A Federal Right

Early in the summer of 1955 the school board in the little (pop. 1,855) cow-and-cotton town of Hoxie, Ark. made a big decision: the community's 25 Negro students were to be integrated with the 1,000 white youngsters in the school system at the start of the next semester. All went well until the White Citizens' Council of Arkansas and White America, Inc. moved into town and with local segregationists began a pressure and terror campaign against parents and school-board members. But the school board held firm; following the procedure laid down by the Supreme Court decision, the board sought and won from the U.S. District Court at Jonesboro, Ark. an injunction forbidding further interference in school-board affairs.

Last week three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals at St. Louis not only sustained the District Court injunction but unanimously ruled that school boards administering integration programs "have a federal right to be free from direct and deliberate interference with the performance of their constitutionally imposed duty." In Washington the Justice Department (which had taken the school board's side in the appeal as a "friend of the Court") saw a "nationwide impact" in the hands-off warning to segregationists, believed that the Hoxie suit might well mark a turning point in the integration fight. Reason: by clearly establishing that local officials are entitled to protection from the U.S. courts when they perform duties imposed upon them by the U.S. Constitution, the decision gave a nudge to school boards that realize they must ultimately obey the Supreme Court's integration edict but have dragged their feet in fear of local opposition.

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