News in Perspective; 117; School Desegregation

From Atlanta, Georgia, news in perspective, the South de-segregates, presented by National Educational Television and the New York Times, with Clifton Daniel, Associate Editor, Roy Reed, New Orleans Bureau, James T. Wooten, Atlanta Bureau, and special guests, Julian Bond, Democratic Representative, Georgia State Legislature, and Roy V. Harris, Member of the Georgia Board of Regents. Now, Mr. Daniel. In 1954, it seems a long time ago. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that separate schools

for black and white children were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. In 1955, the court ordered that the nation's separate school system should be integrated with all deliberate speed. A distinctive phrase, a catchy one, with all deliberate speed. Nobody has ever been able to say exactly what it meant. But after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, barred federal aid to segregated schools, there was more speed and less deliberation. Since the first of the year, new orders from the federal courts have quickened the pace again. And now the dual public school system of the South, which endured for a century, is legally dead. Legally dead. Yet the majority of black children, North and South, still go to school only with

each other. Hundreds of thousands of white children, by one means or another, have avoided integrated schools. Is full integration really possible? Is it practical? Is it desirable? Here in Atlanta, and in the South at large, these questions are not academic. And the answers are not obvious. Listen to Roy Harris, 74 years old, a lawyer, former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Georgia, a leader of the Citizens Councils of America, publisher of the Augusta Courier, a segregationist newspaper, and Georgia State Campaign Manager for George C. Wallace in his 1968 bid for the presidency. And listen to Julian Bond,

30 years old, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, one of 14 Negroes and state legislation. The first black man to have his name placed a nomination for the vice presidency at a democratic national convention. And my two colleagues from the New York Times. Roy Reed, regional correspondent in New Orleans, and James T. Wooten, regional correspondent in Atlanta. Jim, you were in Mississippi in January when 30 school districts were integrated by court audit. And you were here in Atlanta when 40 more districts were integrated. What degree of actual integration was achieved? Actually very little. The pattern is a very checkered one across the South. And many cases, the school systems have simply re-segregated themselves,

particularly in Mississippi districts where there are substantially more Negro students than white students. The white children are going to private schools and simply staying home. Some of the other districts are simply ignoring the order. Some of them have gone back into court and have been granted reprieves by the courts. But generally speaking, a very little new integration has taken place as a result of these orders in the last two months. Roy Reed, you were in Mississippi also, and you've since been touring the South. What is the prevailing mood of white southerners on the integration issue? The indignation, I think, is the main thing they feel put up on. They think they're being asked to do something very painful, but the rest of the country is not being required to do. I think they're going to stay in the dignity of perhaps become even angry, if things continue the way they are, and especially with political leaders now seemingly intent on

making the most of this, I'm afraid we may see a repetition of the spectacle of the 1950s. Mr. Bond, as a Negro legislator and civil rights leader, are you satisfied with the pace and style of integration? No, not at all. I think you could fairly say that under Kennedy and Johnson and even more so under Nixon that the history of the move toward integration in the South has been one of equivocation and delay and evasion lately, abetted by the government in Washington. It just has not been enough happening fast enough. Mr. Harris, I've seen you described as a super segregationist. From your point of view, has desegregation gone too far and too fast? Well, of course, as you know, I'm against desegregation at all. I believe in segregation. I think the Supreme Court went haywire in 1954 when it overturned all of the decisions of all of the courts in this country

over a hundred years. I have wondered whether or not desegregation was possible, and I have tried to make a study and watch it. I have reached a conclusion that it will never be a successful movement. I think it's going to defeat itself. And I think one of the things we've been making some inquiries about some of our Negro colleges in the university system, I mean the ones who have been in the past four or five years ago, the students in these colleges would want to whip you if you didn't agree to kind of do away with the Negro colleges and fuse them all into the whites. Now, if you undertook to do away with them, you'd be in trouble. There has been a change of feeling there somewhere. And of course, when you get down basically, this race problem is nothing new. It's been going on ever since recorded history for 10,000 years. You've had this

dealing with it. I think some time ago, Julian and I have an interview and I, at that time, Arnold Taunbe had recently written an article in which he stated that the only remedy for it was fusion of the races. But the English-speaking races, the French and the Germanic races, the Scandinavians and the Jews, all refused to fuse. Consequently, with that situation, you had them fighting every effort and everything towards social mixing and mingling with the races which lead to a fusion. And I think you'll find that it's been going on for 10,000 years and all for the next 10,000. We'll come back to that and ask Mr. Bond's opinion. You all have your opinions. I have mine. But what about those directly affected by the recent integration orders? Black and white parents, school officials, community leaders, and the children.

