Education: Slow But Not Sure

How much progress has been made in desegregating Southern schools since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision two years ago? Last week the nonprofit, nonpartisan Southern Education Reporting Service published a survey that leads to only one conclusion: progress has been slow—and anything but sure.

Of some 4,540 school districts with Negro pupils, only 540 have desegregated or are in the process of doing so. The border states have made the best records. Maryland has started desegregation in 15 of its 22 counties, Kentucky in 41 of its 184 districts. Oklahoma has integrated its schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and 86 other districts. By next fall Texas will have desegregated 68 districts. And of Missouri's 67,000 Negro pupils, only 4,500 will still be going to segregated schools.

Rigid As Ever. Elsewhere the situation is quite different. Arkansas has integrated only three small districts with a total of 50 Negro pupils. Though both a state and a federal court have declared Tennessee's school segregation laws unconstitutional, the state has still only one desegregated area—Oak Ridge, which is under federal control. In Louisiana the only major move against segregation has come from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, whose parochial schools are now being integrated. In the rest of the South —Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida—elementary and secondary schools remain as rigidly segregated as ever.

What is worse, resistance to integration has been steadily mounting. More than 70 pro-segregation bills or resolutions, ranging from outright nullification resolutions in Georgia and Alabama to a Mississippi bill authorizing special secret agents to spy on integrationists, have come before Southern legislatures. The number of private organizations formed to fight desegregation has climbed to 46, with the Citizens' Councils alone claiming 500,000 members. Other activities of the pro-segregationists last week: ¶ In a special session of the Florida legislature, the state house of representatives passed four bills to circumvent a state supreme court ruling that the Florida school segregation laws are invalid. The bills would enable county boards of education to assign pupils and teachers to schools on the basis of intelligence, ability, and "cultural background.'' One representative objected that "some Negro pupils have higher IQs than some white pupils." Snapped a backer of the bill: "But who is going to give the tests?" ¶ The North Carolina legislature convened for its first special session in 18 years, to act on the recommendations of its advisory committee on education. The recommendations, known as the Pearsall Plan, would amend the state constitution to 1) allow the government to pay the private-school tuitions of children whose parents do not want them to go to mixed public schools, and 2) permit local residents to close down their public schools, should the courts try to enforce desegregation.