Acceptance at this one university does not mean, however, that it would be so easy at other institutions in the South. Most southern states have, admittedly, shown a certain willingness to integrate students at the university level. Some, such as Tennessee, have suggested tenative plans for integrating first at the graduate level, and then working down to the college and finally the school level, one grade more each year. But even this scheme, better than nothing, to be sure, does not face the realities of the situation.

The rather frightening truth of the situation is that few Negro high school graduates at present are adequately prepared for college, and even fewer have a desire to go to an integrated institution.

The Southern Project

In this respect the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students has conducted a Southern project for the past two years. The objective was to encourage more of the best Negro students from Southern high schools to apply for admission to good interracial colleges in the North. During the two years 78 Negro high schools in the 45 largest southern cities were visited. 3,178 students, all in the top ten percent of their senior classes, then took a modified college entrance examination. Of these, 1,732 passed. And 578 applied for admission to an interracial college, with 523 being accepted.

On the basis of the exam scores, two interesting statistics stand out. The first is that only three out of every 100 graduates from Negro high schools in the South were qualified for a good interracial college. Also, only six percent of the top-ranking Negroes from Southern high schools did as well or better than the average student who took the regular entrance tests.

It might also be noted that only about one-third of those Negro students qualifying for interracial colleges actually applied. Thus, motivational and economic factors--especially the former--play a significant role in the Negro's actual academic record. Integration at college level, therefore, really proves little by itself. The problem is a much more real one at the school level, where at least the educational and motivational factors can perhaps be straightened out, if not the economic. The Negro in an integrated college is there in spite of, not because of, his secondary school training.

It need hardly be emphasized that the Negro is not of a natural intellectual inferiority compared to the white. As Harold A. Ferguson and Richard L. Plaut, Executive Vice Chairman of NSSFNS, have pointed out, "There is no evidence of differences between the intellectual achievement of whites and Negroes because of innate racial differences. The evidence points rather to differences in environment, to differences in socio-economic status, to differences in the educational background of the family, and, finally, to differences in educational motivation."

Integration No Panacea

Such problems as these, which point almost inevitably to the conclusion that even separate but equal facilities can never raise educational standards of the Negro to those of the white, are ignored by the white leaders in their fixation with a principle. And even the spokesmen for the integration viewpoints tend to forget the complexities of the situation in their enthusiasm for ending the dual school system. Yet it has been decisively shown by Ferguson and Plaut, in a survey of 32 public high schools in 11 northern states, that only 53 of 3,300 Negro seniors finished in the top quarter of their classes out of a total senior class enrollment of 10,400.

In this battle over principles, there has also been little discussion of what would happen to the school system if the Negro and white races were given similar schooling opportunities, and the Negro were to take advantage of them. Eli Ginzberg discusses this in his book, The Negro Potential: "If the education of southern negro males were brought up to the level of southern white males, the actual number of Negro high school graduates in the region would be tripled, from about 11,000 to about 32,000. If the education of northern Negroes were brought up to that of whites in the North, the number of Negro high school graduates in the North would be nearly doubled, from almost 14,000 to almost 25,000.

If these figures are realized, the obvious prob-

Equality of Opportunity?

If these figures are realized, the obvious problem of overcrowding immediately arises. A national conference on the topic, "Approaching Equality or Opportunity in Higher Education," sponsored by the American Council on Education, has examined the situation in colleges. The conference came to three conclusions: 1) educational opportunity through the next two decades will extend in the abstract ideological sense; 2) the enormous increase of college enrollments in the 1960-75 period, however, will result in an overall reduction of educational opportunity (by 1975, 3,800,000 men and women will be reaching the age of 22 annually, compared to 2,100,000 last year); 3) the change in birth rates among the several economic groups will bring relatively more highly motivated youths from upper status groups into college, at the expense of the less highly motivated youth of lower status groups, including the Negro.

Yet, problems such as these fall away in the South before the battle over principles. They are undoubtedly in the back of many people's minds; but to southerners they do not seem as important as the basic issue of whether or not to comply--and how to comply-- with the Supreme Court decision.

It is no good blaming this situation on the "white rabble rousers" in the Citizens' Councils, either. For the most part, these men are not uneducated, unreasoned leaders longing for a brawl.