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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 28, 1963)
orfcheirini (Editor's note: The U.S. Civil Rights commusion. in study of public ichool segregation last December, reported that the practice oi segration in the North differs only in method from that in the South. What is "Northern style" school seg regation, what causes it and how can it be remedies? In the following dispatch. UPI reporters Frederick H. Treesh. Robert W. Irvin and Leo Soroka examine the situation in three cities cited in the Civil Rights commission report New Rochelle, N.Y.; Highland Park. Mich., and St. Louis, Mo.) A UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL TEAM REPORT On a bright Monday after noon in May, 195', the United States Supreme Court hand ed down its historic decision declaring segregated schools to be unconstitutional. "Separate educational fa cilities are inherently un equal," the court said in a unanimous opinion. , The court ruled on a South ern case, but the nation was to learn that segregated schools in the North - regard less of how they got that way - were affected by its find ings. In I960, New Rochelle, N.Y., was rocked by a Federal Court order to desegregate its 94 per cent Negro Lincoln school. The publicity sur rounding the case branded New Rochelle "the Little Rock of the North." "It's a shame for them to take all the abuse when this (school segregation) is as com mon in the North as apple pie and cheese," said Negro attorney Paul Zuber, who launched the New Rochelle litigation and participated in several other desegregation cases. Hempstead, N.Y".; Newark, N.J.; Highland Park, Mich.; M iff i 4 SJt t f SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL - Armatha Risinger, 15, has been suspended from school at St. Louis, Mo., for refusing to take square dance lessons on religious grounds without having a confirming letter from her minister. She is shown at home with her father, Jewel Risinger. She was sent home twice and then suspended although her mother had written the principal and visited the school on two occasions. (UPI) Plans Being Made For Investigator Printed applications for the new special investigator on non-support cases will be available at the district attor ney's office in approximately Space Age Projects Add fo Paper Work Anaheim, Calif.-WD-Amer-ican industry is learning that paper work required for cpace age projects "multiplies nearly at the speed of light," according to C. B. McKcown, general man ager of B. F. .Goodrich Aerospace and Def ence products, Arkon, Ohio. "It has been estimated that the paper to be used on the Apollo program, if placed in a single pile, would reach the moon before the capsule," he told a conference of the American Society for Qual ity control. EMBEZZLERS GET DEATH Moscow - HPIi - Six persons have been sentenced to death in Sverdlovsk for embezzling gold and other precious met als and gems. Tass news agency reported Wednesday. Sixty-two other members of the ring received prison sen tences up to 15 years. Tass said the ring illegally oblain ed M56.000 worth of goid, platinum, rubies and other valuables from Ural Magadan ore mines. and Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis; Gary, Ind. - all scat tered Northern communities - have had segregation con troversies. There have been dozens more. A bitter feud involving picketing .ani school boy cotts is now in progress in Englewood, N.J., a fashion able suburb across the Hud son river from New York City. For a look at how segrega tion problems develop in Northern cities and suburbs, United Press International as signed reporters to study the situation in New Rochelle, where a school was desegre gated by court' order; High land Park, where a segrega tion problem was solved by negotiation, and St. Louis, where schools once desegre gated are "resegregating" be cause of shifting housing pat terns. NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y.t When the school segrega tion crisis came to New Ro chelle, N.Y., cooler heads fail ed to prevail and, in a bom bast of unfavorable publicity, the city became the first in the North to have a public school desegregated by court order. The hilly community in fashionable Westchester coun ty, just north of New York City, has a population of 77,000. Its chara "r is mainly residential. Negroes began migrating to New Rochelle decades ago from seamy Harlem and else where, attracted in part by work in light industry. The big influx came after World War II and the Negroes be came increasingly ghettoized in the aging and congested central area. By 1960, there were 16,000 Negroes residing within the city limits. Racial Balance New Rochelles' schools were for the