In May 1961 a Negro applied for admission to the University of Mississippi.26 His application was denied on the grounds that he was attending a nonaccredited college, and that he did not have the certificates from alumni of the university required by law." The student then brought action in a Federal district court alleging that he was a student at Jackson State College, a public institution administered by the same board of trustees as the University of Mississippi.28 This suit, the first of its kind in the State of Mississippi, seeks to restrain the university from refusing to permit the plaintiff to enroll in the summer session beginning June 8, 1961.29 It also seeks to open all of Mississippi's colleges and universities to qualified Negroes. The court denied the plaintiff's request for a restraining order, and set June 12 for hearing on a preliminary injunction.30 No decision has been announced.

The university's chancellor, J. D. Williams, said in an address to students, that steps to prevent desegregation of Mississippi's white senior colleges will not be determined by the individual institutions. He asserted that they will be mapped "in Jackson," by the Governor, legislature, and board of trustees of State institutions of higher learning.31 It is reported that three Negro women have applied for admission to Winthrop State College for Women at Rock Hill, S.C. President Charles S. Davis of Winthrop said that he did not know whether the applications were from publicity seekers or genuine students." Two Negro college men have applied for transfers to Clemson College at Clemson, and one has applied for admission to South Carolina Medical College at Charleston in September 1961.33 Under South Carolina law, a court order admitting a Negro to any of the white State-supported colleges will automatically close not only that college, but also South Carolina State College for Negroes at Orangeburg, the only public Negro college in the State.

34

The University of Tennessee admitted two Negroes to the undergraduate division for the second semester of the school year 1960-61.35 They were accepted under a desegregation policy adopted by the board of trustees in November 1960.36 They registered routinely and without disturbance. The university's graduate and law schools have been desegregated since 1952.3

37

38

PRIVATE COLLEGES

Several private institutions for higher education have announced plans to desegregate since the publication of the Commission's Higher Education Report. All of them receive Federal funds." On January 31, 1961, the trustees of the University of Miami announced that in the

future the university would accept "any qualified student in any of its schools or colleges regardless of race, creed, or color.” 40 On April 19, 1961, Tulane University at New Orleans, Louisiana, announced that it would "admit qualified students regardless of race or color" if it were legally permissible." Duke University at Durham, N.C., has indicated that it will admit Negroes to its graduate and professional schools beginning in the fall of 1961. Duke was the first private college in North Carolina to announce such a policy.12 Following Duke's example, the trustees of Wake Forest College at WinstonSalem, N.C., authorized the college's three graduate divisions to admit qualified applicants without regard to race. This, however, left the final decision on admitting particular applicants to the discretion of the deans and faculties of each graduate school.43 (Duke and Wake Forest are the only two private colleges in North Carolina which have graduate schools in law and medicine.) On June 5, 1961, Wake Forest trustees further liberalized their policy. They said the college could admit a "limited number of special students for evening classes or summer term classes without discrimination as to race.'

" 44

At least some of these changes in admission policy were reported to have been influenced by the Commission's Higher Education Report.

12. Conclusions

The Nation's progress in removing the stultifying effects of segregation in the public elementary and secondary schools-North, South, East, and West-is slow indeed.

During the period 1959-61, only 44 school districts in the 17 Southern and border States initiated desegregation programs; 13 of these acted under court orders; 15 more were pressured into action by pending suits. Seven years after the Supreme Court decision in the School Segregation Cases, 2,062 school districts in the South that enroll both white and Negro pupils had not even started to comply with the requirements of the Constitution. These include all districts in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina; all but one in Florida and one in Louisiana. Some of the 775 that have started to desegregate have barely begun a 12-year progression; others, by making all initial assignments by race and placing the burden of seeking transfer on Negro pupils often under extensive pupil placement procedures have kept at a minimum the number of Negroes in attendance at formerly white schools.

In the North and the West, where segregation by race, color, religion, or national origin is not officially countenanced, it exists in fact in many public schools. A Federal court decision in the New Rochelle, N.Y., case in January 1961 (affirmed by the court of appeals) which required the desegregation of a public school in a northern city, was probably the most significant single event affecting equal protection of the laws in public education since the Supreme Court's decision in the Little Rock case in 1958.

Legislative resistance to desegregation has continued in some Southern States, notably Louisiana. Others, such as Virginia and Georgia, have shifted from massive resistance to freedom of choice fortified by tuition grants. The former proved unconstitutional; the new strategy is now before the courts. The Prince Edward (Va.) case raised the question whether the closing of the public schools and financing the education of all children who seek it in private schools is an evasion of a court order to desegregate. In the St. Helena case the closing of a public school in accordance with Louisiana State law to avoid the neces

sity of desegregating has been successfully challenged as a denial of equal protection under the 14th amendment.

