A Dubious Precedent

When Judge W. Arthur Garrity placed South Boston High School in federal receivership last December, he cited the precedent of a small rural Georgia school system that was taken over by the courts ten years ago, after it tried to circumvent federal desegregation guidelines. But on close inspection, the consequences of that Georgia takeover do not bode well for South Boston: instead of leading to integration, the court's intervention resulted in a school system that now has only black students.

The Georgia case had its roots in a 1965 voter-registration drive organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Taliaferro County (pronounced "Tolliver" by residents). As part of the campaign, which was sparked by an impassioned speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in the county seat of Crawfordville (pop. 786), black leaders called for desegregation of Taliaferro's two public schools. Murden School (enrollment 600) was all black; the Alexander Stephens Institute (enrollment 203) was all white.

The Federal Government responded to the campaign by ordering the schools desegregated, and Lola Williams, the county's white school superintendent, issued a statement that any student in the system could attend the school of his choice. But when 88 blacks said they wanted to transfer to Alexander Stephens, Williams and the all-white school board simply closed the school. They explained that all of Stephens' pupils had asked to transfer to schools in adjoining counties. Taliaferro school buses were then used to carry the whites to schools outside the county. When black students tried to board the buses, their way was blocked; in one demonstration, the Grand Dragon of Georgia's Ku Klux Klan attacked a black student who was trying to climb on a bus full of whites.

Choice of Schools. After black parents filed suit in the U.S. district court charging that their children's rights were being violated, a three-judge panel placed the Taliaferro school system in federal receivership under Claude Purcell, the state superintendent of schools. To give blacks as wide a choice of schools as whites, Purcell demanded that schools in other Georgia counties take any of Taliaferro's blacks who applied; 42 blacks did transfer out and were accepted peacefully. Purcell also ordered the reopening and desegregation of Alexander Stephens. This done, the court took the school system out of receivership and gave control back to Superintendent Williams.

Although Taliaferro's two schools have been technically desegregated for a decade, not a single white has attended them since the court takeover. Nonetheless, they are still run by Lola Williams and an all-white school board. Taliaferro's white students have moved either to private academies (five have been set up since 1965), or to public schools outside the county. Some white families have moved out of the county, and Taliaferro's population (then 62%, now 64% black) has dropped from 3,300 in 1965 to 2,400 today.

Taliaferro whites are still bitter about the federal receivership, claiming that the order destroyed the county's school system. Blacks are simply resigned. Says George Hughes, a Crawfordville black leader: "The courts did the only thing they could do. But you just can't force white students to go to the public schools."

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