Court Asked to Curb Threats Blocking School Integration in Rural Mississippi County

    10 Columbus Circle 
\ New York, N.Y. 10019 

) JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
President hf To) E; 

Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers —. RELEASE 
he cal te September 14, 1964 
Associate Counsel 

Constance Baker Motley 

COURT ASKED TO CURB THREATS 
BLOCKING SCHOOL INTEGRATION 
IN RURAL MISSISSIPPI COUNTY 

JACKSON, Miss.--The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has moved to 

block intimidation of Negro parents of children slated for 

integrated schooling in rural Leake County. 

Announcement was made here today by Legal Defense Fund 

Assistant Counsel Derrick Bell who filed the motion in federal 

district court for southern Mississippi. 

The motion seeks to broaden and make more effective the 

court's order for first grade desegregation. An early hearing 

has been requested, 

In addition, it alleges that “the efforts of those opposed 

to Negro parents' exercising their rights under this Court's 

orders have already frustrated the intent of this Court to 

provide a meaningful start toward the goal of school de- 

segregation in Leake County during the 1964-65 school year." 

Acting in behalf of Negro parents in end around Carthage, 

a small town of 2,500 residents, Mr. Bell charged that threats 

of physical violence and economic reprisals led eight Negro 

families to change their minds. 

Nine families had won the legal right to have their 

youngsters enter first grade September Ist. All but one family 

was frightened. 

The Legal Defense Fund Motion pointed out that Mr. A.D, Lewis, 

of Carthage, whose daughter Debora was the only Negro to enroll 

in a white school, was fired fzom his lumber company job the 

day after his child began attending classes. 

(more) 

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



Court Asked to Curb Threats -2- September 14, 1964 
Blocking School Integration 
In Rural Mississippi County 

Attorney Bell also said that he had asked the Justice 

Department to investigate the intimidations of the parents of 

eight other Negro first-graders, who had announced their in- 

tentions of enrolling their youngsters in the Carthage school. 

They were visited by segregationists on August 31, Mr. Bell 

affirmed, and subsequently changed their minds. "One family 

in the nearby Olfahoma community wept openly as they explained 

that they were now afraid to send their child to the white school,' 

the 33-year old attorney said. 

Mr. Bell, who has handled the Leake County case since a 

suit was first filed in March 1963, further pointed out that 

"members of the Leake County School Board, its attorneys and 

other persons in the community who have attempted to comply, 

or advised compliance with the orders of this court have been 

harassed or threatened." 

"These persons are opposed to school desegregation, but 

because they advocated peaceful compliance with Federal court 

orders, they have been accosted in public, vilified by 

telephone, and one local leader has been subjected to the 

harrowing experience of a cross burning in front of his home," 

Mr. Bell told the court. 

A date for a hearing on the Defense Fund motion for 

further relief has not yet been set, but will probably fall 

within the next ten days, before Judge Sidney R. Mize, who 

issued the original desegregation order on March 4, and 

tentatively approved the Board's grade-a-year plan on July 29, 

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