Desegregation Prospects

In the entire South last spring--six years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional--a grand total of 4.200 Negro children attended classes with whites. The vast ma jority of that number--some 3,300--were in 125 west Texas districts. There were 22 in one Miami school and 490 in another that had only eight white students. In the rest of the South, the number rose from 199 the year before to 400. Yet even that tiny gain, most of it token integration, was the biggest in history. What will happen this year?

Last week, summing up the long legal battle "over the careers of a few amazingly staunch Negro children." the Southern Regional Council pinpointed key areas for 1960.

The most dramatic is New Orleans, where Louisiana's Governor Jimmie Davis seems determined to repeat the Little Rock debacle. To block a federal court order for first-grade integration this fall, Davis recently seized control of the city's public schools. Under new state laws, he was empowered to close any integrated school. In turn, the federal courts might have closed all schools in the state.

Before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week, white taxpayers and N.A.A.C.P. lawyers challenged Davis' move. Appearing for the defense. Louisiana's Attorney General Jack P. F. Gremillion lost his temper. "I am not going to stay in this den of iniquity,'' cried he, stalking from the room. The three-judge court promptly cited him for contempt, declared Davis' seizure unconstitutional--and returned New Orleans' schools to the school board. Of the board's five members, four favor opening the schools next week on an integrated basis.

The next move is up to Davis. If a real crisis occurs, said S.R.C. last week, "prospects will be gloomy for the South and for national self-respect." But if New Orleans complies, "the myth of Southern ability to defy the law will have been fatally punctured; the consequences could be an emotional release in the upper South that would enable desegregation to move without the lash of law.''

Other areas may be equally significant. Among them:

P: Houston, where for three years the nation's biggest segregated school system has evaded court orders by "ingenious procrastination." Reason: loss of state aid if the schools integrate. But last month Houston's federal district court ordered first-grade integration this fall, and a grade a year thereafter. Last week the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to halt integration while considering an appeal on the ruling, and Houston must desegregate. Should the state try to cut off aid. Houston might be forced to close its schools--more likely it would challenge the state's anti-integration laws in court.

P: Virginia, where "massive resistance" has slowly turned to a "containment" policy of local option. One impetus: the experience of Norfolk, which closed all high schools in 1958 to avoid integration. One out of five students got no schooling at all, reported three University of North Carolina sociologists last week, and hundreds of parents felt "inconvenience and despair." Virginia's Pupil Placement Board has begun voluntarily assigning Negroes to white schools. Some 150 Negroes will be integrated this fall.

P: Florida, where new N.A.A.C.P. lawsuits "may have more basic effect on school desegregation throughout the South than will the events of any other area, even New Orleans." The key case involves Daytona Beach. The plaintiffs ask not only enjoinment of the segregated school system, but also a complete reorganization of the schools on a nonracial basis. No other suit has been so comprehensive.

What may well speed the "plodding gait of the law." says S.R.C.. is the profound effect of Negro sit-in strikes on the South. S.R.C. considers them "the most important development of 1960." With an impressive number of lunch-counter settlements to their credit, the strikers succeeded "in causing white Southerners to see Negro Southerners as individuals." Such is the crux of the case for school desegregation. "What so many dime stores have acknowledged is what the lawsuits have asked, and still ask, the school systems to practice."

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