Free Republic

Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100 By ADAM CLYMER trom Thurmond of South Carolina, a central figure in the political transformation of the South and the longest-serving senator in American history, died yesterday in Edgefield, S.C. He was 100. He had been living in Edgefield, his hometown, since retiring from the Senate in January, after 48 years. Mr. Thurmond first came to national attention in 1948 as the States' Rights candidate after Southerners walked out of the Democratic convention to protest the party's new commitment to civil rights. Mr. Thurmond finished a distant third to President Harry S....

GREENVILLE - Vibrant Greenville County, long a growing New South area with its focus on the future, finds itself grappling with a race relations controversy decades after integration. Earlier this month, Greenville County Council made slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday an optional holiday, but left it to county employees whether to take the day off. As a result, activists - including Greenville native Jesse Jackson - have begun a boycott of the county. They say it will continue until King is honored with his own paid holiday. "It's in County Council's hands," said Lottie Gibson, one...

ST. PETERSBURG -- During the first year of school choice, hundreds of African-American children in St. Petersburg will be bused out of their neighborhoods, leaving behind new schools that are only two-thirds full. Pinellas school officials acknowledged Tuesday they are limiting enrollment in several elementary schools, including the brand new Douglas Jamerson and James Sanderlin elementary schools in south Pinellas. The reason, in part, is that not enough nonblack students want to attend schools in predominantly black neighborhoods. That means hundreds of students who wanted to attend the two brand new schools -- as well as the rebuilt Campbell Park,...

Schools 'Promote' Failure http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/31073.htm

School board to study racial limits By Deirdre Cox Baker Davenport school board members will consider limiting the number of white students who leave the district under Iowa’s open-enrollment policy. Superintendent Jim Blanche presented a plan Monday to slow the loss of white students in a district where the percentage of minority students is higher than the racial makeup of the city’s population. What galls Davenport’s superintendent the most, Blanche told school board members at Monday’s committee-of-the-whole meeting, is that his research shows that nine of 10 students who leave never have set foot in a Davenport school. Blanche proposed...

<p>OXFORD, Miss. - Ted Cowsert says that when he stood on the University of Mississippi campus 40 years ago to quash a bloody uprising, he feared he would have to take up arms against fellow soldiers and state troopers.</p> <p>Cowsert said the Mississippi guardsmen and troopers were acting under orders of then-Gov. Ross Barnett, who had vowed that his state would remain a segregated society.</p>