Racial Barriers Broken

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32359, 27 July 1970, Page 14

Racial Barriers Broken

To find she was ac-| cepted by Negro pupils] at an integrated school she attended in Union City, Tennessee, was one of the highlights of a year spent in the United States under the American Field Service exchange scheme by Jenefer Thomson, a former pupil of Christchurch Girls’ High School.

Jenefer Thomson was one I of seven former secondary! school pupils who spoke to| members of the Christchurch branch of the American Field Service at the week-end. The group, including six who were at Christchurch schools before they went to the United States, returned to New Zealand about a week ago. When she first went to her American school she was looked on by Negro pupils as another white girl. The school, in a town of 10,000 people with a quarter of the population Negro, had a roll of 600. After she had gone to the Negro community and spoken there. Miss Thomson said, the whole situation had changed. Miss Thomson said that there was a racial problem in the area but she felt that there had been an improvement in relationships in the year she had been at school there. - Another former Christchurch Girls’ High School pupil in the group, Eleanor Cooper, lived at Lancaster, 40 miles west of Boston in Massachusetts, with a family of seven children, all of whom were adopted, in a house of 22 rooms and four bathrooms, reputedly built to the design of the man who also designed the Capitol in Washington.

Alan Cumming, who was at Shirley Boys’ High School before going overseas and who stayed on an apple and pear

[orchard in New York, said that while finding the people very friendly he would not ! like to live in the United States. The political situation was tearing the country apart, he said. He is no admirer of the American education system. While he noted that it was freer and more relaxed than in New Zealand, there was no discipline and no way of stopping the pupils at the back of the room from talking.

Julie MacKenzie, formerly of Avonside Girls’ High School, did not find her year in school in America very profitable. She was in Kansas City and attended a coeducational school with 2500 pupils. The found the Americans very exuberant and full of life and in this respect she found it hard at first to participate in the cheer parties

that supported school sporting teams, but by the end of her stay she had become an American—“l now feel half over there and half here.” Julie Dalzell, who was at Rangi-Ruru Presbyterian Girls’ School in Christchurch last year, lived in a town of 6000 to 8000 people in New Jersey, about 30 miles from New York city. She found she did not have to work hard at school.

Glenys Armstrong, who went to Hagley High School, said her hosts in Ohio had the New Zealand flag up to welcome her when she arrived. She said that travel to her was “just places” and her recollection of her year in America was of people. She would not wish to live there and was pleased to come home.

Warwick Stevens, who went to Darfield High School, was in New York State. He

described himself as the one who “almost did not make it.” Before he left Auckland he had left his papers in the care of another member of the party and they had been deposited in the hold of the aircraft by the time that he returned from a visit to the duty free shop. At the port of entry into the United States—Hawaii—he ran into trouble and was eventually allowed into the United States for 30 days provided he produced his papers. Another party of Christchurch pupils will leave New Zealand early next month to spend a similar period in the United States, and there are 65 applications from local secondary school children.

Tour Opens.—The New Zealand women's softball team opened its 1970 overseas tour last night when it lost 1-0 to New South Wales, at Sydney. New Zealand will play its next game against Queensland on Wednesday evening.