Nation: NIxon Goes South for Integration

(2 of 2)

Ocean of Confusion. Despite all of the pressures toward compliance, the committees' task is a tough one. Out of the 2,697 school districts in eleven Southern states, 635 were still operating dual systems last spring. Almost half (311) of these have voluntarily agreed to desegregate this year. Many of the rest are especially difficult areas in which blacks constitute a majority and few whites want any part of putting their children in black-dominated schools. Federal officials are uncertain what form the white resistance may take: school boycotts, a further flight to the all-white private academies, or actual confrontations at the schoolhouse doors.

TIME'S Atlanta Bureau Chief Joseph Kane sees no sign of serious new tensions across the South as the school opening approaches. But he detects "an ocean of confusion that can breed sporadic violence" in districts where desegregation plans have not yet been detailed, parents do not know what schools their children will be attending, and there are last-minute plans involving long bus rides or predominantly black classrooms that could "radicalize"' whites. There is also a mood of increased militancy among young blacks, who are less likely than before to accept meekly any unfair treatment in their newly desegregated schools.

But the more prevalent danger is that relatively affluent whites will increasingly abandon the public schools to the blacks and poor whites. There are possibly 300 white academies ready to open or reopen in Georgia, 100 in Mississippi, at least one in most of the counties of South Carolina. Many communities are reducing their tax support of public schools so that taxpayers can better afford private tuition. "The cause of public education in Mississippi is at the lowest point since the schools started in 1870," warns R.W. Griffith, Mississippi's assistant superintendent of public education. "It's a pathetic situation."

Should resistance in the diehard districts take the form of defiance rather than defection, Attorney General Mitchell indicated last week that the Federal Government is ready to deal with it. Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, headed by Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale, Mitchell said that he had more than 300 Justice lawyers, as well as FBI agents and U.S. marshals, ready to take legal action against defiant school officials.

Already, the 28 U.S. Attorneys' offices in the South are manned by 250 lawyers. Asked by Senator Jacob Javits how Southern blacks could feel free to complain about any noncompliance with the law without fear of reprisals in their communities, Mitchell took a tough, uncompromising stance. "If there is any question of retaliation," he vowed, "we will take the swiftest and most drastic action possible under the law."