The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 11, 1957

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that an administrative assistant to Governor Orval Faubus stated to reporters that he had canceled all of his appointments this date because he was exhausted. He had been keeping long hours since he had called out the National Guard a week earlier to prevent violence at Little Rock's Central High School as nine black students had been scheduled to enroll the prior Tuesday, subsequently prevented by the Guard from entering the school in the face of white protests. The Governor's counsel was preparing evidence for presentation in Federal District Court nine days hence in support of the notion that racial violence would have exploded in Little Rock had the Governor not barred the black students from enrollment, with the Governor having told the press that it would be all forms of evidence, including documentary and witness testimony. The previous day, the Governor had quietly accepted service of a summons to appear on September 20 before the Federal District Court to answer an order to show cause why the Governor and the Guard should not be barred from further interference with the Court's previous orders to integrate the high school.

In Nashville, police officers were determined to "stop any more trouble before it gets started" and so arrested segregationist John Kasper and ten black people before midmorning, as integrated classes resumed in the first grades at six elementary schools. Mr. Kasper, from Baltimore, had been arrested shortly after midnight and held in jail without bond on charges of inciting to riot, his third arrest in Nashville during the prior 12 hours. The ten blacks, including two juveniles, were arrested by police officers near various integrated City schools, charged with carrying firearms. The assistant police chief said that some of those arrested had carried pistols and some had shotguns, taken into custody within two blocks of the integrated elementary schools. Police kept all outsiders from coming any closer, maintaining roadblocks around each elementary school for one block in each direction. Mayor Ben West and City school officials sought a Federal injunction against the activities in Nashville of Mr. Kasper, already convicted for contempt by an all-white jury in Knoxville on July 23 for his violation of a District Court order not to interfere with integration at the Clinton High School in east Tennessee. The Mayor said that he would attempt to have the appellate bond of Mr. Kasper canceled in the Clinton matter. The third day of integrated first-grade classes in Nashville resumed without incident, but with continued sharply reduced attendance, as many white parents had kept their children home from school.

In Birmingham, Ala., a dummy was hung in effigy and another was burned at separate white high schools this date in the aftermath of an effort to integrate the City school system. Heavy police guards dispersed small crowds which had gathered sporadically during the night at several schools. A dummy had been burned at Phillips High School, where the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth had been beaten on Monday as he had driven up to attempt to enroll four black students in the school. A dummy was hung in effigy at Ensley High School, located in the steel mill area. The Reverend Shuttlesworth had called off efforts for immediate enrollment by black students at white schools the previous day, and said he would await the results of tests which would begin the following week for the eight black students seeking admittance to three white schools, the tests being the first use of Alabama's school placement law, giving local school boards unlimited power. The City Schools superintendent described the tests as normal, routine achievement and aptitude tests. He had been instructed the previous week by the School Board to receive the applications for enrollment of the black students who were seeking to enter white schools and was also instructed to gather information for a later report to the Board. The state school placement law made no mention of segregation, but its sponsors had said openly that it was an effort to avert racial integration in the state's schools.

Jim Thomasson of the Associated Press reports from Atlanta that public school segregation was slowly dissolving in the South, three years after Brown v. Board of Education, with some indication that action in that direction might go even more slowly in the Deep South. The effort had been mostly peaceful, but had been marked by occasional violence. Of the 17 states which maintained segregated schools prior to the Brown decision, only in the traditionally segregated seven Southern states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi and Virginia were all public schools still segregated. In several of those states, however, segregation was under legal attack. Integration had proceeded inward from the border states, with at least some schools now integrated in Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. But the Southern School News, the publication of the Southern Education Reporting Service, a fact-finding agency created to compile information on developments arising from Brown, reported in its latest edition that while 738 school districts had begun or accomplished desegregation since 1954, there remained 2,300 "biracial districts still tightly segregated". Most of the 2,300 districts were in the Deep South, but segregation also remained in virtually all of the border states, contributing to spotty integration. Each of the four new school fall terms since Brown had been decided, had brought a flareup of disturbances, with demonstrations having taken place in West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia in 1954, in Clinton, Tenn., Sturgis and Clay, Ky., and Mansfield, Tex., in 1956, and in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Nashville in the current year. Less well-known had been demonstrations in such places as San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, St. Louis, Louisville, and Ozark, Ark. Harold Fleming of the Southern Regional Council, an organization devoted to better race relations, conceded that there was no easy answer as to why violence flared in some districts and not in others when desegregation was initiated. He believed that some contributing factors could be identified, however, such as the low ratio of black population and the cost of maintaining separate schools in smaller systems, community climate and proper preparation to smooth integration in some areas, the local history of peaceful race relations, and previous integration of ministerial or physicians groups, libraries, buses, playgrounds and the like. St. Louis was cited as an example of being prepared for integration, with an extensive program having been undertaken there, resulting in integration having been accomplished with a minimum of disturbances. On the other side, according to Mr. Fleming, were places where citizens and leaders were not ready for integration and where there were strong or outspoken pro-segregation groups, leading to difficulty. After moving rapidly in the border states during the first two years, integration in the public schools had become slower during the current fall, such that of the 738 districts which had begun integration, only 25, according to Southern School News, had begun integration during the current year. That publication had actually listed 27 such districts, but included Little Rock and North Little Rock, where the effort at least temporarily had been balked during the previous week. Districts beginning integration in the current year included three in Arkansas, six in Kentucky, one in Maryland, seven in Missouri, three in North Carolina, four in Oklahoma and one in Tennessee.

