book review

University of Georgia Press

Chapter Title: Sue Cowan Morris (1910–1994) An Educator and the Little Rock, Arkansas, Classroom Teachers’ Salary Equalization Suit Chapter Author(s): JOHN A. KIRK

Book Title: Arkansas Women Book Subtitle: Their Lives and Times Book Editor(s): Cherisse Jones-Branch, Gary T. Edwards Published by: University of Georgia Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vhtrh3.14

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide

range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and

facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Georgia Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arkansas Women

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris (1910-1994)

An Educator and the Little Rock, Arkansas, Classroom Teachers' Salary Equalization Suit

J O H N A. K I R K

In 1942, schoolteacher Sue Morris filed suit for the equalization of black and white teachers' salaries in the Little Rock School District with the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Al- though the Arkansas courts denied her claim, she finally won the case in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Missouri, which ordered the district to equalize teachers' pay. An NAACP historian, Mark Tushnet, described the case as one of the "most important salary suit[s] of the 1940S."1 Morris's stand came at a cost. Her actions led to her contract with the school district not being renewed. It was many years before she was rehired by the district and only then after being forced to apologize for filing the suit in the first place. Nevertheless, the teachers' salary lawsuit had an important impact on the evolving black activism in the state. The suit attracted attention from the NAACP national office and laid the foundations for that organization's expansion in Arkansas. In 1945, the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP Branches was formed. The growing strength of the NAACP in the state was crucial to the ability of another black woman activist, Daisy Bates, to provide leadership during the 1957 Little Rock school desegrega- tion crisis. The school crisis, which made national and international headlines, proved to be a turning point in the civil rights movement in Arkansas and na- tionally.

Sue Morris was born Sue Cowan on May 29, 1910, in the small town of Eu- dora in southeast Arkansas near the Louisiana border and the Mississippi River. She was the only child of J. Alex Cowan, a school principal, and Lelia Roberts Cowan, a schoolteacher. Morris's mother died soon after Sue's birth. She was

179

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

180 J O H N A. K I R K

raised by her maternal grandmother in Texas before returning to be with her father in Eudora at the age of four. With a keen understanding of the value of a good education, Sue's father and stepmother made the necessary financial sacrifices to send her to the best southern schools available to African Ameri- cans at the time. Sue attended a private Congregational Church school in Clin- ton, Mississippi, for the fifth and sixth grades, before moving to Spelman Col- lege in Atlanta for the seventh and eighth grades. She completed her schooling in Alabama at Tougaloo High School and at Talladega College. In 1935, Sue Cowan started teaching at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Little Rock and became chair of the English Department. At some point between start- ing to teach at Dunbar and appearing as the plaintiff in the teachers' salary suit in 1942, Cowan was apparently married, since her name changed to Sue Morris, although there is little information about her husband in the historical record. In preparation for the salary lawsuit, over the summer of 1941 Morris attended a graduate program at the University of Chicago and made straight A's in the course Methods of Teaching English. As Morris explained, "I decided to go to the University of Chicago because it [was] a prestigious institution. . . . And after the suit was filed, I wanted to prove that I was capable of being the test case."2

The determination of Sue Morris and other black Little Rock teachers to file suit came against the backdrop of increasing national interest in teachers' salary equalization cases in the late 19308 and early 19408. Thurgood Marshall, NAACP special counsel, was the chief legal champion of the cause. Marshall had first- hand experience of the discrimination faced by African American educators: his mother, Norma Williams Marshall, was a teacher. Indeed, Marshall's biogra- pher Juan Williams claimed that Marshall "took it personally that his mother's work was valued less than a white teacher's."3 Certainly, Marshall believed, "One of the most glaring inequalities was the gap between white and colored teach- ers."4 In his home state of Maryland, Marshall won the first out-of-court settle- ment to equalize black and white teachers' salaries in the case of Montgomery County teacher William Gibbs in 1937. The first successful court ruling in favor of equalization came in the case of Anne Arundel County teacher Walter Mills in 1939.5 After these victories, Marshall looked to pursue similar lawsuits across the South. However, although there were inquiries from teachers' groups in Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, and Louisiana, no significant breakthroughs came. In some places, teachers withdrew from the case because their jobs were under threat. In others, the school district managed to string out the case in the courts in an attempt to dishearten and intimidate the teachers through delaying tac- tics. Another ploy used by school districts was to offer out-of-court settlements