The other day, news and perspective sent its cameras to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, to record interviews with some of them. Jackson has a normal school enrollment of 39,000, 53% white, and 47% black. The schools were closed for two weeks to reorganize in compliance with the court order. When they reopened on February 6th, enrollment was down by 4,500 students. 1,000 of these were black. How did integration go? What will be its results? Jim Carian of National Educational Television asked the questions. Do you think the whole change came off relatively calm and smooth? Yes, it did. We had a terrific number of problems to overcome, of course, in a very short time. In fact, it amounts to completely closing down a school system,

completely reorganizing it from top to bottom, doing all the logistics and getting it back into operation in less than nine days' time. Of course, we've had our administrative rough spots. We've got our scheduling problems. We've got students that are still trying to find the way around. But other than that, things have gone extremely smooth. Right now, we're trying to get students in classes. They were interrupted in the middle of the school year. Consequently, we have many problems in enabling them to pick up the same course of study and the same courses that they were in at the beginning of the year for the remainder of this year, even though they have changed schools, they've changed teachers. This is quite a logistics problem. When you have a little over 39,000 students and 55 schools to deal with. When you destroy your neighborhood school, when you interrupt the curriculum in the middle of the school year, and arbitrarily, on 15 days,

notice, say that you are going to have to leave the particular school that you're going to get on the bus sometimes an hour or an hour and a half before a reasonable period to travel all the way across the city into another school, which might or might not have the same courses that you are taking, that might or might not have a curriculum that is in land with what you were having, what you were taking the first semester. Then you naturally have a tendency to have a breakdown in education. That's what the steribs me serve more than any other single thing. It's not a question of segregation or integration. It's a question of whether we're going to have quality education in the schools of this state. Two of my children have been moved into a white school, and this means that they have to get up a little bit earlier in the morning, and I have a

transportation, not a problem, but a real creative problem, but I still can get the children back and forth to school. It must be very hard, though, for a lot of parents. It's very hard because we have so many parents who work and cannot get their children to school. We have parents who say that we just can't afford much money, high in the world, am I going to get a child to school? I can't afford to pay 30 cents a day for children to go to school to be transferred on the bus. And this is a big problem for a lot of adults. But when you look at it, Nick Gross have always been to the place where they had to get up early and get to our school. So if a parent would say that I had to do this myself when I grew up, because I lived out in the rule and I didn't have any other choice. If I wanted a good education, I had to get up and

catch a bus to get to our school. How have the two of your children reacted to this? Do they like the new school? At first, they were very disturbed because of the fact they only went two and a half blocks to a school. And now they have to go a distance. This was very disturbing to my two children and they are two in. And they really didn't want to be separated, so I told them I said both of you have to go to the same school. And this is what they are doing and they are enjoying it now. Today was the first day that they decided to walk home from school. And one said, well mother, I'll lose some weight if I have to walk like this, you know, every day. So they are enjoying it now. Mr. Trapper, would you characterize yourself as a progressive parent in Jackson? No, I think I'm just just a plain parent. I wouldn't think of myself as being progressive or otherwise. I'm just just an ordinary parent. But you said earlier, you think that if the court had

left things alone, things would have worked themselves out. Yes, I do because our people in Mississippi most of them attend church and they know the Bible and the teachings of the Bible about the worth of the individual and accepting the individual as a child of God. And I think that that is the thing that it's going to take for this to work is for us to realize that all people are human beings and they are, they should have opportunities. And I think our people in Mississippi were working toward those goals. And we're accepting one another. But now that this court order has come in, it has caused us to, well, I guess, to withdraw and to become afraid of one another.

As a parent, when you were in this period of not knowing where your children will go, were you ever tempted to send your children, your own children to a private school? No, we were not tempted to send our children to a private school because the private school here that has been in operation for a long time was not able to take care of all the children and these schools that have opened up since this came about cannot give to our children the education that they need. Jackson Public Schools over the years has accumulated books, buildings, lab equipment, and all of that in excess of $43 million. Our school budget is $22 million a year. And these schools that are beginning now have no way of having that kind of means with which to operate. So we didn't even consider private school. We just hope that there will be enough

of the whites that are capable leaders that will remain and our schools can continue to operate in the way that it has in years past. You feel in Mississippi people can support both the private school system and a public school system? Or do you feel the public school system will go down that there'll be less funding for it? Well, I think it would be inevitable that tax support or the need for appropriating tax monies to support public schools will decrease as enrollment decreases. And so far, most of the concern we've heard expressed about the inability of the white people in Mississippi to send their children to private schools has been from two rather interesting and disparate groups. One has been the very affluent white people who worry about this and the other has been northern reporters. They seem concerned about it.

