Alabama Must Integrate

In an effort to end some of the academic deprivation that Negro children have suffered in Alabama, a federal district court last week ordered the state board of education to integrate all public schools by next fall. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel marks the first time that an entire state has been put under injunction to desegregate. Previously, civil rights organizations have had to seek rulings against individual school districts. Despite years of bitter court litigation, only 19 of Alabama's 118 school boards have been explicitly enjoined to end segregation in their schools.

The new court order, signed by District Judges Frank M. Johnson Jr. and H. H. Grooms and Judge Richard T. Rives of the Circuit Court of Appeals, came in response to a suit initiated last November by the N.A.A.C.P. It charged that Alabama's Governor and the state board of education were willfully evading the Supreme Court's 1954 school-desegregation rulings. The Montgomery court in effect goes beyond the Supreme Court guideline that integration should proceed with "all deliberate speed," which had provided a convenient loophole for the state to delay compliance with the law. So far, substantive integration steps have been taken in only 58 of Alabama's school districts; only 76 of the state's 28,000 teachers are currently assigned to schools containing students of another race.

In their decision, the judges noted that segregation had saddled the Negro community with "markedly inferior educational opportunities." More than 25% of the Negro high schools in Alabama are unaccredited, compared with 3.4% of the white schools. Moreover, Alabama's investment in school buildings and equipment is $607 for each white student, only $295 for every Negro pupil. The court order allows every student to enroll in the school of his choice starting next fall and implies that punitive action will be taken against state and school board officials who seek to evade the ruling. It also tosses out as unconstitutional a state law under which tuition grants of $185 a year have been given to white students so that they could attend segregated private schools rather than public schools the courts have ordered to integrate.

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