LAW AGAINST NEGROES

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27895, 17 February 1956, Page 11

LAW AGAINST NEGROES

Louisiana Act Held Invalid (Rec. 11p.m.) NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 15. Three judges in a Federal Court today declared invalid the segregation laws that Louisiana had devised to sidestep the United States Supreme Court ban on separate white and negro public schools. After today’s decision. United States District Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered New Orleans to “desegregate its public schools with all deliberate speed.” In 1954. after the Supreme Court decision, the Louisiana Legislature passed a series of laws that segregated schools under the State police powers. One act provided for separate white and negro schools “to promote and protect public health, morals, better education and peace and good order in the State.” The act specifically declared that segregation was “not because of race.” But the Federal Court today ruled that the police power provision did not save the laws from being declared invalid. The Court ruled that the laws were unconstitutional. Judge Wright granted a temporary injunction against continued segregation in New Orleans public schools. Judge Wright said: “The problems attendant on desegregation in the deep South are considerably more serious than generally appreciated in some sections of our country. The problem of changing a people’s mores, particularly those with an emotional overlay, is not to be taken lightly. "It is a problem which will require the utmost patience, understanding, generosity and forbearance from all of us of whatever race. “But the magnitude of the problem may not nullify t e principle.” Judge Wright added. “That principle is that we are all free-born Americans with a right to make our way unfettered by sanctions imposed'by man because of the work of God.”