Monthly Report, March 9, 1954

March 9, 1954

MEETING WITH U.S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION: On Friday, February 19, Dr. Buell Gallagher, Dean Charles Thompson, the Executive Secretary, and the Director of the Washington Bureau met with Dr. Samuel M. Brownell, U.S. Commissioner of Education.

We discussed the role of the U.S. Office of Education in the light of a possible Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools.1 We, also, submitted a memorandum on developments following Secretary of Defense Wilson’s order requiring the end of segregation in schools on military posts.2

Dr. Brownell stated that a report on suggested actions by the U.S. Office of Education is being prepared. The report will be designed to offer plans for action no matter what type of decision the U.S. Supreme Court gives. He also promised to handle promptly various questions raised in a memorandum which we submitted concerning developments in schools on military posts and other related matters.3

HEARINGS ON FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE LEGISLATION: The Executive Secretary and the Bureau Director testified at hearings on S. 692, which is a bill to prevent discrimination in employment. We stressed the importance of enacting a bill with enforcement power.

Regrettably, several persons seemed to believe that S.1, which is a bill introduced by Senator Dirksen of Illinois, would be an acceptable substitute for S. 692. The Dirksen Bill does not have any enforcement powers. Also, while S. 692 is before the Senate Labor Committee, the S.1 is in the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee.4

SCUTTLING THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSING MESSAGE: In our January report, we mentioned the President’s reference to minority group housing problems in his message to Congress on January 25.5 Despite the President’s statements, the Housing, and Home Finance Agency continues to support the Birmingham Slum Clearance program which has the effect of ousting colored residents from the area where they are now living and replacing their living space with hospital and health facilities that will operate on a Jim-Crow basis.6

Similar plans are still underway in Baltimore, Maryland, and Paducah, Kentucky. In these cases, however, housing will be built in the cleared area but strict rules of exclusion or segregation will be followed in the new dwellings.7

The Bureau Director had an opportunity to witness the dramatic impact of current housing policies when he visited Savannah, Georgia. A white public housing project has been built on land formerly occupied by colored persons. The new buildings and clean streets of this project are completely surrounded by shacks and unpaved streets. The slum area that remains is still occupied by colored people.8

GRANTS TO HOSPITALS: Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare states that she is powerless to prevent a Federal grant of $1,500,000.00 to the city hospital at Houston, Texas, even though that institute refuses to permit colored doctors to use its facilities.

We have asked Mrs. Hobby to restudy this question and to submit the matter to the Attorney General for a ruling. We contend that the Health, Education, and Welfare Department does have the authority and the duty to prevent the use of Federal money in such obviously discriminatory situations.9

U.S. SOLDIERS HOME: In last month’s report, we mentioned an Army pledge that segregation would be ended at the U.S. Soldiers Home. We had reservations about this promise because it was based on a principle of gradualism. Meanwhile, those who favor segregation apparently succeeded in obtaining a legal opinion in the Department of the Army that the Secretary of the Army did not have authority to order Home officials to end segregation.

The Director of the Bureau has been advised confidentially that at one point the Judge Advocate General’s Office was prepared to rule that the Secretary of the Army could order the end of segregation, but this ruling was halted because of pressures. We have appealed to Secretary of Defense Wilson on this matter, because it again reveals how prejudiced subordinates are able to thwart the President’s program of ending racial segregation in all Government operations.

During the consideration of this matter, the chief complainant, Mr. John R. Bates, was assaulted by another resident of the Home. The other resident was colored, but Mr. Bates has advised us that this man opposed efforts to end segregation.

TORTURE OF TRAINEE AT FORT JACKSON: The Bureau received an anonymous letter stating that a Private Jeff McGriff had been forced to stand in front of a hot stove at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, by two white soldiers. As a result of this ordeal, Pvt. McGriff, who is colored, fainted and was later treated for serious burns.

We placed the matter before Assistant Secretary of the Army, Mr. Hugh Milton, for investigation and action. The report is authentic. The Army sentenced the two offenders to a year in prison and gave them bad conduct discharges.

From all indications, the Army had started action against the offenders before the Bureau complaint was filed. If this is true, it is a healthy sign.10

FAIR EMPLOYMENT CONTEST: Behind the scene in official Washington, there is a serious struggle between the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Fair Employment Board. At stake is the question of whether the Board’s decision permitting colored veterans to be trained as plate printers will be junked by the Bureau of Engraving under another guise of economy.

Last month, we mentioned that the Bureau Director had a conference with the Secretary of the Treasury on this matter. The Secretary has ruled that, after current lay-offs are completed, the veterans will be returned to the training that the Board stipulated they should receive as vacancies develop in the plate printer’s staff.11

We are not satisfied with this ruling by the Secretary because it is not clear how long the men must wait before there will be any vacancies. Meanwhile, the legislative representative of the plate printers union has threatened the Civil Service Commission and the Treasury with reprisals through Congress if the men are permitted to continue their training.12

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION SEGREGATION: In connection with our efforts to spur the ending of segregation in Veterans hospitals and domiciliary facilities, we have had a number of conversations with officials who are interested in this matter.

At one point, we were advised that the VA hospital at Tuskegee, Alabama, was resisting the program of no segregation. After investigation of this matter, the Director was able to advise the Veterans Administration that the officials at the hospital at Tuskegee do not oppose integration and would welcome it. These officials have quite properly pointed out that integration in the VA hospitals must include staff as well as patients.13

MS: NAACP II: A-656, DLC.

[1] See 2/17/54.


[2] This was a follow-up to a meeting Mitchell had with Brownell on December 21, 1953, when they discussed (1) the integration of schools on military posts where local authorities were responsible for those schools, (2) the role of the Office of Education in administering federal funds that were spent in states with segregated schools, and (3) the role of the U.S. Office of Education should the Supreme Court outlaw segregation.