The people most directly concerned don't seem to worry. They just work it out. The enrollment in our schools, I think, reflects just about all possible economic levels. And most people we've found work out some way to do what they want to do. And some families and mother might get a job, the papa might do a little moon lighting. And in one case, I know one of our patrons drives a school bus to put her three children through school. I think that this state needs public education and I intend to support public education. I also, at the same time, intend to do everything I can as a state senator to see that all of the children of this state are educated. I don't say to you that private schools are panacea that we should move in mass to them. I think that what we should do is to explore all aspects of public

education as we go forward. And there's all the other states are doing in the field of education. And as I just got through saying, better than 50 percent of the states of this union have enacted legislation or are contemplating legislation or in the process of doing so to support private education. I think state of Mississippi should do likewise. I think some private schools will remain now. No doubt about that in my mind. But I think there will be few and far between. Consequently, what will happen is that you are going to have some real good high school and high schools in the next three years where the blacks and the whites will decide that we need to live here in Mississippi and in these United States together. There is a lot of opposition to integration, just integration if it was right by my house. If the school was next door, many people are against integration. But I, to a certain extent, am against the busing kids

long ways because I'm a victim of that. I myself am not because I walk the school six miles per day. But I have seen black kids ride 40 miles one way for years, not one year for years. But it took this kind of a thing for the white man to understand how horrendous it was and is. And now he understands it. It has always been wrong that you had to transfer kids long distances. But the undeniable fact is that we have had an opportunity to do this thing ourselves for 15 years. We could have had our own neighborhood schools. Some of these schools would have had more whites than blacks. Some of them would have had more or blacks than whites. But we could have lived with it. But now the idea that is being forced upon us, being forced upon the white man, makes him

fight that much harder, yes. Do you think, especially in Jackson itself, things might have worked themselves out better, had the court order, this recent court order not been? No, I don't say that. I'm saying that my belief is as long as the courts stay out, it would have never come. If the courts had stayed out, Mr. Duckworth says it would never have come. But now it has come, Jim. And actually speaking, what happened when the integration took place in these 70 districts? Was there much disruption? Was there violence? Was there a great deal of anguish? What took place? Well, there was in comparison with the resistance techniques that we've seen in the past and the South. There was very little violence. There were several cases of suspected arson,

some schools burned in Mississippi. There were some reporters who were roughed up occasionally. But generally speaking, the private school syndrome, I think, took care of the tendencies toward violence. And we discussed this over in Jackson while we were covering the story. And the idea of creative disorder was brought up in which the white people who actually or essentially opposed desegregation or integration had the private schools to turn to rather than to outright violence. In the case, for instance, of Wilkinson County, Mississippi, this picture behind me was taken in Wilkinson County on the first day of their 1970s school term. And the little girl there is a net brown. She's an 11-year-old sixth grader. And she and her brother were the only

white students out of about 3,000 black students in the entire system. What had happened there was it that people just absolutely decided that they were not going to go to school with black people, not in those numbers. Roy, did this integration process amount in your view to a massive disruption of the educational system in the South? We've got a great deal of discussion about that. In recent weeks, we've heard the man-like senator Stennis say that the school system is in chaos. Mr. Gurney talks about the school system being down the drain. I think that's open to debate. I think we've not yet reached that point where we have to ride off the public schools and the side. There was a good bit of disruption. I think it might get worse unless the trend is

arrested. But right now, no. What about it, Mr. Harris? Well, I get most of my information from the school teachers. And the most of the school teachers that I talk to tell me that just as well not be them, that they are that best babysitting in that school. Mr. Bonn. Well, my impression would be like Mr. Reeds. It's just the chaos, the uprisings, the violence that southern governors have said what happened as southern senators have said would or is happening just as an occurring. The tragedy, of course, is that white parents in Mississippi and Alabama to a lesser degree in Georgia withdrawing from public education. And that'll mean I think the corresponding drop in public support for education. But I don't think there's any chaos existing. And I don't think any will exist if you can get some kind of support for obeying the law

