New Jobs and Back Pay Won for Arkansas Negro Teachers Fired When Schools Integrated

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Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

Presiden FOR RELEASE 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers SATURDAY 

Director-Counsel September 24, 1966 
Jack Greenberg 

NEW JOBS AND BACK PAY WON 
FOR ARKANSAS NEGRO TEACHERS 

FIRED WHEN SCHOOLS INTEGRATED 

ST. LOUIS, MO.---Seven school teachers and their principal--all Negroes 
--won the right this week to be rehired by the Arkansas school board 
which had fired them rather than allow them to teach white children. 

This victory, which struck down a pattern in many southern com- 
munities which agree to integrate Negro pupils, was won by attorneys 
of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). 

It was decided here by three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals 

for the Eighth Circuit. 

The suit was brought by Clement S, Smith and Margaret Sanders, 
teachers at L. V. Sullivan High School for Negroes in Morrilton, 
Arkansas, and the Arkansas Teachers Association, Inc., of which 

Mr. Smith and Miss Sanders are members. 

The Association is the professional organization which represents 
most of the Negro teachers in Arkansas. 

Specifically, the Court ruled that the Defendant Board of Educatio: 
reinstate the Negro teachers if they are interested in returning to 
the Morrilton district. 

A teacher wishing to return ‘shall then be offered the first 
position for which he is so qualified in which a vacancy now exists or 
hereafter occurs," the Court ruled. 

LDF attorneys also won damages for the teachers, thus entitling 
them to the back pay lost by their dismissal, 

The Appeals Court concluded its opinion stating it was "grateful 
for the able oral argument:and briefs submitted by counsel." 

LDF Assistant Counsel Michael Meltsner handled the case with 
assistance from: Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg and James Nabrit, III 
in New York City. LDF Cooperating Attorneys John W, Walker and Harold 
Anderson of Little Rock and George Howard, Jr. of Pine Bluff also 
participated. 

LDF lawyers have won similar cases in behalf pf Negro teachers in 
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Another case is still pendine 
in Texas. 

It was Director-Counsel Greenberg who first brought the plight of 
the southern Negro teacher to public attention when he announced in 
May of 1965 that 500 North Carolina Negro teachers were about to lose 
their jobs as schools integrated. 

LDF litigation has done much to contain that “trend of wholesale 
dismissal emerging throughout the South" that was cited by Greenberg 
at that time. 

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Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 <> 9