Fund Challenges State Tuition Payments to Students in "Private" Miss. Schools

Press Release
February 24, 1966

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Fund Challenges State Tuition Payments to Students in "Private" Miss. Schools preview

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  • Press Releases, Volume 3. Fund Challenges State Tuition Payments to Students in "Private" Miss. Schools, 1966. d0fe28cc-b692-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/b2a7b597-b01c-4cfb-b73d-bcf8b4f5714b/fund-challenges-state-tuition-payments-to-students-in-private-miss-schools. Accessed November 23, 2025.

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    10 Columbus Circle 
NeW York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP. 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
President 

Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

Director-Counset FOR RELEASE 
Jack Greenberg Thursday, 

February 24, 1966 

FUND CHALLENGES STATE TUITION PAYMENTS 
TO STUDENTS IN "PRIVATE" MISS, SCHOOLS 

JACKSON, MISS,---Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund Monday (Feb 21) sought a federal court injunction 

against payment of state tuition grants to white students 

attending "private" segregated schools. 

The suit, filed in behalf of Negro pupils and their parents in 

Holmes County, alleges that the Mississippi tuition grant law 

"constitutes State interference with plaintiffs’ right to de- 

segregated public education..." 

The Federal District Court in Jackson last July ordered 

desegregation of at least four grades of the Holmes County school 

system for the 1965-66 school year. 

Holmes County school officials subsequently submitted a 

plan whereby grades one through four were desegregated on a 

"freedom of choice" basis, and about 403 white children, and 189 

Negroes registered for desegregated classes for the fall term. 

Meanwhile, however, three "private" schools, embracing the 

four desegregated grades, were organized in Holmes County, 

allegedly for the purpose of perpetuating segregation. 

All but about 25 of the white pupils withdrew from the deseg- 

regated grades of the public schools and transferred to the 

"private" schools where the state pays their tuition, the complainx 

alleges. 

The "private" schools exclude Negroes, and the 189 Negro 

pupils remained in the previously all-white public schools, 

according to the complaint. 

The Legal Defense Fund complaint asks that a three-judge 
Federal court enjoin the State Education Finance Commiss:on from 
paying tuition of pupils in "private" schools from which Negroes 
are excluded, 

Legal Defense Fund attorneys involved in the case are Carsie 
A, Hall, Marian E, Wright and Henry M, Aronson of Jackson; 
Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg, Derrick A, Bell, Jr. and Melvyn 
Zarr of New York. 

=30= 

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

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