INTEGRATION OF SCHOOLS

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28386, 19 September 1957, Page 13

INTEGRATION OF SCHOOLS

No Assistance From F.B.L

WASHINGTON. September 17.

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Mr J. Edgar Hoover) today denied reports that F. 8.1. agents would be used in Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort negro children to school.

“The reports which are being circulated that F. 8.1. agents would be deputised to co-operate in maintaining order are utterly without foundation,” he said. “Such a practice would be in direct conflict with the longestablished policy of the F. 8.1 and the Department of Justice.

“The assignment of the F. 8.1. to local police duties under the circumstances would be repugnant to our concept of FederalState relationship, and I would not be a party to injecting the F.B I. into an assignment that would so closely resemble a national police.” In Little Rock, the Mayor (Mr Woodrow Wilson Mann) formerly appealed to the Governor (Mr Orval Faubus) to withdraw armed guards from Central High School in the interests of “compliance with law and order.” The United States District Attorney’s office said it had drawn up a list of about 200 names of persons who might be subpoenaed to appear at Friday’s Court hearing on a petition for a preliminary injunction against Mr Faubus. In Nashville. Tennessee, students went to class in normal numbers today at seven newlyintegrated Nashville elementary schools, where a Federal Court injunction kept the peace. The situation at the beginning of the second week of first-grade racial mixing was in sharp contrast to the troubled conditions that existed a week ago.