Against the Malingerers

On two fronts the Nixon Administration last week continued its vigorous drive against the remaining bastions of Southern school segregation. --

> The Internal Revenue Service announced that it would revoke the tax-exempt status of of private schools admitting students on the basis of race. The move will cripple many of the private academies that have blossomed as desegregation has proceeded.

> The Justice Department filed suit against 52 Southern districts to force them to abandon dual school systems by September. That would reduce the holdout districts in all of the South to only 70 of the area's 2,731. Similar suits against many of the 70 are expected to be filed promptly.

The districts had been warned repeatedly by a surprisingly tough team of negotiators, headed by Robert Mardian, executive director of President Nixon's Cabinet Committee on Education (TIME, July 6). Named last week was the State of Mississippi, where the Government charged that state officials were trying to maintain the dual systems imposed by the state Constitution in defiance of the federal Constitution. Other suits were directed at 14 districts in Florida, nine in Arkansas and ten in South Carolina. The Administration insists that when schools open in September, 97% of all black pupils in the South will be enrolled in desegregated school systems.

The use of that figure was attacked last week by Ramsey Clark, the Attorney General who had preceded John Mitchell. He complained that it "implied that the job is done, when, in fact, it is far from done." Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, Clark argued that even when a school district is classified officially as having been desegregated, the actual number of black students sitting in classrooms with whites too often remains insignificantly small. Clark's point is, of course, quite valid, but so is the Administration's effort to take the necessary first steps against diehard segregation in the South.

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