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 181

on the condition that teachers drop their lawsuits first. This removed the pros- pect of legal redress on the basis of what often turned out to be empty promises of equalization.6

Nevertheless, Marshall persevered, and he was finally rewarded with his first southern victory in 1940 when Melvin O. Alston, president of the Norfolk Teachers Association in Virginia, won a claim for equal pay on appeal.7 Alston had replaced the original plaintiff chosen for the case, Aline Black, after the school district refused to renew her contract in 1939. The Alston case had a direct bearing on the decision by teachers in Little Rock to take similar action. In 1940, Little Rock's African American population stood at 22,098, account- ing for 25.1 percent of the city's 88,039 residents. The city was a major hub of African American business, professional, political, civic, and cultural affairs in the state. It was also Arkansas's main center for African American education. Three African American denominational institutions, Philander Smith College (Methodist Episcopal Church), Arkansas Baptist College, and Shorter College (African Methodist Episcopal Church), located across the Arkansas River in North Little Rock, provided access to higher education. The other main African American college of note in the state was the land-grant institution Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N), located in Pine Bluff, forty-five miles southeast of Little Rock.8

There were eight African American public schools in Little Rock with an enrollment of 4,324 students. By far, the most important of these was Paul Lau- rence Dunbar High School. Built in 1930, Dunbar High was known as "the finest high school building in the South for Negro boys and girls."9 A smaller-scale model of the white Little Rock (later renamed Central) High School built in 1927, Dunbar High's construction was, in part, funded by the Rosenwald Fund and the General Education Board. Julius Rosenwald, a successful Jewish busi- nessman and a co-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company, established the Ros- enwald Fund in 1917. Much of its early activities focused on building schools in black communities in the South.10 John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, and his business and philanthropic advisor Frederick T. Gates had estab- lished the General Education Board in 1902. One of its main areas of focus was building public high schools in the South.11 The impressive brick structure of Dunbar boasted thirty-four classrooms; physics, chemistry, and biology labo- ratories; shops for carpentry, woodworking, plumbing, electricity, automobile mechanics, bricklaying, and printing; an auditorium; and a large library. Stu- dents could take classes in English, mathematics, social sciences, science, Latin, French, and American history, government, and economics. The school build- ing also housed Dunbar Junior College, which was mainly used as a center for

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

182 J O H N A. K I R K

African American teachers' training. In 1941, Dunbar High had an enrollment of 1,607 students, and Dunbar Junior College had 142 students.12

The eighty-six African American teachers who taught in Little Rock's segre- gated public schools belonged to a professional association, the Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association (CTA), an affiliate of the Arkansas Teachers As- sociation, which, in turn, was the state affiliate of the national African American professional organization the American Teachers Association. It was the CTA that coordinated the campaign for a teachers' salary equalization suit in Little Rock. Solar M. Carethers, a teacher at Capital Hill Elementary School and a CTA member, had watched the teachers' salary cases develop from Maryland to Vir- ginia with keen interest. Carethers had been active in instilling pride in African American achievements by establishing Negro History Week at Capital Hill School and Stephens School in Little Rock. The Carethers Award went to the three best-performing students in a test at the end of Negro History Week. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of equal teachers' salaries in Norfolk, Carethers suggested that Little Rock teachers take similar action. The teachers agreed to form a Salary Adjustment Committee, with Carethers as its secretary, to investigate further.13 In February 1941, Carethers wrote to Melvin Alston and Walter White, NAACP secretary, asking for advice about "the method of proce- dure and techniques of bringing about equal salaries for teachers."14