White also reported that the “Commissioner agreed to call fairly soon an off-the-record conference of key educators and representatives of key organizations interested in the whole question of public acceptance of the Supreme Court decisions when handed down.” Mitchell memorandum on his meeting with Brownell, 12/21/53, NAACP IX: 98, DLC; Report of the Secretary for the Month of February, 3/9/54, EC.

The gist of Mitchell’s February 19, 1954, memorandum was that several local school districts had indicated the states were spending very little money for the operation of schools on military bases. Mitchell therefore believed that those schools could be integrated by September 1954 at no greater cost to the federal government than at present. He recommended that all leases for school property on military posts should be voided if local authorities sought to use the ostensibly higher costs of operation as a result of desegregation “as a pretext for failing to comply with the Defense Department Directive.” Mitchell said that delays in carrying out the nonsegregation order could only cause unnecessary confusion. Mitchell memorandum, 2/19/54, NAACP WB-171, DLC. See also, most immediately, 2/17, 2/28, 5/5, 6/29, 9/29, 11/4, and 12/31/54.


[3] On May 11, 1954, with her testimony before the Subcommittee on Education of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee on S. 359, S. 2601, and S. 2779, all of which involved federal aid to school construction, Oveta Culp Hobby, secretary of HEW, submitted a letter objecting to passage of the measure under the subcommittee’s consideration. In that letter, she argued that no general federal aid to schools should be recommended until state and White House conferences were held to determine what resources localities had for meeting school construction needs. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 5/14/54, 621.


[4] See 2/4, 6/1, 6/15, and 12/31/53, 2/28 and 12/31/54; 1/26/54, Hearings 75–77; White, 2/25/54, Hearings 176–91.


[5] In his message, Eisenhower said that “the administrative policies governing the operations of the several Housing Agencies must be, and they will be, materially strengthened in order to assure equal opportunity for all of our citizens to acquire, within their means, good and well-located homes. We shall take steps to insure that families of minority groups displaced by urban redevelopment operations have a fair opportunity to acquire adequate housing; we shall prevent the dislocation of such families through the misuse of slum clearance programs; and we shall encourage adequate mortgage financing for the construction of new housing for such families on good, well-located sites.” “Special Message to Congress on Housing,” 1/25/54, Eisenhower, Public Papers of the Presidents 1954, 193–200. See also 2/28/54.


[6] See 2/28 and 5/5/54; Mitchell’s “Recommendations on Present Housing Problems,” memorandum to White, 5/7/54, cited at 6/4/54; in appendix 1, this vol., 12/9/54.


[7] Reiterating this widespread problem, Mitchell reminded Cole that Eisenhower had “clearly stated that slum clearance must not result in Negro clearance, but [that is] exactly what would happen under present redevelopment plans in Baltimore and Birmingham. In the case of Baltimore, I understand that one of your representatives visited the city but obtained most of his information from the same people who are responsible for undemocratic housing policies.” Mitchell letter, 2/5/54, to Cole, NAACP WB-91, DLC.


[8] See the headnote on Segregation in Federal Housing Programs, vol. III.


[9] The $1.5 million was for improving the City-County Hospital at Houston even though it refused to permit African American doctors to use its facilities to treat patients and denied them other courtesies commonly extended to white professionals. Hobby maintained that there was no provision in the Hospital Survey and Construction Act that would permit the Public Health Service to refuse federal aid to a hospital solely on the basis that the hospital would not allow black doctors to use its facilities for treatment of their patients. She acknowledged that the act contained specific provisions pertaining to nondiscrimination; however, they applied to the admission of patients, not to the staffing practices of the hospital. Congress, she said, had considered an amendment to the act that would have authorized the surgeon general “to prescribe regulations to assure that hospitals receiving aid could be used by all licensed practitioners in the community,” but it was defeated. To date, she said, the Public Health Service had not received a formal application for federal aid for construction of the City-County Hospital at Houston. However, if an application was submitted that met the statutory requirements for approval, the surgeon general was required by the act to approve it. Hobby’s letter to Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., 2/4/54, NAACP IX: 98, DLC.


[10] Initially, Maj. Gen. William. E. Bergin, adjutant general, had replied to Mitchell’s complaint of February 25, 1954, that the Department of the Army was not aware of the incident involving McGriff. Mitchell responded that it was “extremely puzzling” to have received his letter. He said that after lodging his initial complaint, he had received information that the men who had mistreated McGriff had been court-martialed and given dishonorable discharges. Subsequently, Maj. Gen. John A. Kikin, acting adjutant general, confirmed for Mitchell that the men had been punished as he had heard. Mitchell’s letter to Bergin, 2/25/54; Bergin’s letter to Mitchell, 3/16/54; Mitchell’s letter to Bergin, 3/31/54; Kikin’s letter to Mitchell, 4/30/54, all of which are in NAACP IX: 59, DLC. For other problems involving African American soldiers at Fort Jackson, see 2/28/54.


[11] The text of the letter from George Humphrey, secretary of the treasury, that bothered Mitchell said: “With the dismissals of plate printers that must be made between now and July 1, we will have no plate printers left in service, who were hired after the time the apprentice program began, who are not veterans. It is impossible to substitute apprentices for any of them. But we will, when vacancies occur in the future, reinstate apprentices in the order of their seniority before any plate printers are hired from the outside.” Humphrey to Mitchell, 2/11/54, NAACP WB-18, DLC. At the end of the year, this matter would still be unresolved. See 12/31/54.


[12] See, among others, 12/31/53, 6/29 and 9/29/54.


[13] See also, among others, 9/9 and 12/7/53, 6/29/54; materials in NAACP WB-185, DLC.