Philadelphia Dilemma

Squarely in the middle of North Philadelphia's Negro ghetto stands a high-walled oasis: Girard College (endowment: $70 million), a 42-acre stretch of green lawns and classic buildings devoted to the free education of 700 "poor, white male orphans." To desegregate Girard has become the consuming passion of Cecil Moore, the militant president of Philadelphia's N.A.A.C.P. "It's a perpetual red flag," protests Moore. "A boy wakes up every morning to see a reminder that he's inferior."

Last week N.A.A.C.P. pickets ringed Philadelphia's State Office Building as Girard's trustees conferred inside with Pennsylvania's Governor William Scranton. Giving point to the urgency of the talks, a scuffle broke out between police and pickets: five Negroes were arrested, bringing the total to 24 since the N.A.A.C.P. started picketing Girard's "Berlin Wall" last May.

Girard (actually a school rather than a college) bars Negroes because of the seemingly unbreakable will of Founder Stephen Girard. When he died in 1831, reputedly the nation's richest man, Shipping Tycoon Girard added a segregation clause to his $6,000,000 bequest on the then plausible theory that quality education would suffer if the sons of slaves were mixed with the sons of whites. Agreeing at the time, the city accepted the money, and the state later ran the school with public trustees.

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld two would-be Negro applicants and struck down Girard's color bar as a violation of the 14th Amendment guarantee against state-enforced racial discrimination. Loath to meddle with Girard's will, however, the Philadelphia Orphans Court merely substituted private for public trustees. Since the school was no longer a public agency, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal challenging the Orphans Court's action.

Girard's trustees contend that they are helpless to change the offending clause. In 1962, however, New Orleans' Tulane University broke a similar color bar by voluntarily admitting Negroes and thereby starting a court test of its power to do so. Because private discrimination is lawful, ruled a federal court, Tulane was free both to exclude Negroes--and to admit them. After last week's meeting with Governor Scranton, Girard's trustees tentatively agreed to undertake a new legal attack on Girard's will. Their tactics have not yet been chosen, and meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P.'s Cecil Moore has no intention of calling off his pickets. Says he: "We will never call off demonstrations until we go over the wall."

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