CARROT AND STICK

...The procedural requirements and the Administration's understandable desire to begin by emphasizing the carrot rather than the stick will doubtless delay achievement of the full impact of Title VI for many months...

...In Mississippi, the Greenville school board appeared electrified by the prod of Title VI...

...We are not nearly so confident as the President, for two reasons...

...Americans still are being degraded, cheated, threatened, terrorized, and even brutally murdered—for no other reason than that they are Negroes or allies of Negroes...

...For a report on the extent of school desegregation in the South, see "Two Per Cent Desegregated" on Page 9 of this issue...

...The potential power of this prod against segregated education can be judged from the fact that eleven Southern states now receive a total of $300 million a year in Federal aid to schools...

...When President Johnson approved the regulations worked out by the Federal agencies to carry out the mandate of Title VI, he called the procedures "just and reasonable...

...Title VI of the Civil Rights Act packs a powerful deterrent to discrimination by providing that no one shall be denied the benefits of any program receiving Federal aid because of race...

...It voted unanimously to prepare a desegregation plan to comply with the Civil Rights Act...

...One is that not all regional offices of all Federal agencies administering grants-in-aid are likely to be sufficiently diligent in carrying out Title VI, and the lack of Federal vigor may not be confined to Dixie...

...Some local authorities may decide to forfeit Federal help rather than comply...

...No cut-off of funds can be ordered until thirty days after the appropriate committees receive the report...

...In Georgia, the State Board of Education voted unanimously—and without debate—to sign a pledge of compliance with Federal desegregation requirements...

...At the same time he expressed confidence that voluntary compliance would be so widespread that the number of financial cut-offs required would be minimal...

...In the school field alone, the U.S...

...And to make the carrot bigger, Georgia might get another $40 million a year in U.S...

...funds if Congress approves the school aid program...

...Segregated school systems will have more to lose than ever before...

...Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars pour out of Washington into the states and communities of Dixie to subsidize segregated schools, hospitals, housing, welfare programs, research, and a host of other enterprises dependent on Federal assistance...

...President Johnson has approved the rules drawn by twenty-three agencies that operate more than 300 programs involving billions of dollars in Federal grants-in-aid each year...

...For several months government agencies have been engaged in the difficult and exacting task of drafting the regulations to govern the enforcement of Title VI...

...Their pledges to do so are a condition of further U.S...

...Observance of the public accommodations section, for example, has become so widespread that LeRoy Collins, director of the Community Relations Service, was able to report during the past month that "in the major cities in the nineteen states not having their own public accommodation laws, there has been desegregation in more than two-thirds of the hotels, motels, chain restaurants, theaters, sporis facilities, parks, and libraries...

...The state's pledge means that if local school systems sign similar pledges, Georgia's schools will continue to receive $55 million a year in Federal subsidies...

...The other reason concerns the requirement in Title VI for reports of non-compliance cases to Congressional committees—and the postponement of cut-off action for thirty days thereafter...

...They have now completed their task...

...The muscle in this provision— the stick of enforcement that follows the carrot of assistance—is the requirement that Federal agencies cut off aid to any state or local program that practices discrimination...

...Any local failure to comply requires a hearing by the Federal agency involved as well as attempts to secure voluntary compliance...

...A significant part of the long, lonely road that lies ahead is the special burden of the Federal government...

...Hopeful as these school developments are, Title VI will not work miracles of immediate integration in classrooms, or bring a speedy end to racial discrimination in welfare, housing, research, farm, or other Federally-aided programs subject to the title's cut-off provisions...

...If Congress enacts President Johnson's aid-to-education program, this present leverage to step up school desegregation in Dixie will be vastly increased because his program places heavy emphasis on aid to schools in poverty-stricken areas, the kind of low-income communities so prevalent in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and other parts of the Deep South...

...Office of Education recently sent out 121,000 "pledge" notices to school systems, colleges, and universities throughout the country, including thousands in the South, warning that to continue receiving Federal grants for programs now in force they must take immediate steps to assure the Federal government they will end any discrimination practiced in such programs...

...Thus the state's official school segregation policy, which had endured since Reconstruction days, was terminated...

...Failure to do so could mean the loss of $272,-000 in Federal school aid, and in addition open the way for Federal court action to compel Greenville's compliance...

...We will be pleasantly surprised if this delay does not encourage a series of ear-splitting protests from the Dixiecrats in Congressional committees, followed by some paralysis of will in the Federal agencies involved...

...Yet Title VI stands as a monumental reversal of the shameful policy of the past when the Federal government officially subsidized major areas of discrimination and segregation...

...Thus, unlike any state north of the Mason-Dixon line, Alabama, during fiscal 1962, the last year for which complete figures are available, received twenty-four per cent of its general state revenue in Federal grants, according to The Wall Street Journal...

...The measure of its impact for significant progress in the struggle against racism will be the extent to which the Federal government, after a reasonable period of feeling its way, boldly invokes what seems to us the most powerful and, potentially, the most decisive provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964...

...Atlanta and several other Georgia cities have been desegregating schools for several years...

...One of the most shocking—and least understood—facts about segregation is that our government has been, and remains even today, the principal financial underwriter of discrimination in the South...

...For many years the traditional formulas for dispensing Federal aids have tended to favor the poorer but segregation-ridden states of the South...

...Granted this is far from complete compliance, the important thing to note is that before the act passed, the reverse was the case...

...And the board counsel told school board members: "The real choice is whether we are going to obey the law with Federal aid or obey the law without Federal aid...

...A realist, Collins was obliged to remind the nation of the harsh fact that despite the progress of recent months, "the nation is a long, lonely way down the road from the full enjoyment of civil rights by all citizens...

...Others will agree grudgingly to comply but then may test the patience of the Federal government, which has said it will allow "reasonable" time to abolish discriminatory practices...

...Mayor Pat Dunne, reluctantly supporting the move toward desegregation, summed up community opinion when he said: "Repugnant as the law is to all of us, it's a Federal law and it's either a case of comply or close the schools...

...Happily, this shameful practice of rewarding racism may now be near-ing its end...

...If this is unavailing, the Federal agency must file a report with the Congressional committees which have jurisdiction over the program...

...Despite the hardly surprising survival of massive pockets of bitter and brutal resistance, it is worth noting that the program has achieved a greater measure of acceptance and success than most of its supporters dared hope during its long and stormy passage through the Congress...