1950s
11/ 1956 - (Governor) Leader Orders State Survey of School Desegregation (Phila. Bulletin)
"Governor Leader has ordered a statewide survey of desegregation in the public schools. The state school code specifically prohibits any distinction to be made on account of race or color in the assignment of any pupil, he pointed out. thus the school code is in conformity with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. As to the employment of teachers, the governor further notes that the recently enacted FEPC legislation clearly prohibits discrimination in the employment of teachers. ... The two pivotal questions are whether any schools are segregated and whether any Negro teachers are employed. The questionnaire (sent by the state superintendent of public instructions) also wants to know if Negro teachers are employed in the teaching of mixed classes of whites and Negroes and whether there is a school board policy, either written or unwritten, prohibiting the employment of Negro teachers. It also inquires whether activities sponsored by the school outside of regular school hours or so-called extracurricular ones during school hours are fully integrated. Specific information is asked on athletics, school clubs, dances, dramatics, journalism, music and debating clubs. It has been the policy of the Philadelphia public schools to very largely follow the pattern of the neighborhood of the schools served. Negro teachers have been appointed in the secondary schools for some time and Ruth Hayre, a Negro, was recently appointed principal of William Penn High.
2/6/57: School Segregation Survey Cloaked by 10 week silence: 1200 State Districts Got Queries (Phila. Inquirer)
"Ten weeks after the deadline for completion of a survey of segregation in the 1200 school districts of Pennsylvania, the results were still bottled up yesterday in the State Department of Public Instruction. ...The importance of the bottled up survey returns was highlighted in a letter to Gov. Leader by Floyd M. Logan, president of the Educational Equality League. After complimenting the governor on his civil rights recommendation to the Legislature for action on banning racial and religious discrimination in State-aided schools, Logan said: 'We would like very much to know the type of legislation you have in mind..."
5/15/57: State finds segregation in 3 School Districts (Phila. Evening Bulletin)
"Governor Leader las last night ordered the Dept. of Public Instruction to 'stamp out' racial segregation in 3 southeastern school districts. He named the districts involved as Kennett Consolidated and Coatesville and Steelton-Highpire. Governor Leader last November ordered the Department of Public Instruction to survey segregation. "
5/15/57: State Finds Segregation in Three School Districts (Phila. Evening Bulletin)
"Governor Leader last night ordered the Department of Public Instruction to 'stamp out' racial segregation in 3 southeast school districts...Kennett Consolidated and Coateville...and Steelton-Highspire.... Gov. Leader last November ordered the Department of Public Instruction to survey segregation.... The disclosure that the districts were still segregating Negro pupils three years after the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed the practice set off considerable hubbub here. Segregation also is a violation of the 1935 equal rights law and a racial ban written into the school code in 1949. ... Superintendent of Public Instruction Charles H. Boehm at first refused to pointblank to name the districts. Then the former Bucks County superintendent of schools offered the somewhat inaccurate advice that the districts involved were 'somewhere along the Maryland line.' Finally, he said he was under orders from the governor to withhold the names.... The survey disclosed that the Chichester Joint District, in Delaware County, and the Valley Township District, in Chester County, maintain all-Negro schools with Negro instructors, but attributed this to an absence of white students. The department also reported that 49 school systems in 20 counties employ Negro teachers and none reported a ban on such employment. Prior to receiving this orders from the governor Boehm indicated his would have no part in halting the practice of segregation. 'The Department of Public Instruction is not charged with the enforcement of anti segregation laws...local parties must take their grievances to local courts. Of course, the Department of Public Instruction expects complete compliance with all state and federal statues as soon as possible."
5 Questions Asked on School Integration
The following five questions were asked of the state's 2,440 school districts in the segregation survey ordered by Governor Leader:
1. Are any schools of the area segregated?
2. Are Negro teachers employed in any of the schools?
3. Do Negro teachers, if employed, teach segregated classes?
4. Is there a school board policy, either written or unwritten prohibiting the employment of Negro teachers?
5. Are the activities sponsored by the school outside of regular school hours or so-called extracurricular activities during the school hours full integrated?
