ustxtxb_obs_1963_06_28_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

to start grade-a-year integration in 1964. The first through fourth grades of the Austin schools will be integrated this September, completing the school system’s integration several years ahead of the schedule because, the superintendent said, “Everybody has been so cooperative.” Wa,co, with a large Negro population, was the largest city with segregated schools in Texas until this month, when its school board, although not under court order to integrate, voted to do so in stages that will be completed in 1969. West Texas. U. S. Dist. Atty. Barefoot Sanders of Dallas held conversations with some school authorities in his 100-county district bearing on the recent ruling against aid to schools in federally impacted areas. Sanders said there was no “threat of action” involved. Abilene’s board of education integrated Dyess elementary, just outside its air force base, last Jan. 21, and all other Abilene schools through the seventh grade as of next September. The other grades are to be integrated one a year. Districts in Mineral Wells, Colorado Abilene, decided they would accept defensebase children on an integrated basis. Anson schools are being integrated despite the protests of twelve Negro citizens. Fort Worth. U. S. courts ordered Fort Worth to integrate, and the school board came forward with a grade-a-year plan that would have been completed in 1975. The board also proposed that, maintaining existing school district boundaries, students who want to go to schools other than those in their own districts \(that is, in effect, students wanting to go to schools attended mostly by students of a race other than for transfers and report to the schools they would have attended before integration and, as the board president, Atwood McDonald, put it, “counsel wtih persons of their own race.” Clifford Davis, attorney for plaintiffs in the Fort Worth suit, bitterly protested that the plan maintained segregated boundaries and that it would leave the vocational education program segregated for many years. Federal Judge Leo Brewster ordered desegregation next September of the first grade and adult education night classes at the technical high school, set aside the requirement about counseling with members of one’s own race before getting a transfer, and did not rule on the future rate of integration. North Texas. Acting without court pressure, the Denton school board desegregated all grades next September. Arlington schools integrated at a grade-a-year rate after a conversation with U.S.D.A. Sanders. But a Dallas News check showed that other area schools are resisting desegregation. Terrell is building new Negro high and elementary schools, spending $1.7 million therefor. The News quoted a few school board presidents in towns near Dallas: Felix Smith, McKinney: “We have had no Negro applications . . so we are not studying any plans.” Dr. L. W. Conradt, Terrell: “We’ll wait. That’s all you can do.” 12 The Texas Observer CC Kenneth Smith, Rockwall: “Negroes indicate they prefer their , own schools.” S. B. Lumpkins, Waxahachie: ” . . . who is to say what would be best and when ?” At the college level, three Negro students have been admitted to Texas A.&M. University without incident. Under federal court order, Negroes have also been admitted without fuss at Southwest Texas State College in San Marcos. Several Rice University alumni came forward last week to oppose a request ofRice’s trustees that a district court remove a barrier to the entry of Negro students at Rice in the 1891 will whichcreated that private university. Sam Houston State, East Texas State, Stephen F. Austin, Sul Ross State, and Prairie View A.&M. are still segregated. In May, the student senate at East Texas State, in Commerce, voted 9-4 to give $1,000 in scholarships, but not until the college admits Negroes. The southwest conference is still segregated as to intercollegiate athletics. Negro students at the University of Texas have sued that institution to bring an end to dormitory segregation. Various forms of discrimination against Negro students at U.T., as well as integrated situations, have been copiously reviewed in a study prepared by the religious workers’ assn. there. Apparently a recent program at U.T. was modified to exclude waltzing in order to avoid having interracial waltzing on a university stage. On the other hand, it has emerged, in the U.T. dorm unit, that white students can have Negro students of the same sex as overnight guests in their rooms, or vice versa. THE NEGRO SUPREMACY movement, “the black Muslims,” has gained a few toe-holds in Texas and is under close press and police surveillance. \(It has been declared a subversive organization on grounds that it is a secessionist counted 43 Muslim inmates. Harry V. Burns, San Antonio N.A.A.C.P. president, said a leader of the anti-white Muslims is working in San Antonio, but the local police chief says he knows of only two Muslims in the city. The Fort Worth police chief says there are about a dozen of them in Fort Worth, but they attend meetings at the Dallas “mosque.” The Dallas News reports that there are 34 known Muslims in Dallas and that the mosque in that city is run by a man who was fired as a city policeman on a charge of failing to turn stolen property into the police property room. Muslim activity is reported also in Houston, with a reported 92 members led by “Raymond X\( recently of Chicago, and in Abilene and Amarillo. Amarillo’s sheriff, Jim Line, has attributed a near-riot in Amarillo last May 5 to Muslims. Two white liquor agents tried to arrest two Negro men in a night club in the Flats, a Negro section. About 400 Negroes surrounded them ; fighting broke out, additional police were called. A justice of the peace has fined five Negro men $2,023 for throwing rocks, bottles, and bricks at the agents and police and called the riot “a shameful occurrence,” “bringing disgrace to your race.” Sheriff Line says, “These Negroes kept hollering `Kill ’em, kill ’em,’ the same words used in a recent Los Angeles uprising of black Muslims.” Although Line added that Muslim petitions against police brutality had been circulated in Amarillo, he apparently had no direct evidence connecting Muslims with the riot. On June 2 there was a similar episode in Dallas. According to press reports, two policemen had stopped a Negro just before midnight for questioning when a second Negro walked up and wanted to know what the problem was. “An argument ensued,” and when the police tried to handcuff one of the two Negroes, he swung on the officer, kicked at him, and got his hand on his pistol, but did not get it out of the holster. The other officer also struggled with the resisting Negro and lost his pistol to him; the officers’ report said the Negro fired it into the air. An estimated 50 Negroes, the officers reported, “engulfed the officers and were chanting and talking loud as if they intended to get the Negro male from police custody.” The resisting Negro was subdued and booked for investigation of burglary and theft and aggravated assault on a policeman. Perhaps it was a coincidence, and perhaps not, that the Dallas police chief said shortly thereafter that he would like to have a total of a dozen police dogs and announced a refresher course in riot control for sixty policemen. Last month, the Rev. Edward Odom, Jr., N.A.A.C.P. church secretary, toured Texas chapters making speeches about school desegregation; a Muslim minister turned up at a luncheon Odom was addressing and, according to the N.A.A.C.P., “said that his organization did not advocate violence but would retaliate if attacked. . . . Later at a public meeting at the Munger Avenue Baptist Church in Dallas,” the N.A.A.C.P. said, “about a dozen persons who said they were members of the black Muslims appeared. No one in the N.A.A.C.P. was quite certain if this was intended as a friendly or unfriendly gesture.” With Muslims preaching hate of the whites, rejection of Christianity, defensive violence, and secession from the U.S., the N.A.A.C.P. and Rev. Martin Luther King’s non-violent resistance movement appear relatively moderate. The Dallas News reprinted part of King’s already celebrated “letter from a Birmingham jail” this month; the Houston Chronicle contrasted King’s leadership with the Muslims’. Yet in fact the N.A.A.C.P. and Rev. King are more militant than ever \(King saying, for