from governors and senators and people in public positions. But as long as you don't have that, then the possibility of chaos and violence is always there and it's always present. Was this particularly disruptive because it took place in midterm? Or have you been better to have done it at another time? I think had I been doing it, had I been in charge, I read it, of course, would have been done 1955 when it should have been done. But lacking that, I think it would not have been difficult to have waited until the beginning of the upcoming school year, the 1970s, September opening of the schools, or to have done it in 1969 at the opening of the school year. It was bad to do it in the middle of the term, but even with that amount of disruption, you see the head of the Jackson school system saying that they accomplished it with little and no difficulty. I think that's an important point and that is that where leadership, whether it be at the state level or the local level, where the leadership insists that there is chaos, this insistence creates chaos in the system. This not say that some of the ATW plans have not created some

discomforts for white people and black people who are in systems that are complying. One ATW plan in particular, in Mississippi, zoned, what was it, right? Zoned one school out of existence. Right, or some students, about 350 students out of school. So there have been some examples of ineptness in some of the plans. But generally speaking, where local leadership has decided that this will work, it has worked, and there are examples of it across the South. The chaos is generally, I think, caused by people who say there will be chaos. I think that point of leadership can't be made too hard. It's a gem, and I've seen that repeatedly. Where especially local leaders have decided that it's got to work, it is working. It could be reversed. I'm not saying that it's going to work from now on. But in a place like Yazoo City,

Mississippi, for example, where there's a black majority of about 60, 40, the local leaders decided that the time had come to stop fighting. And if they were going to save their town, they had to get down and make it work. And it has worked. The white kids have very largely stayed in the schools, us there. The time has come to stop fighting. He says, Mr. Harris, that he found this sentiment in Yazoo City. His integration generally accepted now by Southern political leaders. You were one of them. I don't think so. Now, let me tell you, the accepted as a legal factor, or a lawyer. Well, now we bow to it. We don't agree with it. And you know, I practice long enough to know that just before the judge go put you in jail, I changed my tune. And I go right up to the jail, no one fighting the judge. I did last week in a case in Augusta.

But here's the pitiful thing about this situation. You take my county, for instance, Richmond County and Augusta. This integration has been going on. The Board of Education has voted in the courts, but they have complied with the court decrees. That hasn't been any violence. That hasn't been any demonstrations. That hasn't been any disturbance. But I have made a point in the last few weeks to talk to the school teachers. Now, they tell you, right, sad tale. When they tell you that they just as well, they do just as well as they stay at home and didn't go to school at all. That inside the schoolroom, nothing is going on because they are with the mixing and mingling that have had different backgrounds and have different teachers. It's remarkable. I know a teacher in Atlanta who tells me she has now. She's always taught chef of all her life in an old white school. It's now practically old Negro. She has

33 little Negroes in her class that I've forgotten it somewhere, 5 or 6 or 7th grade. She tells me that they just worship her that way she puts it, the cutest little things she ever saw, but she's meant all last fall and couldn't teach him anything. What about that, Mr. Vaughn? Well, I don't know about that particular case. I was going to make the point that in a way it's very refreshing to hear Mr. Harris talk in opposition to the Mississippi State Senator, saw a moment ago, who maintains that the issue is not raised. I think Mr. Harris would maintain that it is raised and I maintain that it is raised. Well, you know, I've always said this, that all these liberals, who say the liberals are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. Well, it's not just the liberals now, though. It's the conservatives as well, who say it's not raised. It's quality education. I agree with you because it, and I think they're all hypocrites. And I take what's happening in Washington with a school

system. When they set out to make a model system and all these hypocrites up there, they left town. They're leaving in Atlanta. They're leaving everywhere else. And you know, Mr. Agnew, they're the day. He talked about these, what do you call them, the limousine liberals, who send their children to private schools. He does the same thing. Yeah, I know he does. But now, I think one of the reasons we've never had an adequate solution to the race problem, and we haven't must admit we've got one, is that there's never been an honest effort on the part of the leaders to sit down and solve it. They're all about your hypocrites from the present and old down. But the solutions are not all that simply when you... I agree with you. Well, I tell you, I don't know that I'll ever be in position to see what I would like to see, what I have. And Julian has heard me use this illustration. I've written about it.

I think the finest illustration to be found in the world is right here in Atlanta. When Sherman got through with it, nobody had any bread or anything else to eat, and everybody was hungry, and it broke. Everything was burned up, and the white people and the black people had to start to rebuild a new social and economic order. They built it on a segregated basis, and there's never been over... I don't know what the next census culture would up in the 1960s. There's never been over 200,000 Negroes in Atlanta. And there has never been a time in the Civil War that Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, all those three cities, anyhow, haven't had more Negroes in Atlanta. Yet there is more Negro wealth in Atlanta than any other place in this country. And I have read, and I can't prove it, that there's more Negro wealth in any city in the world. You've got six Negro colleges and universities that they built themselves and operate themselves. You've got more Negro college students in the state of Georgia today than you have in New York,

