Education: The Germ

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Until last January the school board of Dade County, Fla. thought it had a pretty good scheme for dealing with the children of migratory Puerto Rican farm hands in the Redland district some 15 miles south of Miami. Most of the children were dark skinned enough to be sent to the Negro school, and for those considered white, there was a special school at one of the labor camps. But last year, appalled by the labor camp's filth, the special school's teachers refused to work. The board had no alternative but to admit 30 Puerto Ricans and 55 children of Mexican ancestry to the regular public school for whites.

To the citizens of the Redland district the whole deal was an outrage. The migrant children, they insisted, were not only dirty, they also tended to slow the other pupils down. When Principal Joseph L. Logan refused to put them out_ the parents began a boycott. By last week 470 white children were staying at home.

Summoned to a mass meeting, the school board promised to try another special school at a labor camp—a portable structure with outdoor privies. But the Puerto Ricans decided to start a boycott of their own, and were threatening to take their case to court. One verdict on the case, however, was already in. Cried Mrs. Polly Rose Balfe, editor-publisher of the weekly Homestead News:"

You righteous citizens of the Redlands —with your 27 churches and 35 civic and fraternal organizations—you, to your everlasting shame, refused to let your children attend school because 85 little Puerto Rican and Mexican children were enrolled there . . . Sure, some of them come to school unbathed, even as some of yours. Sure, some of them don't understand our language, but they're young and teachable and citizens. They're vaccinated, they're inoculated . . . They can't contaminate your children. You can contaminate them—with the germ of intolerance."