Civil Rights: Some Needed Nudges

  • Share
  • Read Later

(2 of 2)

· SEGREGATED FACULTIES. Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina have only token integration, while teaching staffs in Louisiana and Mississippi are completely segregated. Howe suggested that Southern school officials might assign one white teacher to every all-Negro faculty and vice versa—or risk losing federal aid.

· INADEQUATE BUILDINGS. Throughout the South, Howe noted, dilapidated one-or two-room shacks serve as all-Negro schools. These must be closed and their students transferred to other schools.

· "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" PLANS. Under such plans, Negro children are theoretically entitled to attend any white school they wish. In practice, they rarely do so. Reason: countless parents who have elected to send their children to white schools have been evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, even shot at. Howe demanded evidence that there is genuine freedom in the desegregation plans.

As for segregation in hospitals, Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced that "a medical facilities compliance report" had been sent to the more than 10,000 hospitals throughout the U.S. Those that are found to practice segregation, he warned, will be denied federal funds. With billions of dollars of medicare benefits due to start flowing from Washington after July 1, few hospitals, public or private, are likely to dismiss his threat lightly.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. Next Page