Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / May 17, 1956, edition 1 / Page 2
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pari mo THE - DAILY TAR MS EL Two Years O v fl- l-he-' Road I Two years ao tins morning the Supreme Court of tlie United States '.landed down the derision tltat lias caused the Southland to shake visahly;, The shaking has not yet stopped. " Chiel Justice "Warren read the unanimous decision: "We conclude that in, tw field of public education the doctrine of separate but 'equal, (sic) has no place. SeparaLe educational, facilit; ties are inherently unequal." The decision has become known in the past two years by terms that stiike deeply into the hearts ,of Southerners:. Integration; Desegre gation. And if has made another term mean more for the Negroes of this nation: Segregation. The original decision w.ts fol lowed bv more specific rulings by th? Supreme -Court.' Segregated in terstate transportation was declar ed illegal. Negroes were given the tight to use municipal entertain ment areas, slu h as golf courses and public beaches. And they were giv en, by tlie Supreme Court, the right to attend the public schools thev wished to attend. Along with the decision has come .t whole new vocabulary for the South. People w ho never heard of Interposition and Nullification started using it almost every day. The word Patriot took on a new meaning. A--Manifesto, which for merly implied a doctrine of the communist-thinking peoples, be came, for some people, another wed;e to stick in the way of the court. . It wasn't just a new vocabulary that developed, in the Southland. People's emotions developed, too, sometimes to the breaking point. Sometimes people, white people, got so emotional over the desegre gation opinion that they killed. Sometimes people, Negro people, were given a fierce new hope by the court's Tilling, and they tried their hardest to i equality un der the law of i lie South. In North - C trolina the people witched' the tl sgration -'decision affect tb"' daily lives, and they were in re moderate and sensible .'.U.mt it than some of their fellow Southerners. Yet some people, stubborn people in public offices, bcoame rabble-rousers overnight, living to appeal to the people's emotions. A professor, in the University's Medical School, who believes the Negro people are biologically in ferior to the whites, was named pre sident of a statewide organization called the Patriots of North Caro lina Inc. Dr. George (whose writ ings appear on the opposite page) was serious in his belief that the The Daily Tar Heel The official student publication of the Publications Board of the University of North Carolina, where it is published d; iJy except Sunday, Monday and exam ination and vacation periods and sum mer terms. Entered as second class mat ter in the post office in Chapel Hill, N C, under the Act of Iarch 8, 1870. . Subscription rates: mailed, $4 per year, $2.50 a semester; delivered, $6 a year, $2.50 a semester. Elitor FRED POWLEDGE Managing Editor CHARLIE JOHNSON News Editor 1 RAY LINKER Business Manager - BILL BOB PEEL Sports Editor.,. WAYNE BISHOP Advertising Manager. Dick Sirkin. Photographer Truman Moore Circulation Manager Milton Mbye Subscription Manager Dale Staley Assistant Sports Editor Larry Cheek L.brarian Stall Artist George A. George Charlie Daniel Coed Editor -Peg Humphrey NEWS STAFF alike Vester, Clarke Jones, Neil Bass, Billy Barnes, Stan Urennan, Carolyn Thompson, Walter Schruntek, Doris Burgess. BUSINESS STAFF Fred KaUin, Stao Bershaw, Rosa Moore, Charlotte Lilly, Johnny Whitaker. (JITICK TELEPHONES News, .editor in, subscription: 9-33G1. News, bus-.. nH: H237I; Night phone:' 8-44 4 or 445. ;i j it Editor Mike Vester I unnoi Moderation Patriots could do a great deal to keep .North Carolina segregated, lint there are people who watched Dr. George at an Orange County meeting of the Patriots, and who remaiked that he did not seem pleased at the emotional appeal exen i.sed hy .one ol the ral)l)le-rouS-ing speakers. ., . 'Many of the students on tin's campus ;1 e lieve'jtlia t segrega t ion i s goo(ii aiid:that integration: is had. i I his newspaper 'does not share that belief. J lh is. newspaper he Ijees that .Negroes were created ecjital to whites, biologically and every other way, and that if they are given the. chance to attend the same sc hools and live the same lives their wh'ite contemporaries, they will rise to the positions of leader ship that heretofore have been re served for people with white skins. In the past two years, North Carolina and the UNC campus have, perhaps, shown "considerable moderation on tlie subject of seg- regatioiHntegration. That moder ation is good. It is the only way we c.n pull ourselves out of the near-utter confusion that has come from the court's ruling two years ago this morning. Iut simple mo deration is not enough. We must be moderate and, at the same time, work toward implementation of the Supreme Court's decision. Other areas in the South have not behaved as well