Under Protest

In Milford, Del. one day last week, Principal M. A. Glasmire marched up to the door of his high school, and while the chief of police looked on, solemnly tacked up a sign: "CLOSED Until Further Notice." Milford's two public schools were shut last week, for the town had never been in quite so ugly a mood. There were mass meetings, telephoned threats, promises of violence--all because eleven Negro students had been admitted to the high school along with 665 whites.

Until this fall, the town's Negroes had gone to a Negro high school in Dover, 19 miles away. But in view of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, the Milford school board decided that it would admit Negro students to the tenth grade. As a result, 1,500 citizens jammed into the American Legion hall to protest. A few, nights later, 1,000 more presented the school board with a petition demanding that the Negroes be dropped. A group even paid a midnight visit to Board President W. Dean Kimmel, warned him that some of their numbers had "gotten out of hand and there might be violence."

The board decided to close the schools, arranged a meeting with the State Board of Education to find out what it should do next. Upshot of the meeting was still more confusion. The state board blamed the local board for not having consulted it earlier, and the Milford members resigned in a huff. As for the eleven Negroes, the state board ruled they should remain. At week's end the schools of Milford were planning to open once again, with no one knowing what to expect.

Other developments on the desegregation front:

P: In Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court finally set Dec. 6 for hearing on how its ruling should be carried out.* So far, seven states have announced that they would attend as friends of the court: North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

P: In Baltimore, the Board of School Commissioners formally filed a demurrer to a suit brought by parents of seven white schoolchildren, the Maryland Petition Committee, and a few-months-old group calling itself the National Association for the Advancement of White People, who had hoped to force the board to keep segregation.

P: In Missouri, students of the Carthage High School held their school elections, proved that their ten new Negro classmates were going to do just fine: Negro Charles Scott is now the senior class vice president, and Negro Dub Cheney is now the junior class reporter.

^P: In West Virginia, 21 white students went on strike at the Sherman High School in Seth because three Negroes had been admitted, and 300 parents held a protest meeting in Madison over 18 Negro pupils. Meanwhile, Kanawha County, seat of the capital, rescinded its earlier decision, ordered 2,905 Negroes back to segregated schools. But elsewhere in the state, there was progress of another sort. Last week 164 white students were peacefully enrolled at the once all-Negro West Virginia State College.

* In Albany the New York Education Department announced that it was gradually abolishing segregation of another sort. By this fall, 90% of the state's 1,818 Indian children had been removed from the ramshackle schools on their reservations, are now attending regular public school.

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