Atlanta Daily World

Pupil Assignments On Zone Basis Asked In Little Rock Integration

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - (SNS) - The U. S. District Court here Saturday was asked to require the Little Rock School Board to admit Negro students to public high schools under a "prescribed school zones" basis. The request came from attorneys for the NAACP.

Also asked for, in effect, was an ordered restraining the board from using the 1959 pupil placement law to assign Negro students to various schools. Only six Negro pupils have been assigned to attend previously all- white schools, although 60 applied

School board members declined comment on this action in court.

The NAACP motion that the board's denying Negroes entrance to schools "in their appropriate school zones" deprived the students of the benefits of prior desegregation decrees from federal courts.

The motion carried the names of Thelma Mothershed and Melba Pattillo, who attended Central High School in 1957. and William J. Massie, Jr., who had applied for admission to Hall High. They had been assigned to Horace Mann High, an all-Negro facility.

The motion was filed by Thurgood Marshall of New York and Wiley Branton of Pine Bluff, Ark.

STRIKE THREATENED

Meanwhile, the Capital Citizens Council threatened a "buyers strike" against downtown merchants if high school integration comes as scheduled Wednesday.

Amis Guthridge. attorney for the Council, said the strike would be aimed against every firm that employs even one Negro. Other actions in connection with integration were planned. Guthridge said.

Little Rock Chamber of Commerce President Grainger Williams refused to comment on the threat

The Chamber last winter officially urged the reopening of public high schools.

Guthridge charged that the merchants o. Main Street and Little Rock Negroes "are working as a team to make the parents of Little Rock submit (to integration) regardless of their own or their children's feelings."