as North Caro lina, and in some cases North Car olina has not used its intelligence verv well. Yesterday's newspapers told of the charges of the, National Assn. for the Advancement of Col ored People that in 19 N. C. coun-: ties Negroes have been denied the right to vote. In a county in Tennessee, one of our students. rejwrts, the sheriff sits by the brllot box, gun in his hand. And in Mississippi., .which', with Ixmisiana forms the most backward area in North America, there is the story of an elaborate spy ne work, sex r by the gover-. nor of that state, to be the "eyes and ears" of Mississippi's fight to maintain segregation. On the criii pus, there is a sad lack of initiative to implement the court's decision where it could be implemented easiest. The University, in what was ob viously a "Wc tried we're sor ry" action, fought the entrance of three undergraduate Negroes to this campus. It lost. lint the Uni versity has show n nothing but backwardness in refusing to allow white students to share, the same dormitory floor with Negroes. Elsewhere' on the campus, white students are stacked three in a room. But there are hopeful signs. In Alabama, where'hoodlums attack ed singer Nat (King) Cole, the people seemed in sympathy with Cole, , even though he is a Negro. -(But, "on the other side, a Charlotte disc joc key was fired for expressing his opinion about the incident.) In Eeaksville this week, a for mer mavor resigned from the Pa triors organization in . that area, charging the group had become "the opposite of patriotic." Vhat lie should have added (but he would not have been welcome in Leaksville if he had) is that the Patriots of North Carolina Inc. are just the present-day counter parts of the Ku Klux Klan. North Carolina's future, we feel, in the battle between segregation and integration ,is almost secure. Our leaders, if they can shake off the pressures of the Patriots , and the reactionaries, can arrive 'at a moderate course toward implemen tation, of the court's decision. Theother states in the South, .we fear, will not fare so well. They will be beset, for quite some time, by 'murders and lynchings and hangings and, .maybe, by resigna tion of the Negro race to the late of continued segregation. Such a fate will, in time, place those states in the backward class of Mississip pi and Iouisiaua. During the past two years of tur moil in the South, there has emer ged a tiny segment of the people " that' waiits;the-iiw)derate course to ward .-desegregation. With ' help from Cod, that segment 'will grow and the people will be free. TWO YEARS LATER: I he SouiH s John Popham (The following summary of the standing of the - United. States two years after the Su preme Court's ruling that seg regation is unconstitutional is reprinted from last Sunday's Neto York Times) . C 1 1 AT AN 0 0( j A, Tenn. Next Thursday will be the Second an .niversary of the Supreme 'Court's historic ruling ."that public- school radar segregation, laws are un constitutional. . In the intervening monthJ the issue of compliance. ..with the court's decision has posed a do mestic ti'ilemma of vast social and political implications. The court itself clearly recog nized the great complexity of the problem when it waited until May 30, 1935, to hand down in writing a final decree that forth a formula designed to help the school systems accommo date to the new, legal principle. This decree set no specific time limit for compliance and emphasized that the problem was one calling for extended consul tation at bolhourt and communi ty leveL. To this end the court entrusted the mechanics of trans ition to local Federal district courts and local school districts. -These two units together, the court directed, should "aess" their situations, recognize the administrative "complexities," in sure a "prompt and reasonable start" and do the job with "all deliberate speed" as quickly as 'practicable" in the circum stances. VARIED REACTION The desegregation order af fected seventeen -states and the District of Columbia, where Ne gro and white students were re quired by law to attend sepa rate schools. Reaction to the or der in this area ha. ranged from grudging acceptance to violent protest. - In border states and in some mountain counties throughout the region where some localities have Negro populations as low as 1 to 12 per cent, there has been successful compliance. .'But in the traditional South land," where Negro population in some counties runs as high as 50 ' per cent and more, and where economic and social forces are c''rongly buttressed by prevail ing racial customs, there has been hardening resistance and a militant search for stratagems to circumvent the court order. This is the situation on the second anniversary of the deseg regation order: THE SCORE i Deleware, Maryland, West Vir ginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Okla homa and Texas have made starts on dcgregation. These begin nings range in degree from West Virginia's compliance in all but five of its fifty-five counties, to Texas' compliance in sixty-five school districts situated in ac tions that . account for about 10 per cent of the state's Negro stu dents. " In all of these states except Texas there are official policies at some upper level of govern ment calling for desegregation of schools. s Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida are await ing further action at both' court and state government levels. In Arkansas three small school dis-- Li'l Abner Capp (- :?