In Alexandria, Va., a Federal District Court judge refused this date to delay arguments on a motion for an order directing the admission to Arlington County white schools of seven black students.

In Philadelphia, the Orphans Court this date rejected the applications of two black students to Girard College, while, at the same time, removing the Board of City Trusts as trustees of the private school.

In Newport, R.I., the President, continuing his vacation, this date signed a bill providing for admittance of up to about 70,000 aliens presently barred from the country. The measure fell far short of what the President had sought.

In Charlotte, a City policeman was told this date that he had acted "hastily" in arresting a black man for perjury just after he had left Superior Court the previous day. The officer, appearing before Superior Court Judge Dan K. Moore, future Governor, this date to answer charges of contempt of court for allegedly "manhandling" a witness who had changed his story, was given a brief lecture and returned to duty by the judge. During a trial the previous day for hit-and-run, the witness told the court that he had not told the truth when he accused the defendant of driving the vehicle in question, and the defendant was thereafter acquitted, after having been convicted on July 14 in City Recorder's Court, then appealing to the Superior Court. When the witness had departed the courtroom the previous afternoon, the police officer rushed after him and placed him under arrest for perjury. An attorney told the court that he had observed what had occurred and that the officer had "manhandled" the witness, indicating that "a man like that" had "no business" on the police force. He said that the officer had grabbed the witness by the collar and belt and "ran him like a dog" from the courthouse. The officer testified that he merely told the witness that he was under arrest for perjury and grabbed the man's belt in back. The judge said that the officer had "acted unwisely", adding that he doubted "seriously if it was a legal arrest". He said that the officer or one of his superiors should have made the facts known to the court or to the solicitor, noting that a police officer spent a great amount of time and energy preparing a case for trial and that it was natural to resent a witness who changed his story. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn told the newspaper during the morning that the officer had been wrong in grabbing the witness.

The editorial page is here. "Keepers of the Peace Must Be Careful" rates Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas a "bust" as a keeper of the peace. He had pointed out that his son was enrolled in an integrated college and that seven public school districts in Arkansas were integrated and that the citizenry had been "less vocal" and had made "more progress" in integration than any state in the South. He claimed specifically that Arkansas had outpaced North Carolina, with more black students integrated into the Van Buren School than the total number, ten, thus far entering North Carolina schools in Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. The Governor returned to the notion that all he was doing in mobilizing the National Guard was seeking to preserve the peace.

The piece finds, however, that the trouble had occurred only after the Guard had surrounded Central High School in Little Rock, and that in the wake of the order, there had been fresh outbreaks of violence in other states, including the dynamite bombing of an elementary school in Nashville the previous day, where only one black first-grade pupil had registered. It finds no evidence that the Governor's order had led directly to such incidents, but that "a keeper of the peace who has created a martial atmosphere must be careful if that atmosphere is not to infect ordinary citizens with a desire for reckless action and talk." It suggests that he had not been careful and that his position had been widely misunderstood. He had even cited reports of a plot in Northern cities to assassinate him, although he had paid no attention to the reports. He had also suggested baseless charges that the Federal Government was about to arrest him and that the Government was illegally tapping his phones. It finds that such conduct by the Governor did not suggest that he was earnestly seeking to calm passions and promote tranquility.

It concludes that "as a keeper of the peace, the governor ought to turn in his badge."

As we have fallen behind, full notes on the pages will be sporadic until we catch up.