5/16/57: Leader to Cut Off State Aid If Schools Don't Integrate (Phila. Bulletin)
"Governor Leader today threatened to cut off state funds and invoke legal sanctions against Pennsylvania school districts that enforce racial segregation. ... Three districts - Coatesville and Kennett Consolidated in Chester County and Steelton-Highspire in Dauphin County - admitted to the Department of Public Instruction recently that they practice limited segregation of Negro pupils. The disclosure resulted from a statewide survey conducted by the department, after several Negro groups had complained to the governor. "If these districts do not eliminate segregation as they promised, or if in the future other cases of segregation come to light and the local authorities fail to take action to end such segregation, it will be the policy of the commonwealth to do everything within its power to eliminate it," Leader said. The governor said the state will use the threat of withholding subsidies and other appropriations and invoke legal action in the form of mandamuses and criminal actions against persons responsible for the segregation, as well as file complaints with the Fair Employment Practices Commission if districts discriminate against nonwhite teachers. Leader fixed October 1 as the deadline for compliance. Leader was asked whether Cheyney State Teachers College, which the Department of Public Instruction said today has an all-Negro student body and faculty, was not practicing racial discrimination. "I would assume there is no racial barrier at Cheyney," Leader replied. ..."They ought to try to get some white people to go to Cheyney and they ought to appoint some white teachers there," (Attorney General Thomas D. McBridge) said. The governor said he hoped an attempt would be made for integration of the Chester County institution. McBride said the segregation ban would also apply to school supported extracurricular activities such as dances, honor societies and Hi-Y Clubs. Several districts, including Scranton and Steelton-Highspire, reported that Negroes were barred from such activities... segregation was practiced by the (Steelton-Highspire)school's Hi-Y Club because its parent YMCA organization in Harrisburg also kept Negroes out of its main building."
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"Gov. George M. Leader yesterday promised to use the full power of State law to stamp out racial segregation in the public schools. He said he expected the discrimination to be eliminated by Oct. 1, but that if it wasn't, he was prepared to take the following actions:
--Withdraw State appropriations to the offending schools.
--Withhold State subsidies for teachers' salaries.
--Legal action, through mandamus proceedings, to compel the end of segregation.
--Criminal action under the penal code against those responsible.
--Prosecution under the Fair Employment Practices law if there is discrimination against teachers.
Gov. Leader said that while he has se the Oct. 1 deadline, it didn't necessarily mean that he would 'throw the book' at any schools which hadn't complied by then - that this was a problem that required time to solve..."
5/28/58: Penna. Studies Plan for Wider Integration of Schools (Phila. Inquirer)
"The State is considering a proposal to require the public schools of Philadelphia and other communities to relax geographical school district boundaries in an effort to achieve wider integration through more equal distribution of white and Negro students.... There would be no 'order,' only recommendations, Dr. Seifert (deputy superintendent of public instruction) said, but he added that his department was empowered to withhold subsidies from local school districts that fail to comply with recommendations. The survey on which the State board will base its actions shows:
--Philadelphia, with a public school population of 233,877 - 59% of them white - has 19 schools that have virtually all Negro students, and 15 more with varying propositions of Negroes ranging from about 5% to more than 90%. There are 55 schools in this city that have either no Negro students or less than 1%. These are almost all in the far northern and northeastern sections of the city which have been spurting in population in recent years. There are no negro teachers in these schools, which is one of the main points of criticism of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Education Equality League. Their demand is for full and immediate integration of teaching staff at once, but this policy is opposed by Philadelphia's superintendent of schools, Dr. Allen H. Wetter, who holds that integration can best be accomplished in more gradual way. 'If tomorrow we were to change school district boundaries so as to force white students into predominantly Negro schools, it would set the cause of integration back 25 years. White families would begin moving out of such gerrymandered neighborhoods.' The only way the schools can help solve the problem of integration is by means of the programs the city's schools are now following... which includes human relations activity, seminar and join extracurricular activities for white and Negro students and parents.... One of the obstacles toward immediate full integration of faculties, Dr. Wetter said, is that there is a 'teachers market' now with 600 vacancies in the city schools and teachers pretty much able to select what schools they desire without fear of losing their places on the eligibility list. In 1956, Floyd Logan, president of the Educational Equality league, submitted a report to the State Department of Public Instruction showing that of 8100 teachers in Philadelphia, 1611 were Negroes.