-V;Y5 SLEEPA t-ACFUL AN HA,'-Y-'Y. Af-f yAATS "EM T S4Y 7.-ET WAV) IF m ;j fe if m ft f if H4r . -.1. u 'Are All These Kids Yours? f ir--- 7- h) -r' AvKi 73 nfi t0 tricts with fewer than fifty Ne gro pupila now, have;! mixed classes, but recent proposals to circumvent desegregation., have been approved by Gov. Orval Faubus, a candidate for re-election this year. - , : - DELAY IN TENNESSEE In Tennessee (there is only one desegregated area -wvtheii high schools of Oak Ridge,' the Fed eral atomic installation BjMnuiU' i ,nty. 'f ' - r-'vi v ' Florida has ;no "desegregation in its public schools; and va- com-, mittee has, been named Iq seek "legal i?anctions" for m-aintaln-ing segregated schools.-, ?r Alabama, Georgia, ,;Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina . and Virginia are strongly opposed to the desegregation order. ; Missis sippi, Georgia and South Caro lina have adopted "last resort" legislative measures abolish their public schools rather than desegregate. ' : . - -r. . - - Alabama ha a "placement" law allowing ,the assignment, of shool children and will.,yfptci this year on a measure to giyp parents "freedom of choice" to send pu pils to separate or. mixed schools. Loui.ana had a "police power" law for assignment of ; school children on the statute books un til a Federal District Court re cently struck it clown. ' Virginia has moved toward a plan to assign pupil to schools by factors other than race and to permit- grants toward private 'school .tuition for; pupils whose schools closed or. were integrat ed. In general; . Virginia, -locali-tie are going ahead with plans to operate schools on a segrega ted basis next fall. Through these devices and with legislative resolutions of "inter position" (whereby a state de clares that it interposes its sov ereignty of the Federal Govern ment, on the asserted grounds that the Federal Government has . invaded matters delegated to state control by Constitutional au thority) the white, majority in the old South has underscored its op position, to the desegregation or- der. ... 'The Southern Education . Re porting Service, a fact-finding agency with headquarters, in Nashville, Tenn., reports that in the seventeen-state area and the District of Columbia approxima tely 256,000 Negro public school , students are in "integrated situa tions." The District of Columbia . has completed its desegregation program. The reporting service defines "integrated situations" as mean ing that Negroes either attend formerly all-white schools or for merly all-Negro schools which whites have entered, or are eli gible to attend mixed schools in officially desegregated districts but are not electing to do so for one reason or another. The number in "integrated si-' tuation the service adds, repre sents about 10 per cent of all Negro ' udent enrollment' in the seventeen states and the District of Columbia. All but a very few of the 256,000, however, reside., in the border states. , " ' : . From this variegated pattern , of compliance and resistance the . most obviou ' lesson to be drawn is that the Supreme Court deci sion did not end segregation in the public schools, but rather in tensified many i.-ocial, economic and political problems." Surveys have shown that there are a least forty-six private or ganizations, large and small, for med for the specific purpose of opposing the Supreme Court de cion and influencing public op inion. This spring the school segre gation controversy has become a political issue in the primary elections of at least seven states, The political climate has often yielded to ; counsels of hysteria. In some instances there have been efforts to stifle the region's mo derate voices and. in others there have been complaints by mode rates that extremists in the rest of the country will not hear the South's case "rationally." The emotional climate of the region has precluded any attempt to disentangle the issues and view them with impartiality. A prin cipal result of this has been the almost total breakdown of communications between the lea ders of the two races. More and more there has been an insistence on the Negro's total surrender to decision-making by white leader ship. , It is against these forces and pressures that the legal aspect of implementing the court's dea gregation decision has run afoul. At this stage' the evidence is that much of the South will not yet accept integrated schools and that a slow, evolutionary program with wise social engineering for local conditions, is likely to t be the answer. ...... ..IvV .1 vV C-' 'DON'r WAAITA FALL. A.PART ATO&E T-AR VRY f EVES. CAN'T THNK Q ' ' AO SADDEN SGHT-1, ! A THAAfifE UYN-J lSL 7r t - j 1 I ( (-'AH't-L LEAVE AOrE,AA TH' HUNDRED THOUSAN'jr THr OUGHTA KEEP 'EM W FT WZ -- : 4.S3s : OSS (-y.l.OHT'S V,'J:iL Hi TZH ! MOOSEUM, AN'DJEOAJ . THAR &OOfSTEf. THFM MAN SKULL MDATCT ' BANGED AN' BATTZRZD K JN TH'MAJLS-) w i. SMI RATHSKELLER BARGAINS - Pogo Kelly - ALL YOU CAN EAT & 12 OZCOUD. CANS ALL PREMIUM BRANDS ; vd;j2 AK&e$ iq ox? ooli. G'Jt STfCH, T'Nt e THAT YOysfe h rAYw CP FiZHTY OPfCRZ&H . Fwcy? rfcCHS FCS A coop PCAl Of f.SpH POLICY? i r v 1 XII Ys J ii . : r . f I A ill I rz.J i i. v. fOZUZH POLIO i to boh it powh, voyce SAVU5 THAT VOU CAN'T (HAVE TOO MUCH fCttlQH FOLCY; ACWAllV, War ass GsrriuS at 1 LGT&OP CCS&iH POLCS. J -IV 1 IN NORTH CAROLINA. Acceptance No Applicani - Integration on the UXc ca cepted calmly by most sWns- U ' accompanied the admission of V-" graduates, and the Negro m tmua to atterd classes and eat ,n ' ' they did, before the Supreme cVrr f " years ago. l , According to Director of 4dm' strong, there have been no ap' x-" from Negroes for admittance to'iw" r lege next fall. ' ,f:t- On the public school level, the r visory Commission on Education hasT'" tuition grants for children assigned to J-' against thsir wishes. The Commissi,!!, ed giving authority to any .school d '-" '.' ! its schools by majority vote. ' t; Few Freecoi And I heir Us Curt Matthews The Notre Damo Scholastic During the Mock Convention last w heard quits a bit about "the principles was founded on." No one quite yjd ' -ing just what these principles were Utl ness at the time was more concerned .tfi -that they would be upheld. ' However, I think, this oversight cai t ' since anyone who gets as far as ta? C-r Address in grade school probably ha; a goad idea of just why we have thi.'ir. ;.:; ed the United States of America. According to Mr. Lincoln's battlc-Jiolj the most fundamental principle to whuho.: try is dedicated is that of freedom. Th i t: so ever since Thomas Jefferson, and a i- men, were able to draft a solid and uo.-k.t losophy out of the hodge-pocge of re. !. and liberal thought of the late 1700s. Through the years this philosophy L, broadened, applied and sometimes e'.en Freedom has come to m?an manv thir... :j people. Jefferson and his colleague, st;.--four rather basic ones: Freedom of pre vs. !: of worship,, freedom of speech, and fr1 congregate. But as history, that is. time, place, ar.i : tial judgment, has demanded, more frc-r! -appeared: Fredom of conscience, . frn.i r. . want, and freedom from fear. (Personally I can't see just ulsat U : these latt2rday freedoms since it sec.T. tj : when conscience ceases to h? free ;t is r, conscience and that fear and want are y: rightly so, of man's nature. Unless, of r..: are meant to imply freedom from unj inf . want.) Along with the Gettysburg A.l 'r'.-' something else we should h:ve learned .i school about freedom if not before. T...: meaning of the word. Freedom does not r right to act under the law. That b tht r: as you ought. To understand freedom in this vay. a5' to do as you ought, is essential to an ing of what freedom means in tlie T-W-that is, to the everyday man in the even :: tion. Too often people are content to ! V dom as an end in itself. Something tr v go to war, to preserve. But, freedom is not an ciul -it's J - -meahs by which man is able to rc physical, intellectual and spiritual ?' flnm- The riffht to do. I think that i ! - Jefferson had such a solid and fumbme'--of freedom. He seemed to have such a ? of what should b? done how one - ' With this idea of freedom in mitl see the importance of education for t.w to be free. If freedom is the r:ght ta c- ought then he who knows best how is most free. The better we uri l : rstan.1 -speech the better -ve can exvrcise '-r speech. This goes for all freedoms. Since Jefferson defined those n j freedoms of speech, of press, of o..r.;T; of worship they have slowly faln Freedom of speech is not. th ''2h j'. ' v .seems as such, a license to display lVp . you may speak as you ought acenn.. are. . ry, It means a politician should n.-t ; . ments mor? properly suitable to f in a street' fight. As a public I'-'1' ,,fti nw vet of stands''" ' i i j A niiuiv .if r ( , freedom of speech, vroenom. OUght. . - , f ;-f : The violation of the more widespread and in a sen?? ' 1 f , almost any of the other volat..n. mental freedoms. : ' Freedom of press to many right to prostitute the press. L -.j ,i,niint nine ifp" when only four covered the . ' : We hear very little about oi.r f ,( gregate. However, judging irom seems to give the right to f throw bricks through plant 'ry -Freedom of worship P'dJ -v . lines more than any other free- ul think that freedom of worshlp . r ,n to protest the use oi u.- r : ported . by dollars upon which i r't3
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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May 17, 1956, edition 1
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