Following recommendations from Alston and White, the Salary Adjustment Committee conducted research to determine the precise disparities that existed between African American and white teachers' salaries in Little Rock. They dis- covered that in the city, as in the rest of the state—which already had the lowest rates of pay in the South for both African American and white teachers—large gaps in pay existed because of race.15 There were 320 white teachers in the Little Rock public school system. White elementary school teachers in Little Rock received an average annual salary of $526, while African American elementary school teachers received only $331. White high school teachers received an an- nual salary of $856, while African American high school teachers received only $567. This was despite the fact that white and African American teachers did vir- tually the same work in the same public school system.16 The African American teachers drew up a petition for the equalization of salaries and presented it to the recently appointed Little Rock superintendent of schools, Russell T. Scobee. He passed the petition to the Little Rock school board, which chose to table the matter indefinitely. In fact, over the summer of 1941, unequal pay raises administered by the school district increased the pay disparity between African American and white teachers. Infuriated by this, the African American teachers began to contribute to a fund for a salary equalization suit and retained local

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 183

lawyers Scipio A. Jones, Joseph R. Booker, and Myles A. Hibbler in preparation for the case.17

Sue Morris recalled of the process, "When we would go to faculty meetings there would be a discussion of how we could alleviate this condition, since we knew that we were not getting the same salary as white teachers.... The white teachers were better paid.... So there were several teachers who were able to go forward with this, and after the faculty meeting, the general faculty meeting citywide, they would call for a meeting of the committee, and that meant those teachers who were interested in taking this to the nth degree would stay and the others would leave. So at this particular meeting the motion was made that we would file suit against the Little Rock School District."18

The determination of the CTA to press ahead took Thurgood Marshall by sur- prise. Ignoring his advice to wait until they received their salary schedules for the 1942-1943 school year, an adamant CTA insisted that they were ready to go to court immediately since they feared that any delay might lead to a weakening of their members' resolve. The school authorities had got wind of their inten- tion to file suit for equal salaries, and the teachers were worried that clauses were going to be inserted into their new contracts that would prevent them from taking legal action. Like teachers in many other southern states, teachers in Arkansas did not have tenure, and they were appointed only on annually re- newable contracts. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund agreed to lend its support. Marshall arrived in Little Rock in February 1942 to assist the local attorneys.19

In Little Rock, Marshall attended a meeting of the CTA and watched its mem- bers adopt a final resolution to go ahead with the action. Marshall noted with interest that the teachers insisted on voting individually on the matter and per- forming a roll call of the votes to ensure complete unanimity. All of the teachers present at the meeting voted to file a lawsuit. A suitably impressed Marshall wrote to the assistant executive secretary of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins, "these Southern Teachers have acquired new backbones." Marshall noted that all of the members of the CTA had enthusiastically pledged themselves as NAACP mem- bers "and not just for one dollar memberships either."20

Thurgood Marshall studied the qualifications of the CTA members and drew up a short list of three possible candidates to head the lawsuit. Sue Morris was chosen because of her impeccable credentials. On February 28, 1942, Judge Thomas C. Trimble heard the CTA lawsuit, which had been filed against the chair of the Little Rock School District, Robert M. Williams, along with several members of its board of directors, and superintendent of schools Scobee, in the U.S. District Court at Little Rock. The CTA alleged that the school district had "consistently pursued and maintained a policy, custom and usage of paying

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

184 J O H N A. K I R K

colored teachers and principals less salary than white teachers." Such a disparity, the CTA attorneys contended, violated Morris's Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process under the law21

Attorneys for the school district disagreed. They denied that racial discrimi- nation existed in the district's policy on teachers' pay at all. Rather, they claimed, the criteria that the district used to determine salaries were based on a wide range of factors, including the "special training, ability, character, experiences, duties, services and accomplishments" of teachers. The implication was that African American teachers were inferior to white teachers for a host of reasons and not solely because of race. By implying this, the school district's attorneys both dodged the issue of racial discrimination and justified the existing in- equalities. Trimble upheld the school district's argument by refusing to rule on the issue of Fourteenth Amendment rights. Moreover, he dismissed the case on the technicality that the CTA was an unincorporated organization that could not sue in a federal court. Trimble did not kill off the suit completely, however, since he agreed to hear the case with Sue Morris serving as an individual plaintiff.22

