Mississippi's Choice

Following Georgia and South Carolina, Mississippi last week became the third state to approve the idea of abolishing public schools in order to get around the U.S. Supreme Court's decision against segregation. Out of 135,000 ballots cast, two out of three were in favor of a drastic constitutional amendment that will empower the legislature to: 1) abolish the public schools outright by a two-thirds vote; 2) pass a law by majority vote to enable counties and school districts to abolish their schools themselves; 3) sell, rent or lease school buildings to private corporations; 4) pay students' tuition to what would then be private, segregated schools.

Though the amendment will be used only as a last resort--and may well involve the illegal use of taxpayers' money for private schools--Mississippi has been well conditioned for it. Almost from the moment that the Supreme Court spoke, Governor Hugh White, 73, promised to "make certain that Negroes never enter white schools." Last May, he selected a 25-man legal educational advisory committee to find ways to get around the decision, even tried to persuade the state's Negro leaders to support segregation voluntarily. When the Negroes refused, the committee sponsored the amendment, and Governor White promised that if it passed, he would support a $117 million program to equalize the two school systems.

The verdict of the voters came as a blow to some Mississippians. Among them: Editor Hodding Carter of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, an advocate of gradual desegregation. "Some day," said he last week, "curious and shocked Americans will ask history and each other who were these angry and fearful people who reacted so unwisely to a doubtful threat as to be willing to relinquish to politicians the decision as to whether their hard-gained public-school systems would endure or die . . . Neither do we believe that any county's school system should be permitted to be abolished by a simple majority of the legislature. Man and boy, we've seen too often how simple that majority can be."

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