Plaintiff: the U.S.

If they work on U.S. bases in the South, Negro civilians and servicemen must send their children to the generally inferior Negro schools. Yet they pay federal taxes to support such segregation: the Government gives some $75 million a year to help schools in the South's "impacted" areas --those whose local taxes are insufficient to provide schools for an influx of federal workers' children. Is this fair to U.S.employed Negroes?

Emphatically no. said the Justice Department last week in a significant federal suit involving the Government for the first time as original plaintiff in a school desegregation case. The target: Virginia's Prince George County,* site of Fort Lee, which houses the Army Quartermaster School. While getting hefty impact aid, Prince George last year assigned 117 of Fort Lee's Negro children to Negro schools. The Justice Department goal is not to cut off the aid, but to force an end to segregation. Ultimate aim: the same for about 70 other impacted school districts throughout the South.

* Near Richmond, and not to be confused with Virginia's south-central Prince Edward County, which has closed all public schools to evade integration. Virginia's other regal counties: Prince William, Princess Anne, King George, King William, King and Queen.

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