1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

The desegregation of one elementary school in Rutherford County
in September 1959 resulted from a suit filed earlier that month by
Negro dependents of U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at Sewart Air
Force Base. They sought admission to county-operated John Coleman
Elementary School adjacent to the Federal housing project where the
plaintiffs lived. Previous requests for admission had been denied.
Although white children of Air Force personnel had attended the school
before 1959, Negro children had been transported 28 miles away to
attend a segregated Negro school. The court ordered their admission
to the school effective September 1959 and denied the defendants' request
for a postponement. 105 It refused to order desegregation of all
the county's schools in a separate order, since all the plaintiffs by reason
of their residence would attend the John Coieman school in any event. 106
There were no incidents when 16 Negroes joined the 500 white pupils. 107
Desegregation in Knoxville was the result of a Federal court order and
acceptance of a desegregation plan that duplicated Nashville's. 108 Mr.
Thomas N. Johnston, Superintendent of Schools of Knoxville, testified
at the <strong>Commission</strong>'s Williamsburg conference that according to the plan,
each elementary school was rezoned without regard to race, and that
after the rezoning approximately 85 Negro children, or about one-fourth
of the registered Negro first-graders, were eligible to enter 14 white
schools in September 1960.
He also observed that when the schools opened, 28 Negro first-graders
were enrolled in 8 white schools and that a few days later a Negro entered
a class for the physically handicapped in a previously all-white school. 109
As a result of rezoning, 300 white students found themselves living in
attendance zones of previously all-Negro schools. Under the plan they
all applied for, and were granted, transfers. Requests for transfer on
behalf of two white children in desegregated schools were denied on the
ground that they were already enrolled in a school in which their own
race predominated and therefore were not entitled to transfer. 110 Two
Negro first-grade pupils transferred from a desegregated to an all-Negro
school during the first term. 111
The second semester of 1960-61 saw the third school district in Tennessee
desegregated by Federal court order. In October 1960, pursuant
to a suit filed i month earlier, a Federal court ordered the Davidson
County School Board to submit a desegregation plan. 112 Davidson
County is a predominantly suburban area surrounding Nashville. The
plan submitted was similar to the Nashville plan: a grade-a-year desegregation
beginning with the first grade. The board requested delay
until September <strong>1961</strong> in putting it into effect.
In November the court approved the plan after modifying it to require
desegregation of grades i through 4 effective in January <strong>1961</strong>,
and one grade a year thereafter, in order to synchronize the county's plan
with that of Nashville. 113 On January 23, <strong>1961</strong>, 41 out of about 400
52