Supreme Court To Consider U.S. Racial Issue

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27471, 4 October 1954, Page 11

Supreme Court To Consider U.S. Racial Issue

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec, 9 p.m.) WASHINGTON, October 2. The Supreme Court opens its new session on Monday, faced with finding a way to put into effect its decision against racial segregation in public high schools. But although trouble already has broken out in certain areas where negro children have been admitted to formerly all-white schools, the nine-man Court will not take up the issue until the end of the year.

In an unusual pre-term conference the Judges set aside the week of December 6 for hearing further arguments and reports on the school racial question. This was the earliest time available on the Court’s calendar. '

Both sides* in segregation cases from Virginia) South Carolina, Kansas, Delaware and Washington, D.C., will have one hour each to present follow up arguments for and against the Court’s unanimous decision on May 17 that their school segregation practices were unconstitutional.

In addition, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee and Oklahoma have already requested permission to present arguments if they wish.

In these further arguments, lawyers for the various States will be allowed to discuss whether segregation should be ordered abolished “forthwith,” or by a gradual transition. The Supreme Court’s final ruling on the methods and timing of desegregation could come early in the new year.

States in the deep south are continuing their segregated school systems pending the final Supreme Court decree, and some are laying plans to circumvent it by one means or another.

But Delaware, West Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, began integration with the opening of the school autumn terms last month. The desegregation began peacefully, but trouble soon developed. It flared up suddenly in Baltimore yesterday with demonstrations against mixing of white and negro students at six schools. Police narrowly averted violence at one. Negroes Threatened

A mob of about 400 whites, adults and teen-agers threatened three negro pupils leaving Southern High School. Leon Thompson, 14, was punched in the face, and police arrested Jack Zimmerman, 24, who was later fined 100 dollars. The crowd tried to upset a police car which was taking the negro boy and Zimmerman to a police station.

A clergyman escorted another negro boy from the school, and a young woman teacher rescued a negro boy and girl after they were surrounded by demonstrators. She drove her car into the crowd, grabbed the youngsters, and sped away with them. Mayor Thomas d’Alesahdro, in a public statement, pleaded against any inflammatory action as the city’s school board refused to change its course ending segregation. At Milford, Delaware, attendance was nearly back to normal at the Lakeview Avenue High School this week-end after a new school board rescinded an order admitting 11 negroes. Nearly two-thirds of the pupils had boycotted the school most of the week.

The boycott was promoted at mass meetings spearheaded by Mr Bryant Bowles, president of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and it spread to several neighbouring communities. The Governor of Delaware, Mr J. Caleb Boggs, who has urged residents to obey the law, declined comment “for the present.” But the Vice-President, Mr Richard Nixon, whom Mr Boggs was entertaining at Wilmington, said at a news conference: “We in America must bring into reality the dream of equality in education, employment and other fields to show the rest of the world our sincerity of purpose.” Picketing Halted A circuit judge brought a sudden halt to picketing which closed a school near Fairmont, West Virginia, for two days. A group of parents had picketed in protest at the admission of 13 negro students.

Issuing an injunction, Judge Harper Meredith declared the picketing "a rebellion against the Government, which cannot be tolerated.” He added: “It cannot continue, and I will not permit it to continue. If necessary, I’ll fill the gaol until their feet are sticking out of the windows.” Mr James Byrnes, Governor of South Carolina, said last week that incidents occurring in areas with relatively small negro populations might be multiplied when desegregation began in States with a great percentage of negroes. Similar views were expressed by officials in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana. “Such episodes will spread wherever integration is tried, regardless of what kind of decree the Supreme Court hands down,” said the Louisiana State Senator, Mr William Rainach, chairman of a joint' legislative committee to continue segregation, “I’m afraid,” he added, "the United States will head into the worst period of internal strife and dissension in its history unless the Supreme Court reverses its stand and permits each State to solve the destiny of its people in its own way.” Mr Richard Ervin, Attorney-Gen-eral of Florida, said that immediate desegregation in Florida would "only result in translating the present passive intellectual differences in thought and emotional feelings to an active, positive, and violent physical resistance.”

Factory Explosion in Japan.— An explosion in a fireworks factory at Nagoya, central Japan, today killed six persons and injured 20 others. The factory owner, his wife and two children were among those killed.— Tokyo, October 2.