Pennsylvania, and Illinois, put together. Mr. Barron, you live here in this city of Atlanta. Do you share that Mr. Harris' view of the happy situation of the Negroes in Atlanta? No, not at all. He's right that there are great many very affluent black families here, a great deal of wealth concentrate in the black community. But the fact that there are wealthy black people here hasn't meant much to those who don't have much wealth, just as I'm sure in Augusta, there are great many wealthy white people. But the fact of their wealth doesn't mean a great deal to white people in Augusta. Don't have much money. Or you take someone like Representative Dent from Augusta, whom I'm sure you know, who's a wealthy, wealthy man. His wealth and affluence may be an example to other black people in Augusta, but it doesn't feed them. No, I agree with you. It does do this, Julian. It shows that here they've had an opportunity that they didn't have in New York or Chicago or Philadelphia, right in Atlanta. I'd like to put in as someone who lives in New York, Mr. Harris, that most of those people in Chicago

in New York came from the South, but I also came from. They came there, these black people, in search of something they weren't getting down here, and what they weren't getting down here, I think, was jobs and prosperity. Well, let me answer that by saying that these niggas in Atlanta came from the country sections in Georgia, where they weren't getting what they were expecting and hunting something else, just like they went to New York. Am I not right, Julian? You're right, but a lot of them came here and they didn't find it. They still haven't found it. But I understand this, there's a lot of us countrymen moved into Augusta, as I came, as I did, that we haven't gotten wealthy either. And there's a lot of white people that have come to the end. Of course, all of us know that twice as many poor white people as they are poor niggas. Right. Could I ask a question? Yes. We're all agreed that there's a good bit of a problem right now with school integration. I wonder if some of the present problem might have been avoided, if the white leaders of the South 20 or 30 years ago had done a little

more to make the schools really equal. I don't think there's any doubt about it, but let me tell you, you know, I wasn't born in this century. I'm a little older than you folks. I was born in 1895. In the South, there was never any prosperity in the South from the Civil War days, was up until the World War One days. Now, I lived through that period. I know what, four and five, some cotton, four and five cents a bush of corn. We lived and we weren't hungry, neither black or white, when we were rural people. We didn't have any money. We had a hill of potatoes and we had something to eat. We had gardens and we raised our own meat. We had a different situation, but we never had, because we started off broke. And not only that, we had every discrimination against us from discriminatory freight rates and everything else, which my friend who's registered from North Carolina knows about. We had every handicap, you know, and I, they

not only applied to the white people, they applied to the black people too. But did that really justify the way you... But the point ever is, I'll make you listen. When I went to high school, in my little town, I came up in and there was no public high school supported by tax money. And I finished in 1913. Mr. Harris, you... But there were no private public schools of any kind. You mentioned you were born in 1895. This suggests that perhaps there's not only a racial barrier between you and Julian Bond here, but perhaps also a generation gap. What do you fellows who are touring around the South find out about the attitude of young people? Do they share the point of view of Mr. Harris' generation? Jim? Once again, I want to go back to the leadership element in this. In communities, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, might be a good example of that. In Hattiesburg, which is in

Forest County, there were large parades, sort of like the Older Civil Rights Movement, again, with, except it was white people marching and protesting the recent court order. And in this case, there were girls basketball team and all of the young people that could be found, because they were being led in this direction. In other cases, for instance, like in Columbia, Mississippi, where integration started on a very good footing, I think, because of leadership there, the young people got together and helped spruce up the schools along with the parents. They integrated the cheerleading squads and held extra practices during the Christmas vacation, the same with the basketball team, et cetera. Now, I really think, you know, it's the old adage of an example of being the best way, where leadership is all they do.

With all due respect to your position, Mr. Harris, I'd like to disagree whether you're on something you said a while ago about how most of the white people in the south really feel about integration. I'm sure that you're right that there are a lot of white people who don't want to have anything to do with it and never will, but I think there's a big part. Over 90 percent. Well, now you mentioned that figure. There is some evidence that the white people in the south are really have come to accept the principal of integration. There was a Gallup poll a few months ago that never did get much publicity for some reason. This poll, without going into all the figures that came down to this, it showed that when white parents in the south were asked the question, would you mind your child going to school with black children? An overwhelming percentage of the white of the white parents said no, they would not mind

