Peaceful School Integration Comes to Jackson, Mississippi

Press Release
September 17, 1964

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  • Press Releases, Volume 1. Peaceful School Integration Comes to Jackson, Mississippi, 1964. 0aec5142-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/ba006941-a08b-4c85-b0d7-2f2e5ff00e85/peaceful-school-integration-comes-to-jackson-mississippi. Accessed May 15, 2025.

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

NAACP 

; Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

Allan Knight Chalmers 

September 17, 1964 

PEACEFUL SCHOOL INTEGRATION 
COMES TO JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI 

JACKSON, Miss, --- Thirty-nine Negro children peacefully 

entered eight previously white elementary schools here this 

week =- in Jackson, stronghold of the White Citizens’ Councils, 

The youngsters, all first graders, gained admission under 

guidance of attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 

Failure of a white protest boycott to materialize, the 

positive suppot of segregationist hiayor Allan Thompson and 

the Jackson Chamber of Commerce were termed significant by 

Fund Assistant Counsel Derrick Bell, 

"Our success today (September 14th) is an important new 

development in the school integration posture of the Deep 

South," 

Mr, Bell, who worked with Fund cooperating attorneys 

R. Jess Brown and Jack Young, both of Jackson, added that 

"Mississippi Negro citizens are showing an awakened interest 

in the advantages of integrated education." 

Looking across the South, Attorney Bell stated that 

"on the whole, there has been more peaceful compliance this 

year---1964, than during any other since the 1954 decision." 

The Jackson school case, Mr, Bell pointed out, bears 

the name “Darrell Evers vs. Jackson Municipal Separate School 

District, et al." 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Inf ‘ion—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 es 



The family of the martyred Medgar Evers, field secretary 

of the NAACP in iMississippi, has since moved to Claremont, 

California, However, Mrs. Myrlie Evers wired the Negro 

students congratulating them on the “historic integration 

of Jackson's public schools," 

"Darrell and Reene looked forward to joining their 

schoolmates," Mrs, Evers wired. "All Mississippi moved a 

little bit forward today and 39 Negro children are on their 

way to fuller participation in the mainstream of American 

life," she said. 

- 30 = ¥

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