most part successfully integrated. Its high school was bi-racial and there was a rea- two weeks, Jackson County District Attorney Alan Holmes has announced. Screening all applicants probably will start early in May, he added. "Clackamas county has set the qualifications for its spe cial investigator along civil service recommendations. They require two years of college and two years of law enforcement experience or its equivalent," Holmes said. "Our qualifications will prob ably follow those lines pretty closely. The job duties will be outlined carefully in the application forms." Jackson county circuit court judges now indicate they would require such an inves tigator in the district attor ney's office to check all di vorce cases involving chil dren. The Jackson county public welfare commission probably will want immediate follow up on their aid to dependent children cases involving non support by the father. Holmes noted. Deserted mothers will also want immediate action, he added. "We may have created a monster," the district attor ney commented. "We indicat ed to the budget committee that we will need another deputy and girl in the office in the near future to handle an increased work load." """ "Lt""""' Segregation sonable racial balance in its two junior highs, considering the preponderance of whites in the city. Eight of the city's elementary schools were inte grated without an unreason able percentage of either race. No Negroes lived near three other schools. The ugly duckling in this picture of apparent racial harmony was Lincoln school, an antique (1888) building in the central city surrounded by preponderantly Negro housing. In K60, the 400-plus student body of Lincoln was 94 per cent Negro. The board of education con tended that the imbalance re sulted solely from housing patterns and it had no obliga tion to undo a situation it did not create. Negroes com plained the school was inferi or, that over the years bound ary lines of the area it served were gerrymandered to con tain the Negroes and at times the school system's transfer policies were discriminatory: whites were allowed to trans fer out, the Negroes were not. Legal Action The emotionally charged situation came to a decisive stage in 1960 when the board of education won authority to rebuild Lincoln school on the same site. The board's deci sion was non-negotiable and the Negroes turned to legal action. On Oct. 21, lawyer Zuber filed a complaint in Federal Court, Civil Right Commis sion Investigator Frank Kcp lan wrote in the 1962 report: "The complaint, in essence, was a frontal assault on the problem of de facto school segregation . . ." On Jan. 21, 1961, Judge Irving R. Kaufman ruled that the school board had i . years past gerrymandered the Lin coln district and had discrim inated in its transfer policies. He ordered the board to pre sent a desegregation plan. Finding it unsatisfactory, the judge issued his own order, embodying free transfers to other schools but not com pelling the closing of Lincoln school. The board appealed, finally to the Supreme Court, but lost. In September, 1961, the Kaufman plan was complied with without incident. About half - the Lincoln students transferred. As to how "desegregation" of Lincoln school worked after its first full year, Law Professor Kaplan said: Sees No Chaos "There was no administra tive chaos. Lincoln did not become more racially imbal anced; rather, since most of the white students chose not to transfer, the percentage of Negroes dropped from 94 to 88 . . . nor were transferring Lincoln students greeted with hostility , . . every effort was made by both teachers and students to bring them into the life of their new schools." A number of problems still remain, not the least of which is what to do with Lincoln school. Closing it and redis tributing its student Inevita bly would tip the racial bal ance in nearby schools. Another, according to Kap lan, is this: "One of New Rochelle's two junior high schools prac tices a rigid ability grouping which has left few, if any, Negroes in the fastest classes and a preponderance in the slowest. Negro leaders have branded this type of group ing a method of segregat' Negro children and perpetuat ing the unfair treatment they have received in the elemen tary schools , . , unless some settlement is rea:hed in the near future the tranquility of New Rochelle may be dis turbed again." But the word most fre quently heard in New Ro chelle now is "hope." There appears to be a mutual rec ognition of th; magnitude of the problems and a willing ness to discuss, where for merly there was inflexibility of position. Controls Board Said attorney Zuber last week: "I think a moderate group now controls the board (of education). The structuie