As School Opens

The first school year after the Supreme Court's decision against segregated schools is about to begin. What changes will be made?

In the Deep South there is a general determination to ignore, defy or circumvent the ruling, but no particular plan has been adopted. Deep Southerners are sulkily marking time, waiting for the Supreme Court's next move, which will be a decree outlining federal procedures for enforcing desegregation. The court will hear arguments on this subject in mid-October, may take several months to write its de cree.

By no means is all school segregation in the Deep South, and last May's decision has been followed by many significant steps, most of them taken by local school boards. Among the changes:

The District of Columbia will integrate its kindergartens beginning this month. Also, this fall 2,900 Negroes will be moved out of overcrowded Jim Crow schools into white schools. Next January all junior-high-school graduates will be sent to high schools nearest their homes, and in September 1955 integration will be completed for all students.

Delaware is split. Except for one school district (Dover), the two southern counties have done little toward desegregation. Eight school districts in New Castle, the state's northern county, have varying plans to end segregation gradually. Wilmington pupils in the first six grades will be mixed this month; in nearby Newark, only the junior high and high school will be integrated.

Maryland's rural counties have done nothing yet to end segregation, but Baltimore city officials say they will end segregation in all of the city's 198 grade and high schools this month.

Kansas, where nine cities have segregation under a local option law, is ready to comply with the Supreme Court. The segregated cities, such as Topeka. plan to integrate their schools over a two-year period.

West Virginia school districts with small Negro populations are launching cautious integration plans this fall. Districts with large Negro populations are waiting.

Tennessee, one of the few states to abandon the wait-and-see lethargy of state capitals, has tackled the problem on a statewide basis. The state has asked permission to file a brief next month as a friend of the Supreme Court. Tennessee's brief is expected to suggest that schoolchildren be integrated gradually, beginning with the first grade and moving up through the grades as the years pass. Said State Solicitor General Allison B. Humphreys: "The question [of segregation] was settled by decision last May. We see no point in further arguing that issue." Meanwhile, Tennessee schools will stay segregated for this semester, at least.

Oklahoma public schools have taken no action to end segregation this semester, but Roman Catholic parochial schools are mixing 1,000 Negro pupils with 13,000 whites.

Arkansas has said it will comply with the Supreme Court decision, but school districts are not compelled to act this semester, and almost none have. One that did was Fayetteville, Ark., which will integrate twelve Negro high-school students as an economy move. Fayetteville had been bearing the cost of boarding the dozen students 50 miles away at Fort Smith, site of the nearest Negro high school.

Missouri has left the question of segregation this semester up to local school boards. A few have acted, and the others are submitting long-range desegregation plans to state officials. St. Louis will end segregation this fall in two city-owned teachers colleges and in its schools for the handicapped; high-school segregation will end next semester and elementary-school segregation next fall.

Even though school segregation is breaking down in Missouri, other forms of discrimination against Negro children are still in stubborn conflict. Last week eleven youngsters, two of them Negroes, were returning to St. Louis from a ten-day stay at an Episcopal church camp at Lake of the Ozarks. During a 45-minute layover in Jefferson City, Mo., they were refused service by restaurants in the shadow of the state capitol. Improvising, the whole group bought sandwiches and soda pop, ate a desegregated lunch on a street curb (see cut p. 13).

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