Negroes Face Fifth Year Of No Schools In County

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30206, 10 August 1963, Page 11

Negroes Face Fifth Year Of No Schools In County

[Specially written jor the N.Z.P.A. by

FRANK OLIVER]

WASHINGTON, August 9. When it comes to desegregation, Virginia does not make the headlines produced by Little Rock, Arkansas, or Oxford, Mississippi, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but it certainly deserves some.

The nation scarcely realises that for four years no public schools have been operating at all in Prince Edward County, not many miles from Washington.

In 1959. a Court order said the county's schools had to be integrated, but the local authorities, rather than comply. closed the whole public school system They turned one institution into a private school for white children only and the county’s 1200 white children are educated there.

But about 1700 Negro children were left to fend for themselves, and threequarters of them have had no education whatever in the intervening four years. Some of them have been able to attend short summer schools to try and catch up with the three Rs, and during the winters there have been some efforts to hold small classes in various churches. Research Project

Now a group of sociologists is visiting Prince Edward County on a research project to find out what happens when children get no education over a period of four years

Some things they found staggered them They wanted to give some of these children tests but, said one visiting sociologist, “before we could even get to the test we had to show some of them how to hold a pencil.”

Negro children of seven, eight and nine years, had a pencil in their hands for the first time in their lives. There were more than 500 children under the age of 11 who had never been to school. They are not retarded children. They scored well, said the sociologists, in tests where they had to select from a number of answers to a question, but they could only make a painful X. They could not write a word.

Some of them are game. The investigators found one 12-year-old Negro girl who had two years' education before the schools were closed. She was found in a school in a Baptist Church, teaching a sister and two brothers aged from six to nine how to write. Not far away is a closed public school, which bears the sign: “School property—No trespassing under penalty of Law. Prince Edward County School Board.” Classes For Some

The investigators counted 1725 Negro children of school age tn the county and found that 500 of them were fairly regularly attending informal classes in Farmville, the county capital They sit on hard church pews from 9 am to 1 pm. and are taught by 36 voluntary teachers —17 students from a Virginia college and 19 professional teachers from New York City These students and teachers are g.ving up their summer vacations to try to give these Negro youngsters the rudiments of elementary educa-

tion. About 270 Negro children are getting some sort of education outside the county, but the other thousand have had no education at all in the last four years. There is no doubt that these Negro children want education. More than 80 per cent, of them said they wanted to go back to school if only the schools would reopen. Too Old To Go Back

Some do not want to go back even if the schools open, because they feel they are too old to go back and learn elementary things beside young children. They are youths and girls who are aged from 17 to 20. They feel they had better stay at work and try to help their families economically. The Washington “Post" quotes one New York volunteer teacher as saying she read in the paper about Farmville, about Berlin, about nuclear testing, and, “I thought, what is there important that I can do? So I’m here. We’re extremely serious about this, but don’t ask me what we hope to accomplish in six weeks ” This teacher is giving up six weeks of her summer holiday without pay to try and teach a few Farmville Negro children to read and write. She gets no pay whatever

But when the summer is ended these volunteer teachers and college students will go back to their own institutions and the Negro children of Prince Edward County will enter on their fifth year with no schools, for recently the county board of supervisors voted once again to stop all funds for public schools except for the maintenance of buildings. The 1200 white children will continue to go to their private, segregated school. It is reported that these white children are not getting as good an education as they did from the public schools and that they will be less well educated than they should be when they finally leave school. Their parents can afford to pay the fees for a private school, but the Negro parents cannot. Educational blight has struck Prince Edward County. Virginia, because white parents and school authorities refused to tolerate even token integration of their pure white schools.

Conservative Win Foreeast

iNZ Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, August 9 "The Times” today predicted a 5000 majority for Mr Angus Maude, the Conservative candidate in the Strat-ford-on-Avon by - election next Thursday The by-election is to fill •he vacancy caused by the -esignatior. of the former War Minister. Mr John Profumo, who in the last election had a majority of 14,129

‘‘The Times" said that Mi Maude, who has four opponents. had been running an "even-tempered” campaign, m spite of all attempts to bait him.