of the new board in New Ro chelle now makes it more 'conducive to discussions. I honestly believe they 'e try ing to do something." . Dr. David G. Salten who became superintendent of New Rochelle schools last July is hopeful for much 1'ie same reasons. (The Civil Rights commission report -scribes Salten as "a vigorous, nationally respected educator who enjoys the confidence of all factions.) Dr. Salten said he was en couraged because: "First," the board of edu cation for the first time in many years commands the re spect, if not the full agree ment, of almost everybody in the community. "Second, there has been a reduction in the polarisation - there is now a group of moderates. There Is movement toward the center; it's slow but on the way.' Dr. Salten said the school board is intensively studying the lingering segregation problem and has ordered him to prepare a long-term, com prehensive plan to improve the educational quality. "I hope one of the by products will be a reduction of ethnic imbalance," he said. Dr. Salten said the rigid ability grouping may be more indefensible from an educa tional point of view than from a segregation viewpoint and future ability groupings may be highly flexible. Attorney Zuber begins ar guments in a state court next week on a petition to require the state to pay the cost of transporting students from the Lincoln school area to other schools. They now are carried on a private bus at parents' expense. Zuber did not name the New Rochelle school system as a party to the action. HIGHLAND PARK, MICH.: This relatively young city, surrounded on four sides by Detroit, has a problem com mon to many communities across the nation: race rela tions. Yet, unlike other cities, Highland Park has proved it can settle big racial issues peaceably, without recourse to a court injunction. What's more, the problem of school segregation was resolved when white and Negro par ents banded together to op pose policies of the school board, instead of being on op posite sides. In 1907, this was a sleepy, rural area to the north of De troit. But Henry Ford built a factory to make Model T's here and it grew from 4,000 to 48.000 in the decade around World War I. It grew faster in the 20's when Walter P. Chrysler established an auto firm in the new city. Recent immigrants-Italians and Syrians - settled in the southeast corner near the fac tories. But many left after World War II and Negroes moved in. Their children went to the Donald Thomson school and it became predominantly Negro-nearly 100 per cent by 1961, Most of the white fam ilies sent their children to Barber school a half-mile away. Redisirict School In 1961, the school board redistricted and said children of either race could go to ei ther school. Negroes thought the new boundaries were to keep Thomson segregated; the whites were unhappy because the new bondaries meant some children would have to move from mostly-white Barber to mostly-Negro Thomson school. Both sides believed that if the boundaries were allowed to stand, the remaining white families would move or send their children to private or parochial schools, thus com pletly segregating Thomson. As a result, a neighborhood group-the Massachusetts Ave nue Improvement association -filed suit in Federal court against the school board. Two white men and two Negro men were plaintiffs. The plaintiffs argued Thom son was being conducted as a racially segregated school. Former Federal Judge John Feikens settled the dispute out of court. He said he would rule against the school board if it came to that-but suggest ed instead that both sides sit down and work the problem out themselves. Both Thomson and Barber schools were closed for a week while a com promise solution was worked out. The Thomson boundaries were slightly changed and it was reopened as a K-3 (kin dergarten to third grade) school, plus some special classes for mentally retarded children. Barber continued as a kindergarten to sixth grade school with the Thomson chil dren above the third grade go ing there. Crisis Remains Feikens, now a Detroit at torney, said the school settle ment "did not end the critical problems of segregated hous- ing that caused the school crisis." j "The big problem that re- j mains is one of housing," Fei- j kens said, "How are you going j to keep a school integrated and have a proper balance be-; tween Negro and white chil-j dren ... if white people con- i tinue to move out and Negroes j continue to move in? This : only makes the housing im balance worse. "The problem may eventu ally solve itself if the Massa chusetts Avenue Improvement ' association can convince the white people to stay and then ; educate the Negroes on im-1 proving the quality of their homes." Run Down Homes The