The salary equalization suit also received a hostile reception from white school officials. The state's education commissioner, Ralph B. Jones, decried the "strong-arm methods" of the teachers in taking their case to court. "We believe the only real solution to the problem is a cooperative discussion and agree- ment," he added, although discussions had failed to bring any such action in the past. Jones questioned the teachers' loyalty to the United States: "It is regret- table when any group takes advantage of an emergency such as faces the nation to bring pressure to bear on the problem." The board of directors of the Little Rock School District declared the suit "untimely and ill-advised" and echoed Jones's sentiment that "at this particular time of national crisis an effort is being made to accelerate advantages which are already far ahead of the vast majority of situations elsewhere." The Arkansas State Press, the state's leading African American newspaper, based in Little Rock, disagreed. The owner and editor of the paper, Lucious Christopher (LC) Bates, who was a staunch supporter of the NAACP, declared himself fully behind the teachers' cause. "The day of idle talk is over," he editorialized. "Your steps have been taken in the right direction; in the direction of liberalism and Americanism." Bates warned against bending to white pressure: "To grow weary because of possible slurs which are bound to come from sources unfamiliar with progress will disintegrate a highly desirable movement."23

It took a full nineteen months after the suit had been filed before the case eventually came to trial. In the meantime, Morris lost her job at Dunbar. In the spring of 1943, the school district declined to rehire her for the following aca-

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 185

demic year "because I had filed that suit," Morris later reflected. "But that was never put in writing. The letter stated that I would have no further contract. It never said why." She continued, "And as some people said, when I decided that I

would be the test case, that I knew that I was going to get fired. Which I did. And it was just one sentence that my contract would not be renewed for another year. Nothing about the case. The contract would not be renewed.... And I went to

the superintendent's office, and he said he was sorry, that it wasn't his decision, he was just sorry that it happened." Morris was offered a position teaching at Arkansas AM&N College in Pine Bluff (today the University of Arkansas at Pine

Bluff) by college president Laurence A. Davis. She accepted, but only stayed a couple of weeks, since she was homesick for Little Rock. "I'd see the bus coming to Little Rock [and] I was always wanting to come home," Morris remembered.

"I had been away from home a lot, but [Little Rock] was too near home not to be at home." Morris moved back to Little Rock, and a friend, J. D. Scott, suggested that she apply to work at the Arkansas Ordnance Plant in Jacksonville, just

north of Little Rock. Morris worked testing ammunition there until the end of the war. After World War II, when the plant closed, she took up a post teaching

English at Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock.24

Morris had the opportunity to reflect on her role in the wartime struggle for freedom and equality in a piece called "The Woman in the War Effort," which she wrote for the Bulletin of the Arkansas Teachers Association in December

1943. In it, Morris declared, "It is a privilege to be a woman today, an American woman, and an American Negro woman." She continued:

Negro women have upon their shoulders the responsibility for careful planning toward real racial emancipation. This is not a time for action that will cause undue racial friction, but it is a time for the Negro to choose objectives and techniques which will accomplish social and economic progress with a minimum of racial

conflict. Racial relations never stand still. Since pressures are always active, forward or backward, we can not call a moratorium on the social and economic advance- ment of the Negro. This is a time when people "all over the world" are affirming

the concept of equality of opportunity and the Negro, too, in America must affirm with a strong voice that the rights fundamental to all men must no longer be denied to him.25

While Morris dealt with the repercussions of the case, Thurgood Marshall slogged on through the court delays. "What do I have to do to get the transcript

on the Teachers Case?" he asked local attorneys Joseph R. Booker and Scipio A. Jones in exasperation. "Do I have to come to Little Rock and bring my pistol?"