until the proportion in the school reached something like 50 percent. At that point, they objected pretty strenuously, but my point is that over the last 15 years we've seen a remarkable thing happen in the south, and that is if this Gallup poll can be believed a majority of the white people here now accept at least the principal. Do you think Mr. Honda, excuse me, let's go ahead. Yes, what they do. You know, they'll all tell you that they're interested in quality education that race doesn't make any difference, but they're not telling you the truth. I know them. Who are you talking about there? I mean, the white southern people. They, because they, this thing has been in the churches and everywhere, and it's been fashionable to be for integration, see. And it's the kind of a social stigma to be called

a racist, like I am. I don't know what a racist is. I don't believe in the fusion of the two races. I think we ought to keep the two races. Is that what you fear about the integrated public that's what that's what white people everywhere. That's a whole point, but the point I'm making is the average person in telling you the truth, because he's afraid he'd be called a racist. Mr. Bond, you look at from a slightly different point of view. How do you view this? Well, I hate to agree with Mr. Harris, but I think he is right. I agree with Mr. Harris. I disagree with the Gallup poll. I think he is right that the issue is race and the tragedy, again, is to hear people say quality education. It's quality education. That's not what they're talking about. They mean segregated education. They mean it here when they say it, and they mean it, and Mrs. Epibody. Do you see any prospects then of any black, white cooperation on this issue on a scale in the South? Only I think when there's some kind of leadership and someone gets up and someone who has a position of respect in his community gets up and says this thing is right and we're going to go ahead and do it, even if we don't like it.

Now, that hasn't happened here in this city, which is the citadel of southern liberalism, the mayor, who is an unashamed liberal, the Board of Education, which now has more black members than it ever has had, the newspapers. None of them have taken the credit of forthright standards. I'm going to tell you that the mayor and the newspapers, I've been getting a lot of fun out of it because they've been giving me down the country for years. As soon as it looked like they're going to have a regular mayor in it, a lot of them about to have a fit. That's right. And you know that and they do it too. And the mayor, I mean, not the present mayor, they all went to Ivan Allen. He split with the Negro leadership over one thing. He didn't want a Negro mayor and they weren't one. They allowed a newspaper to split on the same thing. And I think you wouldn't agree with it. And the funny thing, this boy, this mayor now, a lot of these mathematics people, hated the newspapers and hated Ivan Allen so bad, they came in and voted for this new mayor just to give him a kick into pants. Tell me, speaking of the leadership,

one here is that business and industrial leaders are more in favor of integration of the schools than political leaders. Is this a fast statement? They are until it gets next door to them, but you let a Negro move into block and see what they do. You've got a situation here that when you throw them all together, you create hell. Now, if the people will ever sit around and take this problem and work it out intelligently and honestly, you can make some progress, but you never make it with a bunch of hypocrites in the sand. But if that's true, if you do create havoc when you mix black and white children in the classroom, say that is true, why is that true? How can this be that you get back to this now? You get back to this one thing that to feel this in every white woman's mind and every white man. And that is the fusion of the two races.

That is the thing. That's the thing they were at about. And after all, when you begin to think about it, that is the thing that bothers all of us and the thing that we're all concerned with. Well, it doesn't bother me. It's a question of whether you want it, well, it may not bother you. They are all exceptions to have a rule. But most white people that does, and I tell you, we can't get there is white person to be honest about it because we've been preaching to them, I have, I made speeches from all over Virginia, the Texas, they were stating this out. We've been telling them for 15 years that this was a battle that was lost in politics, it's got to be one in politics. Well, it seems like we wanted the ballot box. They had just beginning to wake up right now in the last two or three months, the first time. It seems to me that it's clear from what you say and Mr. Bond somewhat agrees with you. That indeed,

the white people in the South have bowed to legal segregation, but they are obviously still continuing to resist in certain ways. The current strategy, as far as I'm able to interpret it, is that they are, first of all, going to resist the busing of students from one district to another, which would make it impossible, physically, to integrate many districts. And secondly, they're going to insist that Northern and Southern schools be treated alike. That the, by this, I think, Southern politicians hope that Northerners will be so aroused that they will join the Southerners in demanding a return to freedom of choice, as it's called in the South. Is this a correct assessment in your view, Mr. Bond? I think it is, and it's sort of distressing to hear someone like Senator Ribbacoff. Why is it distressing to me because everything that he says is true, yet he still gives aid and comfort to the Maddox's and the Stenis's and probably the Harris's for the South. Well, I'm not sure he's giving as much aid and comfort as they think, because if I

