The Southern Case for School SegregationKilpatrick, James Jackson
History
The Southern Case for School Segregation
Kilpatrick, James Jackson
African Americans -- Segregation; Segregation -- Southern States
Virginia has pointed a way toward such an accommodation, so far as
education is concerned, in its freedom-of-choice program. Under
an act of the General Assembly of 1958, every child in Virginia
has a _right_ to choose between attending a public school or a
nonprofit, nonsectarian private school. The law has nothing to do
with segregation or desegregation. The modest tuition grants provided
in the law (in no case is a grant higher than the local per-pupil
cost in public schools) are intended to represent each child’s equal
share in a total appropriation for purposes of education, and the
State stands indifferent to the child’s way of spending it: Public or
private, it is all the same to the Commonwealth, so long as the child
is schooled.
The freedom-of-choice plan is working now, harmoniously and
effectively, in such areas of Virginia as Norfolk, Charlottesville,
and Front Royal. In each of the localities, the public schools are
desegregated; in each of the localities, good private schools are
operating. Some white families have made one choice, some another.
In a number of cases, white children living in Albemarle County and
Norfolk County have obtained county tuition grants in order to attend
the desegregated public schools of neighboring Charlottesville and
Norfolk city. The State raises no objection. This is the students’
right.
The private schools now operating in Virginia have limited their
admissions, to the best of my knowledge, to white pupils only. This
condition may change in time; nothing prevents the organization
of nonprofit schools for Negroes only, or for Negroes and whites
together. In any event, the right of any group of parents to found a
school to their taste would appear beyond successful challenge. “The
most natural right of man,” said Tocqueville, “next to the right of
acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of
his fellow creatures and of acting in common with them. The right
of association therefore appears to be almost as inalienable in
nature as the right of personal liberty. No legislature can attack it
without impairing the foundations of society.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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