School Integration: Fifth Year

Report Outline
Continuing Resistance to Desegregation
Court Supervision of School Integration
Elements of Basic Struggle in Virginia

Continuing Resistance to Desegregation

New Tests at Opening of Schools in Virgania

The 1958-59 school year, fifth since racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, opens in the wake of events which foreshadow new clashes between state and federal authority in southern states. Following a long stretch of preliminary legal maneuvering, the hard core of Virginia's comprehensive “massive resistance” program probably is finally to be tested in actual operation. Renewal of last year's conflict at Little Rock, Ark., hangs on action of the Supreme Court and of the state legislature—both called into special session to take up the touchy situation revolving around mixing of the races at that city's Central High School. Meanwhile, continued hardening of opposition in the South to school integration is plainly evident.

Three Virginia localities (Arlington, Charlottesville, and Norfolk) are under federal court orders to begin desegregation of public elementary and secondary schools in September. A basic provision of Virginia's resistance code requires the closing of any public school in which both white and colored children have been enrolled.

Threatened Renewal of Little Rock Conflict

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals set aside on Aug. 18 a district court order which would have allowed the Little Rock school board to suspend integration at Central High School until January 1961. The lower court's order had been issued June 21 in response to a plea by the school board for a cooling-off period.