"This Night of Decision"

In Charlotte, N.C. one evening last week, as the local school board gathered in the high-ceilinged city council chamber, one member stood up to offer a prayer: "We beseech thee, O Lord, cast thy shadow before us on this night of decision. We pray for those who will disagree. Enter into their minds and hearts, grant them enlarged understanding." A few minutes later came the board's announcement: acting in concert, school boards in Greensboro (pop. 87,100), Winston-Salem (115,800) and Charlotte (158,800) had approved "on their own merits" certain Negro applications (total: 12 out of 51) for transfer this fall to all-white schools.

This bold offensive in the state's three major cities was worked out over months of secret meetings in restaurants and hotels, was designed to take the heat off any single board. In large part, the decision stemmed from self-interest. North Carolina attorneys feared that without any proof of integration the U.S. courts (as they did in Virginia) would strike down the state's 1955 law, making local boards responsible for assigning pupils to schools as a subterfuge for maintaining segregation. Moreover, state schoolmen felt that North Carolinians would accept do-it-yourself integration more readily than the inevitable court-ordered kind. Nevertheless, in making the first break in the hardcore South's stand against public-school integration, the Tarheel State had shown its neighbors a way toward "enlarged understanding," had done it quietly, thoughtfully--and, above all, voluntarily.

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