SUCCESSES SCORED IN. ONE=DAY SCHOOL BOYCOTTS
By Evelyn Sell.
The battle for first-class integrated education in the United States has been in the forefront of recent civil-rights demonstra~ tions in the North and the South, One-day school boycotts have al- | ready been held in four cities: New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cambridge, Maryland; and Chester, Pennsylvania, Similar boycotts have been announced for Boston and Chicago, The latter city sparked- the boycott technique by its outstanding § success last October when ‘250, 000 students stayed home,
A threatened poycott in Cleveland was called off when the school board. promised to speed up integration by transporting Negro children out of their ghettoes and into white schools. The United Freedom Movement and other civil-rights organizations agreed to temporarily halt picketing and other demonstrations. Just before this agreement was reached, police broke up a sit-in demonstration inside. the school administration building.
on ‘February 5, the same day as the New York school boycott, about 350 persons in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, staged a protest maroh and _ rally at the school administration building over segregation in that. city's schools, ,
“In the New York action, organized by the city-wide Committee for Integrated Schools, 464,000 pupils -- more than one-third of the total -- stayed away from classrooms, This involved primarily the - Negro and Puerto Rican communities which represent more than half the school population. Although New York!s schools are legally integra~ ted, segregated housing patterns keep about 165 schools mostly Negro. ‘and Puerto Rican.
During the one-day boycott, "freedom schools" were set up in. some 500 churches and community centers to teach the children civilrights subjects, Thousands of students and parents were in the streets, marching to picket public schools, city hall, Governor Rockefellerts office and the Board of Education office in the borough of Brooklyn. Chanting "Jim Crow Must Gof" and singing the battle hymn ‘of the civil-rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," the children car~ ried picket signs such as: & 54m Crow Ganit Teach Democracy,"
Many teachers participated also. “About eight per cent of the instructors were absent from school; normal absenteeism runs three per cent.
The New York City Board of: Education tried to shrug off the boy~ cott. Board President James Donovan called it "a fizzle." The figures, however, clearly bear out the boycott leader's statement that the demonstration was a "tremendous success,"
' ‘The Rev. Milton Galamison, head of the Committee for Integrated
on Gee
Schools, warned of another boycott between March 9 and April 17 which would hit the Board of Education in the pocketbook because attendance figures during this period are used in computing state aid to schools,
One week after New York!s smashing success, boycotts were held in Cincinnati and Cambridge, The Cincinnati school system has been integrated by law since 1879 and staff integration took place in 1943 but schools are still segregated because of neighborhood racial patterns, Although eighteen per cent of the city's teachers are Negro, eighty~five per cent of these teach in predominantly Negro schools, The Cincinnati school board reported thirty-five per cent absenteeism among students during the boycott.
Almost 1,000 Negro students stayed home during Cambridge's school boycott. The protest was held despite the fact that all public demonstrations have been banned in the city since last summer's severe racial clashes,
On February 13 about forty per cent of the students in . Chester, Pennsylvania, boycotted their schools, The protest was organized by the Committee for Freedom Now after the mayor turned down twelve demands made by the group. In the South
A school crisis flared again in Alabama on February 3. After the Tuskegee High School had been ordered by the courts to enroll twelve Negro students, all the white students withdrew and transferred to Macon Academy, a private school set up by the segregationists, Since the high school was being attended by only these twelve Negro students, the state school board ordered it closed and tried to transfer the Negroes to a segregated school. The Negroes! protest was backed up by a federal judge who ordered school officials to enroll six of the Negro students at Macon County High in Notasulga and the other six at a school in nearby Shorter,
Governor Wallace, who had already forced the White House to federalize national guardsmen in order to enforce court-ordered integration of Alabama schools, vowed to keep the Negroes out of the white schools, On February 5, Negro students did enter the Shorter school, but Mayor Rea of Notasulga refused entrance to the six attempting to register at Macon County High, Bomb threats and a one-hundred per cent white boycott of both schools were used as excuses to close both institutions,
Governor Wallace busied himself trying to gather state-wide financial aid to underwrite the private segregated Macon Academy, “I've already contributed personally," he said, He promised to divert state funds to the private school,
On February 14, the six Negroes assigned to Macon County High entered the school armed with a new U.S. court order and escorted by a strong foree of state troopers, No white students, however, are now in the school,
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Regional Differences
“The contrast between school | tights in the North and in-the South was again evident in these February actions, In the South, school integration has involved court cases, troops and a limited’ number of heroic young Negroes, In the North, mass demonstrations have been: organized to force integration of all minority children.
‘Another important - ‘difference must be noted: the Southern struggle has concerned itself. primarily with getting Negroes into the school system which already exists for whites; the Northern struggle is concerned with changing the school system that exists for both Negroes and whites.
Getting ‘Negro children into white schools is only a . part of the. Northern struggle. Inextricably bound up with this aim is the fight “to revamp textbooks, curriculums and the composition of school boards.
- Following the New York boycott, a number of neighborhood mootings were held by participants, Parents were less concerned with schemes — for transporting Negro and Puerto Rican children to all-white schools . than they were with improving the quality of education in their own neighborhood schools.
The. truth. of, the matter is that America's) gchool system, is not meating the’ neéds of modern urban children -- of any race, The Negroest fight for more realistic and honest textbooks, for a curricu-~ lum based on the facts of life of our automated economy and for school boards responsive to the members of the communi ty will | inevitably bene-= Lit whites as well as Negroes,