The Omaha Guide

News from NAACP

Exclusion in Graduate Schools Seen Doomed by Ark. U. Action

New York, Aug 26th—Prophesying that the end of segregation in graduate schools in the South is now in view, Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, detailed the fact that the University of Arkansas had admitted its first Negro as a medical student on an unsegregated basis.

"This action," he said, "adds more impetus to the forces which are pushing segregation in education into the limbo of undemocratic practices."

The student to be admitted is Miss Edith May Irby of Hot Springs, a graduate of Knoxville College. She was 28th in an aptitude test given to determine the 90 students who would make up the freshman class. Dr. H. Clay Chenault, vice-president of the university said she would enter the school next month and will be a part of her class, just like any other member without segregation.

Mr. White pointed out that after the NAACP won its first victory against the University of Oklahoma last winter in the Supreme Court, the State of Delaware opened the doors of its graduate school of Negro students without segregation. Maryland has been admitting Negro law students to its universities since the NAACP won a court case there in 1935.

Mr. White prophesied that the NAACP's legal campaign would soon follow these cases up with other victories in other states, citing the present suits against the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma authorities for admission of Negroes to the law and graduate school and also to declare the segregation laws invalid. There is also a case from Texas on its way up to the Supreme Court which will present the issue of whether segregation is valid.