The Attorney General of the United States has been active in the New Orleans case to prevent nullification of constitutional principles by State action; to prevent evasion of the Federal court order to desegregate public schools; and to provide protection to Negro children assigned to formerly white schools. He has also filed a brief as amicus curiae in St. Helena. By invitation of the Federal court in the New Rochelle case, he filed a brief advising the court with regard to the order to be entered. Only in Prince Edward has the Federal court denied the Attorney General the right to intervene to protect the interests of the United States.

During the period 1959-61 there have been numerous desegregation suits in the Federal courts. The law of desegregation is gradually emerging as lower courts have had to apply the principles of the School Segregation Cases, and other pertinent Supreme Court pronouncements, to specific problems. Recent decisions indicate that initial assignment of all pupils by race subject to the right to apply for transfer does not meet constitutional requirements, and that equal protection of the laws demands that the same criteria for assignment must be applied to both whites and Negroes. This should lead to a reevaluation not only of administrative procedures under pupil placement plans but of the entire concept of pupil placement as a method of desegregation.

In New Rochelle the court placed on the school board the obligation of undoing segregation created prior to 1949 by gerrymandering of school zones. As this principle has been affirmed on appeal, school boards having uniracial schools can no longer justify it merely on the basis of residential patterns in combination with a neighborhood school policy. Any existing segregation may be constitutionally suspect. School boards that want to operate their schools in a constitutional manner may have to inquire into the cause of any existing segregation. They may have to prove that zoning lines follow residential patterns by coincidence, not design; that the sites and sizes of schools were not fixed to assure segregation; that racial residential patterns were not officially created in the first instance. Thus New Rochelle challenges many school boards in the North and the West which have thought they were immune from attack because existing segregation did not result from school assignment explicitly by race.

Many dependents of military personnel are still attending segregated off-base schools in the Southern States, particularly in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. In the past 2 years a few off-base schools have been desegregated in Arkansas, Florida, and North Carolina by voluntary agreement; and in Tennessee by court order. Texas an on-base school operated by local school authorities was desegregated only after suit was filed. In many places integrated on-base

In

schools provide elementary school instruction only; high school students must face the problem of segregated schools in local communities.

The growing recognition in the North and the West that "we have to do a lot more for some children just to give them the same chance to learn" forecasts an affirmative approach to equal protection. School systems that have initiated projects to help minority-group children surmount economic, social, and cultural barriers inherited from generations of deprivation have found marked improvement in their scholastic achievement. Private groups also are offering programs to meet the same need. If the function of public schools is to provide opportunity for all American children to develop the skills, attitudes, and knowledge that will enable them to contribute fully to American life, the extension of such programs throughout the Nation should be expected.

Many public libraries in Southern States that receive Federal aid under the Library Services Act of 1956 fail to provide free library service to all residents of the community, or do so only on a separate but unequal basis. In some places only white residents are served.

The admission of two Negro students to the University of Georgia in January 1961 is the outstanding event in the field of higher education since the publication of the Commission's Higher Education Report. Several other colleges and universities, both public and private, have announced a policy, effective September 1961, of admitting students without regard to race or color. The first school desegregation suit of any kind in the State of Mississippi has been filed to secure admission to the State university. It has not been decided.

With the opening of school in September 1961, initial desegregation under court order is scheduled in Atlanta, Ga.; Dallas and Galveston, Tex.; Escambia County (Pensacola), Fla.; and several communities in southern Delaware. Asheville, N.C.; two small communities and one county in Tennessee; two small school districts in Texas; and four in Virginia will voluntarily open their formerly white schools to Negroes for the first time.

A substantial extension of desegregation has been announced in Little Rock, Ark., Dade County (Miami), Fla., and several counties in Virginia. Perhaps the most significant announcement is from Chapel Hill, N.C. It will abandon pupil-placement desegregation in the fall of 1961 in favor of a Nashville-type grade-a-year plan. Grade-a-year plans in Nashville, Knoxville, and Davidson County, Tenn.; Dollarway, Ark.; and Houston, Tex., will desegregate new grades per schedule.

Numerically, the greatest increases in Negroes attending school with whites for the first time will occur in counties of Maryland and Virginia suburban to Washington, D.C. In Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Va., 180 Negroes are expected in the formerly white schools as compared with 71 in 1960-61. In Montgomery County, Md., the closing of the