Congressmen Told of Slow Pace of Southern School Integration

    seri Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Director Counsel 
egal efense und Ae rensiere 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Dinero eaetee 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 

25 

Jesse DeVore, Jr. 
NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

FOR RELEASE 
SATURDAY 
December 10, 1966 

CONGRESSMEN TOLD OF SLOW PACE 
OF SQUTHERN SCHOOL INTEGRATION 

ATLANTA---A subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee 
was told here this week that "an estimated 88-90 per cent of Negro | 
pupils in southern states are still in totally segregated schools." 

Spokesmen for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) 
and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) also noted that this 
circumstance exists three school years after passage of the Civil 
Rights Act of 1964. 

It was LDF attorneys, under the leadership of former Director-Counsel 
Thurgood Marshall, who won the Supreme Court decision outlawing school 
segregation in 1954, 

Since that time LDF attorneys have argued hundreds of individual school 
integration cases across the South, 

However, AFSC executive Winifred Green told the Congressional sub- 
committee that “disappointingly modest progress" in southern school 
desegregation has been made. 

Miss Green appealed for the inclusion, in the Office of Education's 
compliance regulations, of school districts desegregating under court 
order. 

Population centers in which the majority of southern Negro children 
live, Miss Green testified, are desegregating under Federal District 
Court orders. 

"Federal judges have welcomed the role of the Commissioner of Education 
as ‘long overdue'" she added. 

Backing up her assertion, Miss Green cited Fifth Circuit Court Judge 
Elbert Tuttle's Mobile, Alabama ruling of last August. 

The Commissioner's role of implementing the Civil Rights Act is overdue 
because of the “utter impracticability of a continued exercise by the 
courts of the responsibility of supervising the manner in which seg- 
regated school systems break out of the policy of complete segregation 
++eand toward compliance," Judge Tuttle commented, 

Summarizing highlights of LDF and AFSC testimony: 

* The Office of Education guidelines should be strengthened; freedom 
of choice plans, as a means of speeding integration, bring only 
tokenism and should not be used in an across-the-board manner. 

* "Guidelines should be expanded to deal with northern-style de facto 

segregation,” 

* Specific guidelines should be created and used for state education 
agencies which play crucial roles “in preserving or abolishing segre- 
gation." 

* The Office of Education, like other government agencies, should 
devise a program of getting the facts and possibilities of school 
integration to Negro families--"since the burden for initiating deseg- 
regation is still on Negroes." 

* Federal funds should be cut off from districts where intimidations, 
threats, and reprisals have been directed toward Negro families 

(more) 



CONGRESSMEN TOLD OF SLOW PACE 
OF SOUTHERN SCHOOL INTEGRATION 2. 

seeking school integration. 

* The Office of Education should develop a “process of systematic fact- 
finding and evaluation so that it can make an accurate assessment of 

progress...” 

The LDF and the AFSC jointly administered a School Desegregation Task 
Force last spring which operated in several hundred communities in 
seven southern states, 

Twenty field workers distributed 3,000 kits and 85,000 leaflets, held 
leadership training conferences, provided fundamental information, and 
helped develop local community action projects. 

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