Another Angle column
Wasting Time
By James L. Hicks

…Last September several courageous Harlem mothers became fed up with paying teachers to warp the brains of their children, and flatly refused to send them to two of these inferior schools…

Once in the courts the mothers and their lawyers conclusively proved what we have been saying, that what they have been saying – that the Board of Education through its school administration, does discriminate against Negro and Puerto Rican children by refusing to give them an adequate supply of good permanent teachers, denying them the facilities afforded white students in so-called white schools and by conducting the Harlem schools in such a manner that the Negro and Puerto Rican child receives not only an inferior education but an inferiority complex as well…

In many respects in this case the New York Board of Education presents a much more bigoted attitude than many of the bigoted white boards of education in the South.

For in the South today even the bigots have accepted the fact that “separate but equal facilities” is a myth (and therefore unconstitutional) and today they are simply waging an all-out fight against integration.

But while Southern bigots have given up on separate but equal long ago, the New York Board is just getting around to losing a fight on the already outlawed doctrine. And despite its loss, it is at this late date considering appealing that loss to a higher court.

The Board thus finds itself belatedly trying to do what the bigots of the South have already found it impossible to do – to find a legal way to commit an illegal act with taxpayers’ money. …