A Report Card

SCHOOL INTEGRATION IN THE SOUTH

AT THE time the Supreme Court struck down the old separate-but-equal doctrine, on May 17, 1954, public school segregation was maintained by law in 17 states and in the District of Columbia. Last week, with a new school semester under way, a few headline-making blots of disorder in the South obscured the fact that approximately 122,000 Negro children are actually sitting in Southern classrooms with white children in formerly segregated schools. And this figure does not take in the federally operated schools (e.g., on military posts) that have integrated since May 1954, or Roman Catholic parochial schools, which in several Southern states are well ahead of state schools in integration.

Integration's most striking success story unfolded right in the nation's capital. Prodded by President Eisenhower's appeal for trailblazing, the District of Columbia's board of education was ready with an integration plan one week after the Supreme Court handed down its decision. At first white high-school students boycotted classes and booed Negro newcomers, but these protests soon ended when school authorities sternly threatened to ban troublemakers from athletic teams and other extracurricular activities. Washington, D.C. schools are now fully integrated (but 20% of the Negro schoolchildren, living in Negro neighborhoods, go to all-Negro schools), and 58,500 Negroes attend classes along with white children in what one school official called a "miracle of social adjustment." The rapid march to total integration is all the more noteworthy because Negroes make up a 68% majority among District of Columbia public school children.

Border States

None of the states have carried integration quite so far as the District of Columbia, but the six Border States, on the whole, have made heartening progress. Three-fourths of their 800 school districts with both white and Negro pupils have at least started along the path, and some 60,000 Negro children are attending integrated schools. Every one of the tax-supported colleges and universities in the six states is open to Negroes.

Delaware. Out of 61 school districts with both white and Negro children, 18 have wholly or partly ended segregation, with Wilmington entirely integrated and the southern half of the state still segregated. But the U.S. District Court has ordered the easygoing state board of education, which had left integration up to local choice, to draw up a statewide integration program.

Kentucky. About 80% of the state's Negro children live in school districts that have made at least a start toward integration. The semester just begun has seen no serious disorder even in the coal town of Sturgis, where only a year ago a white mob turned back Negro pupils trying to enter the white high school.

Maryland. Baltimore undertook integration promptly after the Supreme Court's decision, and counties soon began following along. After the southernmost county on the Western Shore admitted Negroes to white schools last fortnight, only two counties out of 23 remained 100% segregated.

Missouri. With seven new districts partially integrating this semester, integration in Missouri is well along. No serious integration disorder has been reported since compliance with the Supreme Court's order got under way three years ago. This year the state legislature finally repealed the old segregation statutes, passed a law making segregation illegal.

Oklahoma. Integration has marched along with surprising speed, a notable absence of strife. Only 51 districts out of 1,639 are still entirely segregated.

West Virginia. The integration story came to the beginning of the end last week as the school board in the last fully segregated county changed its mind and admitted Negro applicants to a white elementary school.

The Complying South

Of the eleven states that made up the Confederacy, only four have done any integrating, aside from universities and colleges.

Arkansas. All eight tax-supported colleges are open to Negroes, and as the new semester began a fortnight ago, about 50 Negroes in ten districts had enrolled in white elementary and high schools. Things seemed peaceful enough--until Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard.

North Carolina. In a token appeasement of the Federal Courts, Charlotte, Greensboro and Winston-Salem this semester admitted a total of 13 carefully screened Negroes to white schools. The lone Negro pupil at Charlotte's Harding High School withdrew last week in the face of continuing harassment. The Greensboro and Winston-Salem pioneers were still holding on.

Tennessee. Mob violence, sparked by Rabble-rouser John Kasper, flared in Clinton a year ago when Negroes entered Tennessee's first integrated school. Last week eight Negro pupils sat in Clinton High classrooms, and the town was reassuringly peaceful. But when Nashville admitted twelve Negro first-graders to white schools, Carpetbagger Kasper butted in again--with explosive results (see The Battle of Nashville).

Texas. After a promising start, the pace of integration has slowed down. Of 800-odd school districts with both white and Negro children, 122 have at least partly integrated, and so have several state-supported colleges. But in eastern Texas, where 90% of the Negro schoolchildren live, segregation fences are as high and unscalable as ever. The segregationist camp showed its power this year when the state legislature passed a law under which any school district that integrates without first holding a local referendum loses its share of state school funds. With that law on the books, no more white schools have opened doors to Negroes. But a fortnight ago a federal district judge directed the city of Dallas to start integrating its schools next semester regardless of state laws.

The Defiant South

In seven states of the South integration has proceeded not with "all deliberate speed," as the Supreme Court ordered, but with all deliberate dillydallying.

Alabama. Negroes and whites attend classes together only in two small private colleges. When an ill-advised Negro preacher in Birmingham tried to enroll Negro children at a white school last week amid growing tension fanned by the recent emasculation of a Negro and the news from Arkansas, rowdies beat him and drove him away.

Florida. Governor LeRoy Collins bills himself as a moderate, but even private colleges are still segregated. As the new semester began, no Negro parents even tried to enroll their children in white schools. Pending is a Federal Court suit challenging the constitutionality of the state's pupil assignment law.

Georgia. Total segregation, from colleges to kindergartens.

Louisiana. Some court-ordered integration at the college level, none in elementary or secondary schools. But the Federal District Court, in a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court, has ordered officials to integrate New Orleans schools.

Mississippi. No integration, no suits pending, not even any token efforts by Negroes to enroll children in white schools.

South Carolina. No integration, but the trustees of one school district (Summerton) are under a Federal Court order, upheld by the Supreme Court, to start.

Virginia. Negroes are now admitted to some formerly white-only colleges, but otherwise the state government's "massive resistance" program, with its ingenious network of segregation laws, has kept the barriers intact. Last week in Alexandria, just across the Potomac from the nation's capital, Federal Judge Albert V. Bryan dealt "massive resistance" a hard blow in ruling that school authorities in nearby Arlington "can no longer refuse admittance" to seven Negro children turned away when they tried to enroll in white schools.

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