Legal Defense Fund Presses Pupil, Faculty Integration in Virginia Public Schools

    y) 10 Columbus Circle 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

Boe Anen Knight Chalmers te oe 

Ra yok Greenbers August 2, 1965 
a 

ey 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND PRESSES 
Z PUPIL, FACULTY INTEGRATION 

¥ IN VIRGINIA PUBLIC SCHCOLS 

App als Richmond, Hopewell Cases to U.S. Supreme Court 

WASHINGTON--NAACP -Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyers today 
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review pupil and teacher assignment 
praetices in two Virginia school systems in an effort to bring about mc 
more positive action towards desegregation. 

- The attorneys appealed two decisions by the Fourth U.S, Circuit 
Court of Appeals which last April upheld lower court approval of 
desegregation plans in Richmond and Hopewell, Va. 

« The appeals, which will be heard in the Supreme Court's 
October term if the high court decides to review the cases, 
question Richmond's "freedom of choice" policy as a means of 
abolishing school segregation, and contends that Hopewell's system 
of geographic attenda areas perpetuates segregation. 

Both cases also raise the question of assignment of Negro 
teachers only to schools predominately attended by Negroes, afd 
white teachers to schools predominately attended by whites.’ § 

Bre Richmond case dates back to Sept. 5, 1961, when a group of 
Negro parents and their children filed a suit in a federal 
district court charging that the school system had not "made a 
reasonable start to effectuate a transition to a racially non- 
discriminatory system..." 3 

When the case was begun, only 37 of 23,791 Neaqro school ) 
children attended classes with the 17,777 white cnildren in niche 
schools, the suit elleged. 

e courts subsequently ordered the admission of ten Negro 
childgen involved in the suit to apredominately white school, and =.» 
encouraged the school board to present a desearegation plan. he 

A Legal Defense Fund attorneys contend that the "freedom of t 
chdice" plan does not go far enough in freeing Negro pupils from 
long-established patterns of school segregation, especially when 
vi d in the context of continuing faculty segregation, 

‘"Feculty segregation," the appeal alleges," ¢eeracially 
identifies schools as effectively as a sign over the door and enables 
the freedom of choice plan to offer parents a choice between a 
Negro-faculty school and a white-faculty school. 

In Hopewell, where the school system was completely segregated 
prior to 1963 when the federal district court ordered the admission 
of 26 or 27 Negroes to previously all-white schools, the appeal 
¢harges the school board with "racial gerrymandering" attendance 
districts. 

3. Hopewell's pupil assignment plan “operates to minimize de- 
segregation...," the appeal alleges. 

The appeal also maintains that lower courts “have erred in 
refusing to require Hopewell's public school authorities to end the 
praétice of assigning all white teachers to white schools and all 
Négro teachers to Negro schocis.” 

we 

af Legal Defense Fund attorneys in the suit are Jack Greenberg, 
Fund director-counsel, and James M, Nabrit III of New York, and 
§.W. Tucker and Henry L. Marsh III of Richmond. 

oy gee 

<a0= 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public I ion—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 oO