The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

I would like to give a word of advice to the school teachers, the school board members, the school trustees, and all others in Georgia who are engaged in the educational field.

I am impelled to do this because I find that most of those who are engaged in the educational field are sitting idly by saying nothing and doing little in a time of great crisis in the schools.

The few who are vociferous are off on a tangent and trying to destroy the public school system in this state and the other states in the South. They may not knowingly be trying to destroy the schools, but the things they are doing will destroy the public school system, if successful.

There has sprung up in Atlanta a spurious organization known as HOPE, Inc.

HOPE, Inc., is trying a squeeze-play. They are trying to mislead the people of Georgia into believing that they have one choice and one choice only. They say that we must accept race mixing in the public schools or have no schools at all.

They are shouting from the housetops that to keep our schools we must have "token" integration, that we must have a freedom of choice for each community to decide whether it wants race-mixed schools or separate schools.

Some of them are advocating placement laws.

Some of them are saying that just a little bit of "token" integration will save the public school system.

Now, this position is a fraud on its face.

The Supreme Court of the United States held that segregation is illegal. It didn't say that a little bit of segregation is illegal. It said all of it is illegal.

The court didn't say that a little bit of integration would cure the situation. The court said that every Negro child had the right to go to school with white children.

There is no loophole in this decision that will enable a school system to pick out two or three Negroes to go to school with the whites and forbid the others.

Now, we do not agree with this decision. We have set out to fight it until it is reversed or set aside.

In the meantime, we are determined to resist the enforcement of the decision in every possible manner.

We know that if we surrender a little bit, we will be called upon to surrender a little bit more and a little bit more, until complete race mixing has been accomplished.

Now, it is against the law to make bootleg liquor, in any quantity. No one is justified in making a little "token" bootleg for his own use. The making of a little bit of bootleg is just as illegal as making a lot.

North Carolina is the leading state in the South advocating "token" integration. They have had it in effect now for a couple of years.

Last year, they had thirteen Negroes going to school with whites in various localities in the public schools.

Now, this didn't suit the NAACP and North Carolina, next to Virginia, has more law suits pending complaining of the way they operate their schools than any other state in the South.

Now, Virginia has a freedom of choice plan. In one community they have an all-white private school being operated and they have an integrated school and an all-Negro school.

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Their governor brags about the freedom of choice.

Yet, there are more law suits pending in Virginia asking more integration than there is in any state in the South.

So, the freedom of choice and the placement plans aren't working very well in these two states.

It isn't working because all the plans are hypocritical, they are not honest and nothing but frauds.

Roy Wilkins, Secretary of the NAACP, spoke in Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina, a few months ago. He told them that North Carolina's system didn't satisfy the NAACP and it didn't satisfy the courts and they would not be satisfied with anything less than complete and massive race mixing.

So, North Carolina and Virginia aren't getting along any better than the rest of us.

At least there is no race mixing in the public schools in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

There are more lawsuits pending in the courts in Virginia and North Carolina than there are in all of these five states put together.

Race mixing destroys any school. Look what it did to the Orchard Villa school in Miami. This time last year they had 420 whites in this school and an all-white faculty. When they ordered race mixing, only 14 whites registered and 4 Negroes to attend last September.

Now, the school board in Miami has been forced to convert this into a Negro school. They fired the white faculty and hired an entire Negro faculty. They have about 400 Negroes in this school and 4 or 5 whites.

Soon it will be all-Negro.

When they ordered integration 900 families in this school area sold their homes and moved out.

Wherever race mixing is forced, the white people run off and leave the school. It soon becomes a Negro school.

That's the experience in the nation's capital, that's the experience in Philadelphia and New York, Chicago and elsewhere.

This kind of thing can happen in a city. But it can't occur in a country county. It can't happen in a small city. There is no place to which the people can run and avoid mixed schools in what we call the small cities, the small towns and the rural counties.

Now, suppose they integrate in Atlanta. The Negroes are all herded in one area. The only schools affected would be those in the border areas where the white and Negro areas come together. If nothing else were done about it, the whites would move out of the area and leave it to the Negroes. This would keep up until there was no place left for the white people to go.

However, in Georgia it would be different. Suppose a few schools along the border areas are integrated in Atlanta. The state would see that these schools were closed and the whites would have to go to other white schools and the Negroes would have to go to other Negro schools.

So, it wouldn't accomplish anything.

Unless the state's orders are complied with, the money for the support of all the schools in Atlanta will be cut off and every school will be closed.

But suppose we didn't have this law in Georgia. Who wants to bring about the conditions that exist in the integrated schools in the nation's capital, in New York City, in Chicago and the other places?

Who wants to live in Atlanta and see murder, rape and the other violent crimes introduced into the public school system there?

If it were possible to race mix any of the schools in Atlanta, it would be necessary to put policemen in the halls and corridors to prevent murder and rape. That's what they are doing in Washington and that's what they are doing in New York.

But here is what I want to get over to the school people in Georgia:

We need more school buildings. We need more money for the schools. We are a growing and an expanding state. Our school population

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