some thirty Negro students involved...

...In North Carolina and Virginia the pupil placement system won court approval...

...In September, I960...

...Recent judicial decisions indicate a growing impatience with gradualism and tokenism...

...It has sometimes been suggested that these gradual or limited plans allow time for a community to adjust to new customs and provide for an orderly step-by-step transition from segregated to desegregated schools...

...The Jackson city commission acted voluntarily and without advance notice...

...The great bulk of this desegregation, however, has occurred in the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia...

...In no case has emotion or violence prevented court-ordered desegregation...

...In some places desegregation began almost casually this year, without the last-ditch legal effort, the official ful-minations, and the tensions which have accompanied change below the border states in past years...

...From year to year these plans have become increasingly narrow as school officials'learn what the courts will allow...

...In the only two cases where state and local authorities were unwilling or unable to maintain law and order, there was direct involvement of Federal authority...

...If it is rare for white Southerners to support the principle of desegregation, it is now respectable to urge minimum compliance with Federal court rulings in order to keep the schools open...

...Through tokenism the South hopes to avoid the intent of the 1954 decision while accepting the letter of the ruling...

...Southern school boards now tend to develop "desegregation" plans that are as limited as possible...

...Little Rock and Virginia demonstrated the pointless masochism of closing public schools...

...The clays of massive resistance may not be over in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Louisiana...

...The maneuvering of Southern communities has shown evasion, procrastination, hypocrisy, even dishonesty, but the authority of the Federal courts has always been recognized...

...The South is moving through a period of economic expansion, and there is intense competition among cities for new factories...

...In Tennessee, for example, most communities have followed the "Nashville Plan," which spreads the process of desegregation over a twelve-year period at the rate of a grade a year...

...that public funds cannot be used for private school tuition grants unless the public schools remain open...

...Probably only a clear ruling by the Supreme Court against the practices of tokenism can limit this new pattern of resistance...

...The pointed refusal of President Eisenhower to express his own opinion of the Supreme Court decision and the reluctance of his Administration to support desegregation efforts undermined the position of Southerners working for the implementation of the 1954 decision...

...Commission on Civil Rights recommended in its 1961 report that Congress require every segregated school district to file a plan of desegregation within six months, "said plan to call for at least a first step toward full compliance at the beginning of the following school year, and complete desegregation as soon as practicable thereafter...

...Tokenism reflects acceptance of the authority of the Federal courts...

...These figures do show slight increases, particularly in Virginia, but the growth is infinitesimal...

...Ninety-seven per cent of the South's desegregated Negro students live in these states...

...It has become clear that the South will not resort to the open defiance of law or to the widespread use of violence to avoid school desegregation...

...In the states of the old Confederacy, only 6,800 Negro children are going to school with whites and 4,300 of these are in Texas...

...Governor Ernest Vandiver called Georgia's school closing laws "an albatross around our necks" and requested new, local option laws...

...There was no hysteria...

...In Little Rock not a single new industrial plant came to the city for four years following the violence of 1957...

...This practice of initial assignment by race is under court challenge...

...After eight years of litigation, the leeway for legal maneuver has become limited...

...There are significantly more Negro students in desegregated schools each year, but the bulk of the increases are those in newly "desegregated" situations...

...After five years of tokenism there are just fifteen Negroes attending school with whites in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, twenty-seven in Charlotte...

...The mayor of Birmingham said last December that desegregation would come to that city "only at gun point...

...According to the Southern School News, approximately 233,500 Negro students are attending classes with white students in these seventeen states and the District of Columbia...

...No "racial criteria" are used, of course, but Negro students can be denied transfers for academic, psychological, physical, geographic, and other reasons...

...The schools were later opened by court order, and desegregated...

...This plan would shift the burden of action from the individual Negro student to local school boards...

...As these state laws have been invalidated by the Federal courts, the schools—in Little Rock, Norfolk, Charlottesville, and Front Royal—have been reopened and "desegregated...

...The pattern of token desegregation continues to spread laterally, to new communities each year...

...In 1960, Governor John Patterson of Alabama stated that if the "Federal government attempts to desegregate the schools of the state, I'll be one of the first ones stirring up trouble...

...The U.S...

...Helena Parish case, the Department of Justice contended that such a total shutdown of the educational system of a state would be unconstitutional...

...The current Southern attitude is increasingly calm, realistic, and legalistic...

...However, an attitude of growing realism has been spreading over most of the South since 1959...

...Atlanta began in the fall of 1961 with the eleventh and twelfth grades and assigned nine Negroes to four previously all-white high schools...

...During the current school year, there are 270 Negro children in the first five grades at formerly white schools...

...Now in widespread use throughout the South, pupil placement plans may open all grades for desegregation, but only to individual, "qualified" Negro students who actively seek admission...

...He reported to the President that officials of the Justice Department "worked informally" with the officials of cities faced with transition problems during 1961...

...The emotional intensity of opposition to change is receding in most parts of the South, however, and most white Southerners are reconciled to some desegregation, even though they may not like it...

...It is now clear that a state cannot operate "private" schools if public funds or properties are involved...

...In Dallas the Citizens Council (no relation to the White Citizens Council), an organization of top business leaders, used all the techniques of modern advertising to prepare the city for calm transition...

...The Eisenhower Administration often gave the impression of neutrality on the school issue...

...Most of the South seems to be resigned to living with the 1954 Supreme Court decision striking down compulsory school segregation...

...This was the high tide of the anti-NAACP laws, of legislative investigation committees, of resolutions to impeach the Supreme Court...

...They generally accept as little desegregation as they can...

...Present indications are, rather, that it represents the development of a new and more effective form of resistance to real or meaningful desegregation...

...Four days earlier, three Negro students entered previously white Ti-grett Junior High School in Jackson, Tennessee...

...An increasing number of children PAUL AA...

...The new strategy keeps the peace...

...Business and civic leaders have learned that they have a vital stake in the maintenance of order...

...There was no disruption of law and order even though cities as far South as Dallas, Memphis, Atlanta, and Fort Lauderdale were involved...

...In 1958-59 schools ordered to desegregate in Little Rock and in four Virginia communities were closed...

...Many more white than Negro students were locked out of their classrooms...

...While there has been little disorder in connection with school desegregation in recent years, there has also been little desegregation...

...The Justice Department would have new leverage for action against communities refusing to comply...

...These were the years of interposition, massive resistance, and school closings...

...During the 1961-62 school year, more school districts started classroom desegregation than in any year since 1957...

...During these years business and civic leadership was generally silent and uninvolved, leaving a vacuum too often filled by extremist and irresponsible forces...

...These quiet developments of January, 1962, are indicative of the emerging Southern response to pressures for change...

...Since then most progress has been through the compulsion of Federal court orders...

...Perhaps the very abandonment of absolute resistance in favor of tokenism will weaken future opposition to further desegregation...

...Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi said, in 1960, "Our schools at all levels must be kept segregated, at all costs...

...The Justice Department would be directed to enforce this requirement...

...Any Negro wishing to transfer to a "white" school must make formal application through various involved procedures...

...When litigation reaches the point of a court order to desegregate, the order is invariably acknowledged...

...Nashville and Clinton, Tennessee...

...Sober discussion of the "school issue" is heard again in the South...

...This took the form of troops in Little Rock in 1957, and of Federal marshals escorting Negro and white children to school in New Orleans in 1960...

...Many Southern communities, but only a handful of Negro children, began the desegregation process...

...Kennedy's words are accurate, but his statement implies a sense of achievement that may not be justified...