To Do Right

Mrs. Annie Taylor has spent half of her 48 years as a teacher in the Floydada, Texas grade school for Negroes. This year, before she could qualify for a renewed contract, state law required that she go back to school herself for some courses in elementary education. And the most convenient place for "Miss Annie" to do her graduate work was Wayland College, a white Baptist institution at Plainview, only 28 miles away.

Wayland has received inquiries from Negroes before, but not until Miss Annie sent a transcript of her record did the college find one who was academically qualified. Like other Southern colleges, Wayland might well have waited until the courts ordered an end to racial restrictions. But one day before the spring term ended, Wayland's president, Dr. J. W. ("Bill") Marshall, called faculty and students away from final exams, asked them to vote on Miss Annie's application. No faculty members, and only nine out of 274 students, had any objection.

The next night Dr. Marshall faced the board of trustees. "Our concern," he explained, "is that we do right, and if we do right, God will see that we come out right." Despite token resistance from some West Texas trustees, the board decided that to "do right" was to open "the academic facilities of Wayland College . . . to students of all races and nationalities."

Last week when Miss Annie enrolled, Wayland proved that it meant just what it said. Taking advantage of Wayland's new democracy, three other Negroes had also signed up in the summer session for "leveling out" courses that would entitle them to school promotions.

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After a 15-month-long legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the University of North Carolina this week abandoned its argument that the state provided equal but separate facilities for Negro graduate students, opened its doors to four Negroes for the first time in its 156-year history. Their course of study: the law.

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