Hairsplitting in Virginia

ARLINGTON, VA. (pop. 178,500), historic site of Robert E. Lee's mansion, National Cemetery with graves of Civil War generals, and of 3,802 Negro refugees from Confederacy, Tomb of Unknown Soldier World Wars I and II; a pleasant bedroom suburb of Washington, D.C.; many Federal Government workers from North, many new white refugees from Washington's integrated school system, now 73% Negro.

Federal Judge Albert V. Bryan last year ordered five Negroes into all-white schools, later stayed his order pending appeals, last week heard out lawyers of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Arlington County school board. The school board's defense: the board had turned down all 30 Negro students now seeking admission to white schools not on grounds of race--presumably because that hardly sits with the Supreme Court's 1954-55 decisions--but on one or more of five wholly nonracial criteria that varied from the barely reasonable to the ridiculous.

Eleven out of the 30 Negroes were turned down, said the school board, because they did not live within white-school-area boundaries as interpreted by the school board. Five Negroes trying to get into Washington-Lee High School, turned down because Washington-Lee is overcrowded (which it is), were sent back not to nearby white schools, but back to the all-Negro school they came from. Twenty-one Negroes were turned down because their academic achievement was inadequate--whereupon the N.A.A.C.P.'s lawyers pointed out that one rejected Negro had an IQ of 126-137, another of 112, that 13 out of the original 30 had IQs of 100-plus. The school board's fourth criterion was "psychological problems," and eight Negroes were turned down after their records had been checked by the Director of Psychological Research at the Virginia Department of Mental Hygiene and Hospitals. Sample psychological finding: "Shy."

That left five Negroes to go, and these, said the school board, failed to meet the last criterion--"adaptability to new situations." Straightfaced, Arlington School Board Superintendent Ray E. Reid testified that the five Negroes sure had "outstanding qualities" to get through the first four criteria, but that was just why they ought not to be admitted to white schools. Reid's reasoning: in white schools these young Negro leaders "would get feelings of inferiority" and would not be such good leaders. At last, under questioning, Reid admitted that the five criteria had not been applied to Arlington's whites. "So," said an N.A.A.C.P. lawyer, "race was the factor." At last, in a weak, barely audible voice, Reid answered: "Yes."

Situation at week's end: 1) Judge Bryan deferred his ruling, let Arlington's schools reopen segregated, pending the Supreme Court's decision; 2) the N.A.A.C.P. was able, in effect, to rest its own case on the school board's farce.

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