understand Senator Ribbacoff, he's not proposing to let the South off lightly on integration. What he is proposing is not merely to integrate the schools in the North and in the South, but he is calling for the integration of society in general and of neighborhoods. But he's always, I think the immediate result of his speech was to send the attorney generals of Florida, Mississippi and Alabama, or maybe Louisiana, not Florida, out to California, to Pasadena, Los Angeles, to become friends of the court in that suit. Perfect example of outside agitators going into a situation where they weren't invited to ask. The point is going to be turned, I think, so that Southern resistors will say, we've made a step. Now, we're not going to do anything else until New York does the same. I want New York to be as clean and honest and open as integrated as it can be, but I don't want to wait down here for New York to get right before we get right. But not only Senator Ribbacoff, but President Nixon has supported, seems to have supported the

view of Senator Stennis, who is demanding an amendment now before the Senate, that the law be equally applied to North and South. What do you think the President's purpose is? I think his purpose is to try to capture the Wallace voters, the people voted for George Wallace in 60 years. Do you agree with Mr. Paul? Well, I haven't quite interpreted Nixon's position to be exactly as you have. When you get out and read that policy statement to White House, they should, and then their explanation or retraction of part of it. The only thing I can get out of Nixon is that he isn't against Bussard. And if he is against Bussard, that's the only way you can destroy segregation in the big cities. Well, I think he's trying to get the people that you helped rally for George Wallace. I don't think he's going to do it. I think he's fooling himself. He's always getting himself. He's the only way he can get them as my out-walsing

Wallace. And Wallace is not going to be out-weld. I wonder if you would agree with Charles Morgan of the ACLU. He says the President Southern Strategy is not going to work because the only way you cannot flank Wallace is to go into the Gulf of Mexico. Well, I tell you Southern Strategy won't work because I don't think it's an honest strategy. And I think he's just being hypocritical. But what he's trying to do is to preserve what I call segregation, no of them style, but he's against segregation, Southern style. Now, that's the way I interpret his position. Well, I think what Stennis wants to do is sort of spread what he would consider the misery around. He wants parents in New York State and Pennsylvania and Ohio and California to begin feeling the same kind of agitation that they feel down here. And his hope, of course, as you say, is that as the pressure spread around, everybody will call for a halt. That's what I think is dangerous in Senator Ribbacov's statement. The implied result of it is that the South says,

well, we've done something. We're going to stop and we're not going to do anything else until you've done it. Julia, you mentioned Southern resistors a while ago. I wonder if we could inject into this the phenomenon of black Southern resistors. I'm thinking of Roy Ennis, who's not a seller, but who has been on the South lately proposing an effect and a return to segregated schools. If I'm not being unfair to him, he proposes new separated school districts in which one district would be predominantly black and the other predominantly white. And I understand he's being received pretty well, not only by some of the Southern governors, but also by some of the very frustrated black people. Well, I don't know about that. I was in a meeting a week or so ago, in which he outlined his plans, a meeting of a group of black civil rights workers, some who had a lot of experience in the South, and no one supported his position. And he was challenged

a great deal about what kind of black support he did have in the South. He said he'd been a mobile and talked to leaders of the black community there, and he was challenged. And I just don't think his position is tenable. I don't think it's going to work. I don't think the white South would. He believes that if you have this separate school system with a black school board and a white school board, that the white community, which because of its influence and because of its numbers in the population now supports the public schools by and large or gives the bulk of the support, he believes they'll be willing to split on a per capita basis per child. Revenue is coming into the public schools. I just don't believe it will happen. The South didn't do it in the past. They don't do it now until they're forced to do it. And I just think you're putting yourself in an untenable position. Well, when we speak of Senator Ribbacoff and we talk about Roy Innis, I think it becomes obvious that not all Northern liberals and not even all blacks think that immediate wholesale integration is desirable. The other day, I was reading the New Republic, which is certainly a liberal magazine, and I came on this this article in the February

7th issue, desegregation, where do we go from here by Professor Alexander M. Bickle of the Yale University Law School? Can we any longer fail to acknowledge Professor Bickle says that the federal government is attempting to create in the rural South conditions that cannot in the foreseeable future be attained in large or medium urban centers in the South or in the rest of the country. The government is thus seen as applying its law unequally and unjustly and is therefore fueling the politics of George Wallace. At the same time, the government is also putting itself on a collision course with the aspirations of an articulate and vigorous segment of national Negro leadership. Professor Bickle continues, even if we succeed, at whatever cost, enforcing and maintaining massively integrated school systems in parts of the rural South. We may not

