National Affairs: REPORT CARD

Progress of the States Toward School Desegregation

As the new school year began, 17 Southern and border states had widely varying records of compliance with the Supreme Court's order to enforce desegregation with "all deliberate speed." The states' report cards:

ALABAMA: Grade F. "Not one of the school boards has made any move to try to work out anything," a top Negro attorney correctly reports. The Alabama state legislature recently enacted a "Placement Bill," over the veto of Governor James ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom, empowering local school boards to place pupils in schools upon such considerations as "the psychological qualifications of the pupil for the type of teaching and associations involved . . . the possibility of breaches of peace or ill will or economic retaliation within the community."

ARKANSAS: Grade C Plus. "It is a problem that must be left to the people of the local districts to solve," said Governor Orval E. Faubus. Four of the state's 228 interracial school districts are integrating this fall, moving 49 Negro children in, along with about 2,170 whites. Little Rock (pop. 102,213) will integrate its 24% Negro student population in the high schools in 1957, the junior high schools in 1958. The University of Arkansas held its first integrated summer session this year.

DELAWARE: Grade C. In Wilmington (pop. 110,356), 13 city schools will integrate this fall; 900 Negro students will attend formerly all-white schools, while 50 whites will attend all-Negro schools. In New Castle County (Wilmington), 14 out of 20 school boards intend to integrate. But in Kent and Sussex Counties, officials of only one (the city of Dover) out of 27 white school districts intend to heed the Supreme Court.

FLORIDA: Grade D. State law prohibits the mixing of races in schools, but on three bases of the U.S. Air Force, white and Negro pupils will integrate this fall. Negro parents have filed petitions for integration in four counties.

GEORGIA: Grade F. No desegregation anywhere.

KENTUCKY: Grade B Plus. Governor Lawrence Wetherby and his education officials promise to enact the Supreme Court mandate. Out of 224 school districts, including that of Lexington, 20 or 25 will integrate this fall. Louisville (pop. 369,129), where Jim Crow barriers are fast crumbling, will integrate in 1956. Segregation bars are down at all the state colleges and most private colleges and universities.

LOUISIANA: Grade F. State schools will not be integrated this fall, or in the foreseeable future. New Orleans Catholic authorities will not integrate their parochial schools "this year." The Louisiana state legislature voted $100,000 to hire attorneys to contest integration lawsuits at every level.