The Augusta Courier

FEDERAL AID TO SCHOOLS HITS BOG HOLE IN CONGRESS

Members Fear Bureaucratic Control Of Public Schools

Federal aid to education has bogged down in Congress. The House Labor Committee in Washington has balked on voting Federal aid to education. On March 1st the Committee voted not to approve Federal Aid until President Truman assures there will be no Federal controls over schools. While it has bogged down for the time being the Committee's position is asinine and as crazy as any committee's position could be. Any assurance that President Truman might give wouldn't be worth the proverbial tinker's dam for four reasons. One, Truman isn't going to be there always. Two, he may, as he does on occasion, change his mind. Three, the present or any future Congress could direct otherwise. Four, he wouldn't be able to control the radical crowd who control the Federal Security Administration which has charge of the Federal office on education. The resolution adopted by the Committee was offered by Representative Kearns, Republican of Pennsylvania, and was adopted by a vote of thirteen to eleven. The Kearns resolution was introduced as a direct slap at Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing. The resolution stated that the committee has no assurance that Commissioner of Education Earl J. McGrath will have sole jurisdiction of Federal aid "without interference from the administrator of the Federal Security Agency or any of his administrative assistants." Ewing is the man who is now advocating socialized medicine and is considered one of the radicals of the Truman high command. Evidently the committee is beginning to wake up and to find out what most of us have already known that Federal aid to the public schools means Federal control of the public schools. The whole Truman Administration, and Oscar Ewing is one of the worst of the lot, is doing everything within their power to destroy the segregation of the white and colored races in the South and if Federal aid is ever voted this wildcat crowd will immediately withhold money from the Southern states or force the white and negro children into the same schoolrooms. Congressman James Davis of Georgia's Fifth District sized up the situation recently when he said in reference to the FEPC bill that the administration and Congress are ignoring the needs of the nation and devoting their whole efforts to breaking down segregation of the races. Congressman Davis called their attention the last of February to the fact that Communism was marching full speed ahead, the national debt was increasing, the country was paralyzed with a coal strike and yet the President and the Congress ignored all of these emergencies and devoted their entire time and attention to the passage of a FEPC bill. When the President and Congress are heedless of the needs of the people, heedless of the country's welfare and spend their entire time on a bill in which they do not believe but are advocating for the sole purpose of getting the negro vote in the North then you cannot trust this crowd to control the public schools of this State. Federal aid to education is the greatest danger to Georgia people today. Federal aid to education would be worse than any FEPC bill and Federal aid to education would absolutely destroy the pattern of segregation in the South. Those who advocate Federal aid are simply misguided and if they succeed in getting Federal aid they will destroy the public school system in Georgia as we know it. Federal aid is the most damnable and the most dangerous and the most vicious thing that has ever been proposed to destroy segregation. If it is ever voted it will be used only as a tool to punish and destroy the white people of the South.