--Results of the Survey: "... there were 52 elementary, 2 high and 6 junior high schools with more than 50% of the students Negroes. The high schools included William Penn (79.1%) and Benjamin Franklin (76.3%); 13 elementary schools have 100% Negro attendance..."
9/13/58: Pennsylvania School Integration Picture (Pittsburgh Courier)
"Overshadowed by the more critical Little Rock, Ark. situation, the Pennsylvania State Department of Instruction, Aug. 14, made a momentous announcement. The release declared the end of segregation in schools in the commonwealth by virtue of the integration of schools in Coatesville, Kennett Square, and Steelton. The announcement made pleasing music to most of the citizens anxious to see their great Keystone State spared the pangs of this particular social blight. But it still sounds off key to the Educational Equality League with headquarters in Philadelphia, headed by Floyd L. Logan, president. Logan's organization has been a constant thorn in the side of the State Department of Instruction, and in the hair of Pennsylvania's last 4 or 5 governors on the school integration issue. In response to the general announcement of August 14, Logan took exceptions that strike extremely painful notes to the state and local education departments. Said in his letter to Gov. Leader, in part: 'Even after desegregation in this aforementioned schools areas takes place, there will still remain any number of segregated schools in student bodies as well as faculties in Chester, Allegheny, Philadelphia, and a number of other counties, that have not resulted from segregated housing altogether, but also from a system of districting.' It is significant, therefore, that in May of this year, the State Department of Instruction, in another public release proposed to request the public schools of Philadelphia and other communities apparently employing the redistricting implications leaning to separate schools, to 'relax geographical boundaries' in order to effect 'wider integration.' ... there has been evidence in Philadelphia in many communities that either the system of 'redistricting' or a loosely hung transfer allowance is granted to white parents who choose to remove their children to schools in distant predominantly white neighborhoods. Logan's organization further avers that 'it is a fact, borne out of the state survey, that the services of many Negro teachers are not being utilized altogether on an interracial basis.' What amounts to official acknowledgment of this factor came to light in 1957 when a Philadelphia Board of Education representative at a Fellowship Commission meeting declared that a single Negro teacher had been assigned to the Chestnut Hill Area as part of a teacher training set-up. her assignment, it was pointed out, required that she make visitations to various schools and had no classroom responsibility. ... in November 1955, ...Dr. Allen H. Wetter, superintendent of Philadelphia schools, declared that 'undue haste' should be avoided on integration and the individual neighborhood should be ready to accept Negro teachers before they are placed in all schools... a 'peculiar' situation existed in the city , of 62 schools with entirely white faculties and student bodies, and 11 with all Negro teachers, and student bodies. There were also in 1955 15 schools where in the student population was entirely non-white, which pointed to a smattering of white teachers in 4 schools outside of either extreme. ... in 1957-58, teacher integration took a slight rise, but according to the Educational Equality League, Philadelphia still has 19 all Negro schools, faculty and students included. ... some 1200 school districts in the state hadn't completed the questionnaire (10 week after the survey deadline in November 1956). ... Only the fall school opening can completely reveal Pennsylvania's status on the school integration question, though the commonwealth with its advancements still lagging behind her adjacent sister state of new Jersey and New York, yet only slightly ahead of her two Southern border neighbors of Delaware and Maryland."