neighborhood generally ; is old, often run-down frame homes. Thomson today still has only a relatively small per-! cenAge of white children among its 275 students. Most classrooms have no more than five. The building is old but I . freshly painted and children bubble with enthusiasm. "They get along well to gether," said Walter Zellman, the principal. "These smaller children don't have any built up prejudices and animosi ties." They probably were too young to realize what was happening when they picketed with their parents carrying "No Jim Crow School" signs. In its report on Highland Park, the civil rights commis sion said the settlement shows that "if reasonable men sit down together, reconciliation of differences is not impossi ble." St. Louis is facing a prob lem of "resegrega t i o n" -schools once bi-racial are be coming all-Negro or predom inantly Negro because of ghettoizing housing patterns. "On the balance, de facto segregation in the St. Louis public schools has patently worsened during the last seven years," said the U. S. Civil Rights Commission in its December report. It added: "Not a little 'resegrega Hon' has developed; that is, some schools which were pre dominantly white or substan tially inter-racial, just after desegregation, have since be come all-Negro schools or vir tually so." Mrs. Margaret Bush Wilson, Negro attorney and fourth generation St. Louisan, drew a rough map of the city. It showed the Mississippi river on the east. On the other three sides she sketched in a "black corridor," where Negro fam- savs y m supplies ,w :ms ELECTRIC THE ULTIMATE IN fmm MODEL 360 Suddenly, wonderful things happen to kitchens that have Oaf fart I Sattler built-in. What could be lovelier so completely modern that the richness of life-time porcelain purposefully accented by gleaming trim? Hera are appliances of truly timeless beauty designed by America's foremost stylists-perfected through Gaffers & Sattler's 38 years' experience in producing the finest. 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James Armstrong Scott, Ne gro asistant superintendent of schools who helped with the school site selection; agreed with Hickey that schools must be built near heavy popula tion areas. He blames the "in flux of Negroes lntd the corri dor" for the schools' resegre gation problem. Be that as it may, Negro leaders say, something must be done to reverse the trend. Mrs. Wilson suggests that the board of education consid er some other concept of as signment to schools other than the present neighborhood school plan. Reioning Plan Miss Roberts said if the board desired to improve inte gration it would consider a rezoning plan. "We redistrict and rezone political wards, why can't this be done on the school bound ary levels?" she asks. on,.. mm GAFFERS & SATTLER BUILT-INS GRACIOUS LIVING a SURFACE UNIT DECORATOR COLORS: Brushed Chrome, Sandalwood, While, Mayfalr Pink, Sunny .5239.95 Ofl QA ftWiW a Budget Price GARBAGE DISPOSALS 5-Year Unconditional Guarantee LIST $49.95 'j H.P. SALE PRICE $2695 The Civil Rights Commis sion noted that St. Louis also had a "serious imbalance in the distribution of white and Negro teachers." Wylie H. Davis, author of the civil rights commission re port on St. Louis, wrote: "N o t one predominantly white school , . . has a Negro principal. In fact, there are no Negro principals in any of the schools . . . whose enroll ments approximate a 50-50 Negro-white ratio." Most of the St. Louis schools with predominantly Negro student bodies have predomi nantly Negro faculties; visa versa with predominantly white schools. Wylie says there is no evidence Negro students suffer educationally because their teachers are Negro but there is no reason why integration of teachers need wait for a masive change in the student pattern. Despite its problems, the rights commission cites St. Louis as a place credited with "remarkable achievements in human relations" and there appeared to be "an outstand ing exception to the general rule of lack of rapport be tween school officials and the Negro community." .. "The ray of hope is that the lines of communication between Negroes and school officials are open," said a prominent St. Louis Negro leader. Vocational training in St. Louis schools has no racial bars but graduates are having serious troubles gaining ad mittance to apprenticeship programs. When you think of lighting, think of BEAVER. We have one of the largest lighting displays in Southern Oregon. Wall lights, ceiling lights, pole lamps, a light for every room in the house, plus outdoor lights. Over 500 different styles to choose from and at low discount prices. ; I A I ' MODEL 20-36 OVEN Coppertone, Turquoise, Yellow. 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