Integrated, but Unequal

When Coosa County, Ala., began to desegregate its schools this fall, it promptly closed its all-black high school, though a new gym, science lab, workshop and other facilities had been added to it only eight years ago. It then had to add classrooms to the formerly all-white schools to make room for the black students. In Smith County, Miss., another black high school in good condition was closed, and the overcrowding that has resulted in one of the formerly all-white schools is being alleviated by buying mobile classrooms.

In all the backing and filling going on in the South in order to desegregate the schools, the greatest single source of anger in the black communities has been the wholesale closing of their own physically adequate schools, according to a new 119-page report is sued last week by six civil rights groups.* Not only does this usually mean more busing for black students than their white counterparts, but black neighborhoods also lose much-needed meeting places. Worst of all, the closings are seen as insulting acts of racism, usually-perpetrated because white parents cannot tolerate having their children attend schools once set aside for blacks.

Sharply Critical. Even when the black schools remain open, their names, such as Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver, are usually changed before white students are assigned to them. Black students, on the other hand, are expected to be happy to attend schools named for Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Strom Thurmond.

Equally demoralizing has been the dismissal or humiliation of black teachers and administrators, according to the report, the result of an investigation by a team of monitors (mostly volunteer attorneys) who visited 467 Southern school districts last September. They found that at least 985 black principals and teachers had been either dismissed, demoted or did not have their contracts renewed.

The report is sharply critical of the Nixon Administration's boast that 90% of the Southern school systems are now desegregated. Not only are there many segregated schools within such systems, but even in desegregated schools widespread segregation persists in classrooms, buses and extracurricular activities.

No Afros. In Anderson County, S.C., monitors found black students sitting on one side of the room for a high school history class, while the white students sat on the other, with a row of empty desks down the middle. Chalkboards similarly divided a classroom in Carthage, Texas. For recreation, the black high school students in Alexander City, Ala., had one gym, one black-and-white TV set and a small lounge with straight chairs. The white high school students had three gyms, two swimming pools, a color TV and a large lounge with sofas. In Tyler, Texas, black girls were told that they could not have their senior-class pictures taken if they were wearing Afros.

"The Constitution forbids, not just racial separation, but racial discrimination," the report concludes. "Indeed, face-to-face discrimination against black children may do more direct and lasting harm than did the old systems of isolation and separation." Such discrimination must be dealt with immediately and forcefully, says the report. A start has already been made. About 100 investigations into abuses within the newly desegregated schools have been begun by HEW since last September.

* The American Friends Service Committee, the Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Lawyers' Constitutional Defense Committee, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Washington Research Project.

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