TIME MAGAZINE

School Desegregtion -

(December 16, 1966)

The Federal Government gives no signs of relenting in its drive to desegregate Southern schools and hospitals. Last week, in a show of strength that can only worsen Lyndon Johnson's already battered popularity in the South, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare decided to cut off all federal funds from six segregated school districts in Arkansas, Mississippi and South Carolina, bringing to 37 the number deprived of financial assistance in Old Confederacy states.

 The need for action was demonstrated by a new federal survey that showed that during the present school term, only 12.5% of the 2,900,000 Negro children in the eleven states of the Old Confederacy are attending school with whites. Though that is a marked improvement over last year's 6% figure, the rates remain appallingly low. A dozen years after the U.S. Supreme Court urged "all deliberate speed" in school integration, only one of every 28 Negro children attends classes with whites in Louisiana, one of 31 in Mississippi, one of 42 in Alabama.