"Governor Leader has ordered a statewide survey of desegregation in the public schools. The state school code specifically prohibits any distinction to be made on account of race or color in the assignment of any pupil, he pointed out. thus the school code is in conformity with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. As to the employment of teachers, the governor further notes that the recently enacted FEPC legislation clearly prohibits discrimination in the employment of teachers. ... The two pivotal questions are whether any schools are segregated and whether any Negro teachers are employed. The questionnaire (sent by the state superintendent of public instructions) also wants to know if Negro teachers are employed in the teaching of mixed classes of whites and Negroes and whether there is a school board policy, either written or unwritten, prohibiting the employment of Negro teachers. It also inquires whether activities sponsored by the school outside of regular school hours or so-called extracurricular ones during school hours are fully integrated. Specific information is asked on athletics, school clubs, dances, dramatics, journalism, music and debating clubs. It has been the policy of the Philadelphia public schools to very largely follow the pattern of the neighborhood of the schools served. Negro teachers have been appointed in the secondary schools for some time and Ruth Hayre, a Negro, was recently appointed principal of William Penn High.
2/6/57: School Segregation Survey Cloaked by 10 week silence: 1200 State Districts Got Queries (Phila. Inquirer)
"Ten weeks after the deadline for completion of a survey of segregation in the 1200 school districts of Pennsylvania, the results were still bottled up yesterday in the State Department of Public Instruction. ...The importance of the bottled up survey returns was highlighted in a letter to Gov. Leader by Floyd M. Logan, president of the Educational Equality League. After complimenting the governor on his civil rights recommendation to the Legislature for action on banning racial and religious discrimination in State-aided schools, Logan said: 'We would like very much to know the type of legislation you have in mind..."
5/15/57: State finds segregation in 3 School Districts (Phila. Evening Bulletin)
"Governor Leader las last night ordered the Dept. of Public Instruction to 'stamp out' racial segregation in 3 southeastern school districts. He named the districts involved as Kennett Consolidated and Coatesville and Steelton-Highpire. Governor Leader last November ordered the Department of Public Instruction to survey segregation. "
5/15/57: State Finds Segregation in Three School Districts (Phila. Evening Bulletin)
"Governor Leader last night ordered the Department of Public Instruction to 'stamp out' racial segregation in 3 southeast school districts...Kennett Consolidated and Coateville...and Steelton-Highspire.... Gov. Leader last November ordered the Department of Public Instruction to survey segregation.... The disclosure that the districts were still segregating Negro pupils three years after the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed the practice set off considerable hubbub here. Segregation also is a violation of the 1935 equal rights law and a racial ban written into the school code in 1949. ... Superintendent of Public Instruction Charles H. Boehm at first refused to pointblank to name the districts. Then the former Bucks County superintendent of schools offered the somewhat inaccurate advice that the districts involved were 'somewhere along the Maryland line.' Finally, he said he was under orders from the governor to withhold the names.... The survey disclosed that the Chichester Joint District, in Delaware County, and the Valley Township District, in Chester County, maintain all-Negro schools with Negro instructors, but attributed this to an absence of white students. The department also reported that 49 school systems in 20 counties employ Negro teachers and none reported a ban on such employment. Prior to receiving this orders from the governor Boehm indicated his would have no part in halting the practice of segregation. 'The Department of Public Instruction is not charged with the enforcement of anti segregation laws...local parties must take their grievances to local courts. Of course, the Department of Public Instruction expects complete compliance with all state and federal statues as soon as possible."
5 Questions Asked on School Integration
The following five questions were asked of the state's 2,440 school districts in the segregation survey ordered by Governor Leader:
1. Are any schools of the area segregated?
2. Are Negro teachers employed in any of the schools?
3. Do Negro teachers, if employed, teach segregated classes?
4. Is there a school board policy, either written or unwritten prohibiting the employment of Negro teachers?
5. Are the activities sponsored by the school outside of regular school hours or so-called extracurricular activities during the school hours full integrated?
