U.S. Supreme Court rules on segregated schools

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32587, 22 April 1971, Page 13

U.S. Supreme Court rules on segregated schools

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, APRIL 21.

The United States Supreme Court’s new school desegregation rulings were denounced as “tragic” and “discriminatory” today by some Southerners, but civil rights leaders hailed them as a sign that America was headed towards an integrated society.

“I am not surprised at anything the Court does,” said Governor George Wallace, of Alabama.

“I feel the people in Alabama’s insane institutions could have written a better decision."

The rulings, which gave Federal judges broad new powers in eliminating “all vestiges" of school segregation, dealt only with de jure segregation, or that which is imposed by law, and did not address themselves to de facto segregation, resulting from housing patterns. Senator James Eastland, of Mississippi, said that the ruling “solidly reaffirms the policy of the Warren Court by singling out the South for punitive, vindictive and discriminatory treatment in the operation of public schools. “It gives an all-powerful Federal judiciary an unrestricted licence to impose impossible burdens on Southern schools in the name of integration,” he said.

■ Mr Jack Greenberg, the counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s legal defence fund and one of the lawyers who argued the cases before the Court, took an opposing view: “The country is going toward an integrated society and the Supreme Court has not turned back from that in spite of many dire predictions it would,” Mr Greenberg said. Mr William Booe, a member of the Charlotte, North Carolina school board—one of the school systems involved in the rulings—said that the High Court’s stamp of approval on the concept of massive busing- to achieve integration would lead to "a complete deterioration of public schools.” Terming the rulings “tragic,” Mr Booe said that the decisions meant taxpayers in Charlotte and neighbouring Mecklenburg would be saddled with a s3m to ssm bill next year to pay increased transport costs. The Supreme Court ruled

that schoolchildren might be transported by bus from one school zone to another within a district to break up segregation. But it said that school authorities were not required to do this, and district courts must weigh the soundness of all so-called busing plans to avoid hardships for children. The Court, in a series of important and unanimous decisions clarifying its position on segregation, confined the scope of the new rulings to states that once officially maintained segregation mainly the South. The Court refused to extend its decisions to segregation which is the result of residential patterns, rather than official actions. President Nixon has consistently refused to back what he calls forced integration of the suburbs, but black civil rights advocates had hoped that the Court would act against de facto segregation, thus affecting the entire country, including the north. The Supreme Court ruled

as valid the use of a whiteblack ratio system for schools in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Under this system, e a Judge ordered an extensive transfer of pupils by bus to ensure that the schools reflected the same racial pattern as the area—7l per cent white and 29 per cent Negro. Though the Court allowed this forced mixture of the races on a mathematical base to stand, it stressed that this was only a permissible tool and should hot be taken as a requirement in other districts. The Court also held that the existence of schools within a district that were all of one race, or nearly so, did not in itself constitute evidence that illegal segregation was still to be practised. But it said that in cases arising in such districts, the courts should scrutinise such schools and require authorities to demonstrate that the racial composition did not result from discriminatory | action.