Education: Nonviolent Resistance

The noisiest spot along the gradually integrating border of the Deep South last week was the little (pop. 2,200) coalmining and farming community of Clay, Ky. There white students continued to boycott the Clay school while National Guardsmen and state troopers escorted three frightened Negro children into the nearly deserted school building each morning.

The dispute started when Mrs. Louise Gordon presented her two children (they were later joined by a neighboring child) for admission in the Clay school rather than in the all-Negro Rosenwald School in nearby Providence. Turned away by force, they returned under escort after National Guard Adjutant General J.J.B. Williams arrived in town with 500 troops. Despite an opinion by State Attorney General J. M. Ferguson that Mrs. Gordon had enrolled her children in the school prematurely and illegally, and a demand from Mayor Herman Z. Clark that the troops withdraw, General Williams announced his intention to remain as long as necessary to maintain order. Replied Mayor Clark: “We’re having all the people in town sign a petition asking all the teachers to stay out of school until the Negroes get out. We’re gonna take a tip from Nehru and those Indians; we’re gonna practice non-violent resistance. Of course, we wouldn’t want them over here, but we can learn from them.”

As the troubled school week came to a close, 15 of the Clay school’s 18 teachers returned to work, and the Webster County board of education attempted to give legal sanction to its stand by formally voting not to accept Negro children from the Providence Rosenwald School. The next move was up to Governor A. B. (“Happy”) Chandler. If he orders the guard removed, Mrs. Gordon, whose case is buttressed by neither a county board order nor a court order, will probably have to send her children to the Rosenwald School for another year while Clay belatedly works on a plan for integration.