5/16/57: Leader to Cut Off State Aid If Schools Don't Integrate (Phila. Bulletin)
"Governor Leader today threatened to cut off state funds and invoke legal sanctions against Pennsylvania school districts that enforce racial segregation. ... Three districts - Coatesville and Kennett Consolidated in Chester County and Steelton-Highspire in Dauphin County - admitted to the Department of Public Instruction recently that they practice limited segregation of Negro pupils. The disclosure resulted from a statewide survey conducted by the department, after several Negro groups had complained to the governor. "If these districts do not eliminate segregation as they promised, or if in the future other cases of segregation come to light and the local authorities fail to take action to end such segregation, it will be the policy of the commonwealth to do everything within its power to eliminate it," Leader said. The governor said the state will use the threat of withholding subsidies and other appropriations and invoke legal action in the form of mandamuses and criminal actions against persons responsible for the segregation, as well as file complaints with the Fair Employment Practices Commission if districts discriminate against nonwhite teachers. Leader fixed October 1 as the deadline for compliance. Leader was asked whether Cheyney State Teachers College, which the Department of Public Instruction said today has an all-Negro student body and faculty, was not practicing racial discrimination. "I would assume there is no racial barrier at Cheyney," Leader replied. ..."They ought to try to get some white people to go to Cheyney and they ought to appoint some white teachers there," (Attorney General Thomas D. McBridge) said. The governor said he hoped an attempt would be made for integration of the Chester County institution. McBride said the segregation ban would also apply to school supported extracurricular activities such as dances, honor societies and Hi-Y Clubs. Several districts, including Scranton and Steelton-Highspire, reported that Negroes were barred from such activities... segregation was practiced by the (Steelton-Highspire)school's Hi-Y Club because its parent YMCA organization in Harrisburg also kept Negroes out of its main building."
-
"Gov. George M. Leader yesterday promised to use the full power of State law to stamp out racial segregation in the public schools. He said he expected the discrimination to be eliminated by Oct. 1, but that if it wasn't, he was prepared to take the following actions:
--Withdraw State appropriations to the offending schools.
--Withhold State subsidies for teachers' salaries.
--Legal action, through mandamus proceedings, to compel the end of segregation.
--Criminal action under the penal code against those responsible.
--Prosecution under the Fair Employment Practices law if there is discrimination against teachers.
Gov. Leader said that while he has se the Oct. 1 deadline, it didn't necessarily mean that he would 'throw the book' at any schools which hadn't complied by then - that this was a problem that required time to solve..."
5/28/58: Penna. Studies Plan for Wider Integration of Schools (Phila. Inquirer)
"The State is considering a proposal to require the public schools of Philadelphia and other communities to relax geographical school district boundaries in an effort to achieve wider integration through more equal distribution of white and Negro students.... There would be no 'order,' only recommendations, Dr. Seifert (deputy superintendent of public instruction) said, but he added that his department was empowered to withhold subsidies from local school districts that fail to comply with recommendations. The survey on which the State board will base its actions shows:
--Philadelphia, with a public school population of 233,877 - 59% of them white - has 19 schools that have virtually all Negro students, and 15 more with varying propositions of Negroes ranging from about 5% to more than 90%. There are 55 schools in this city that have either no Negro students or less than 1%. These are almost all in the far northern and northeastern sections of the city which have been spurting in population in recent years. There are no negro teachers in these schools, which is one of the main points of criticism of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Education Equality League. Their demand is for full and immediate integration of teaching staff at once, but this policy is opposed by Philadelphia's superintendent of schools, Dr. Allen H. Wetter, who holds that integration can best be accomplished in more gradual way. 'If tomorrow we were to change school district boundaries so as to force white students into predominantly Negro schools, it would set the cause of integration back 25 years. White families would begin moving out of such gerrymandered neighborhoods.' The only way the schools can help solve the problem of integration is by means of the programs the city's schools are now following... which includes human relations activity, seminar and join extracurricular activities for white and Negro students and parents.... One of the obstacles toward immediate full integration of faculties, Dr. Wetter said, is that there is a 'teachers market' now with 600 vacancies in the city schools and teachers pretty much able to select what schools they desire without fear of losing their places on the eligibility list. In 1956, Floyd Logan, president of the Educational Equality league, submitted a report to the State Department of Public Instruction showing that of 8100 teachers in Philadelphia, 1611 were Negroes.