find ourselves eventually dismantling them again at the behest of blacks seeking decentralized community control. There must be a better way, Professor Bickle says, to employ the material and political resources of the federal government, the process of disestablishing segregation is not quite finished, and both HEW and the courts must drive it to completion, as they must also continually police the disestabishment, but nothing seems to be gained and much is risked or lost by driving the process to the tipping point of resegregation. Professor Bickle concludes, massive school integration is not going to be attained in this country very soon in good part because no one is certain that is really worth the cost. Let us therefore try to proceed with education, Mr. Bond. Well, I think he is wrong if the things set among some of the population, there is not support for

massive integration. I think that you would find it less and less among black people who live in New York. I think you would find it just as strong in this region of the country among urban and rural black people who have been believing since 1954 and beyond that that an integrated public education was the best education. It was an equal education. It was a quality education on the level with the kind of education that other children in their respective districts are getting. I think that has been true. It is true now, and I think it will be true. And I think the forays that Roy Ennis makes into this region of the country and the support he says he does get. I think it is largely of his own making. I just think that the people, the black people in any region are going to insist on an integrated education. My brother-in-law is the NAACP attorney and the school suit in Atlanta and he proposed the NAACP plan in federal court and didn't press it with the judge but the local NAACP repudiated him, the plaintiffs and the school suit repudiated him and insisted that what they wanted was a unitary school system, a single school system attended

by all of the children and directed by a school board, elected by all of the voters. Mr. Harris, it seems according to John Nordheim over New York Times that the major issue of the 1970s may not be segregation but resegregation, resegregation created by population movements. He says that the moving van is replacing the white politician as the catalyst in this situation. I think he's correct and I think it's going to happen. I get back to your new Republic article. You know I have strictly a rural background while I practice law and Augusta, my people live in Jefferson County, a rural county. Now out there in those counties they've got total integration because you don't have to bust them to get the integration. They owe them. If you have a community school, it's integrated. That's true in all of the rural areas and small

towns in Georgia because when I say you don't have to bust them, no more busting them. It used to be always been when you have to bring them from out in the rural areas to wherever the schoolhouse is. But you don't have to move them from one school or one area to another from one white area because in the rural areas and small towns we've never paid much attention to a segregated living of housing. We've accustomed to live right next door to Negro families and especially out on the forums we always did. But not exactly somewhat separate but equal wouldn't you say? Well there weren't always equal but they were always separate. And some of them I've known a lot of Negro places and farm houses were more than equal. But anyhow, a lot of them. But of course it hadn't been since Bowie were there. But see I go back before Bowie were there

when we had some very wealthy Negro farmers all over Georgia in my area but yes what I'm talking about. You don't have the situation in the rural areas that you do in the cities. You can't in the cities have integration without busting from one area to another. The bigger the city the more it requires. For instance I don't know how many school children are new Negro school children in New York but I would say they'd be close to half a million wouldn't they? About something like that. How are you going bust a half a million children into another area? You think Professor Bickel is right then? Yes I do. Now what they're fixing to do is to inflict this on the rural areas. Now when they do that he has what's going to happen. You're going to find this county is going to timber and cattle and the white people are going to move out. And you're going to see now you've got it it came about you take a union is familiar with Hancock County. He's familiar with Tull of a County. Whether he have a whole 70 percent I imagine

a 75 percent and black them 25 percent white. Now those count those areas down there they go to soon be 90 and 95 percent. You agree Roy you've been all over the South lately? Is that there's going to be great movement? Yes. Is it economically socially possible? To just pick up and move out? Yes. For some people yes but not always and Fayette Mississippi for example where they have a black administration a black mayor city council. At first there was a great deal of talk among the white people about packing up and leaving but it hasn't happened and a lot of people think that it isn't going to happen. Or I'll tell you another thing you're going to see. You're going to see the migration from the rural areas in the south of the Nicaraghan to the northern cities hadn't stopped. It has slowed down some but it slowed down a half. It's going to gain a new impetus for this reason. We have had a split of industrial development.

This sounds very interesting but I'm afraid our time is up and I'm going to have to interrupt you. Thank you gentlemen. We've talked a lot and you have all I must say talk very well indeed but the final word on integration will not be said by us. It will certainly not be said by our generation Mr Harris. It will be said by another generation by the children who schools are now being integrated. News and perspective will return in two weeks. Until then, thank you and goodbye. News in perspective. The south desegregates has been presented by national educational television and the New York Times. With Clifton Daniel, Roy Reed, James T. Wooten, and special guests Julian Bond, and Roy Harris. Two weeks from tonight, news and perspective returns to Washington DC for a look at President Nixon's domestic plans and foreign policy. From the New York Times,

Tom Wicker, Max Pranko, and Edwin Dale Jr. join Clifton Daniel to assess the administration, the Congress, and our role in world affairs. This is NET, the public television network.