--Results of the Survey: "... there were 52 elementary, 2 high and 6 junior high schools with more than 50% of the students Negroes. The high schools included William Penn (79.1%) and Benjamin Franklin (76.3%); 13 elementary schools have 100% Negro attendance..."
9/13/58: Pennsylvania School Integration Picture (Pittsburgh Courier)
"Overshadowed by the more critical Little Rock, Ark. situation, the Pennsylvania State Department of Instruction, Aug. 14, made a momentous announcement. The release declared the end of segregation in schools in the commonwealth by virtue of the integration of schools in Coatesville, Kennett Square, and Steelton. The announcement made pleasing music to most of the citizens anxious to see their great Keystone State spared the pangs of this particular social blight. But it still sounds off key to the Educational Equality League with headquarters in Philadelphia, headed by Floyd L. Logan, president. Logan's organization has been a constant thorn in the side of the State Department of Instruction, and in the hair of Pennsylvania's last 4 or 5 governors on the school integration issue. In response to the general announcement of August 14, Logan took exceptions that strike extremely painful notes to the state and local education departments. Said in his letter to Gov. Leader, in part: 'Even after desegregation in this aforementioned schools areas takes place, there will still remain any number of segregated schools in student bodies as well as faculties in Chester, Allegheny, Philadelphia, and a number of other counties, that have not resulted from segregated housing altogether, but also from a system of districting.' It is significant, therefore, that in May of this year, the State Department of Instruction, in another public release proposed to request the public schools of Philadelphia and other communities apparently employing the redistricting implications leaning to separate schools, to 'relax geographical boundaries' in order to effect 'wider integration.' ... there has been evidence in Philadelphia in many communities that either the system of 'redistricting' or a loosely hung transfer allowance is granted to white parents who choose to remove their children to schools in distant predominantly white neighborhoods. Logan's organization further avers that 'it is a fact, borne out of the state survey, that the services of many Negro teachers are not being utilized altogether on an interracial basis.' What amounts to official acknowledgment of this factor came to light in 1957 when a Philadelphia Board of Education representative at a Fellowship Commission meeting declared that a single Negro teacher had been assigned to the Chestnut Hill Area as part of a teacher training set-up. her assignment, it was pointed out, required that she make visitations to various schools and had no classroom responsibility. ... in November 1955, ...Dr. Allen H. Wetter, superintendent of Philadelphia schools, declared that 'undue haste' should be avoided on integration and the individual neighborhood should be ready to accept Negro teachers before they are placed in all schools... a 'peculiar' situation existed in the city , of 62 schools with entirely white faculties and student bodies, and 11 with all Negro teachers, and student bodies. There were also in 1955 15 schools where in the student population was entirely non-white, which pointed to a smattering of white teachers in 4 schools outside of either extreme. ... in 1957-58, teacher integration took a slight rise, but according to the Educational Equality League, Philadelphia still has 19 all Negro schools, faculty and students included. ... some 1200 school districts in the state hadn't completed the questionnaire (10 week after the survey deadline in November 1956). ... Only the fall school opening can completely reveal Pennsylvania's status on the school integration question, though the commonwealth with its advancements still lagging behind her adjacent sister state of new Jersey and New York, yet only slightly ahead of her two Southern border neighbors of Delaware and Maryland."