In part, the delay was due to the vast amount of material that needed to be

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

186 J O H N A. K I R K

collated. "The record in the case," according to Marshall, "consisted] of 832 printed pages in two volumes, [which] contained all the salaries of all the teach- ers [in the school district], minutes of the school board, and other material." All this documentation had to be transcribed by the court stenographer to enter into the trial record. When the hearing was finally held between September 28 and October 2,1943, Marshall continued to take the line that inequality in teach- ers' salaries violated Morris's Fourteenth Amendment rights. He noted that the school district employed only white supervisors to visit African American schools to observe teachers, to advise them on their work, to assist them in improving their teaching methods, and to report back to the school superinten- dent with observations and suggestions for improvement. The supervisors rated teachers against the qualifications and abilities laid out on a merit rating sheet. These ratings were then used in determining teachers' salaries. The principal of Dunbar High, John H. Lewis, testified that in his opinion Morris "ought to be a Group i [highly rated] teacher." Indeed, this was Lewis's recommendation to the principal of the white Garland High School, Charles R. Hamilton, who was in charge of setting the salary ratings for Dunbar High teachers. Lewis held a master's degree from the University of Chicago and a divinity degree from Yale, and he had done graduate work at the University of California. He was a former president of Morris Brown College in Atlanta and a qualified expert on rating teachers. By contrast, Hamilton held only a bachelor's degree and admit- ted to the court that he based his salary ratings on only "three or four" visits to Dunbar High every year. Superintendent Scobee maintained that Morris was "a very poor teacher," although he conceded that his evaluation was based only on watching her teach for ten minutes after the case had been filed.26

Despite gaining the early upper hand, Marshall's anxiety that the school dis- trict had hired "top flight lawyers . . . determined to fight this out" proved well justified. The school district's attorneys from Little Rock's Rose law firm, J. Fair- fax Loughborough and William N. Nash, hammered on the argument that their client judged teachers not by the color of their skin but rather on a transpar- ent merit-based system. They then produced what Marshall referred to as their "trump card": a merit rating sheet for 1941. Other southern school districts had drawn up similar merit rating sheets to justify unequal pay on what they claimed to be objective criteria. As elsewhere, the merit rating sheet aimed to show that most African American teachers in the Little Rock school system were, as Mar- shall put it, "lousy."27 Of the 86 African American teachers in the school system, 50 did not have degrees from and had not conducted work at accredited schools or colleges, while all 320 white teachers held degrees from or had conducted work at accredited schools or colleges.28 Next, the school district's attorneys

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 187

propped up their argument by calling Annie Giffey to the stand. Giffey, the white supervisor of primary school teachers in Little Rock, was a well-known and well- respected woman with thirty-one years of teaching experience. Giffey testified that "regardless of college degrees and teaching experience no white teacher in Little Rock is inferior to the best Negro teacher." From finely argued points of law to blatant racism, the school district's attorneys covered all the ground that they thought might sway the court. The trial left Marshall depressed. "This has been one of the hardest cases so far," he reported, "and we are all quite tired of it."29

While Trimble deliberated over his ruling, African American educators in Little Rock found out that school officials were prepared to take the fight beyond the courtroom. "They made conditions intolerable for all of our witnesses so that they eventually had to leave the system," explained Marshall. The principal of Dunbar High, John H. Lewis, left his job. In a letter of resignation to the superintendent of schools, Lewis stated that it was the "definite dissatisfaction" shown over his part in the teachers' salary suit that had forced him to leave his post. "I definitely told them that if they did not want me, I did not want them and if I was called as a witness a thousand times I would take the same position," Lewis wrote to Marshall. Soon, Lewis was appointed president of Shorter Col- lege in North Little Rock. Shortly afterward, John H. Gipson, head of the CTA and a teacher at Dunbar High, left his job and joined Lewis at Shorter.30

When Judge Trimble finally announced his verdict on January 5,1944, it was, as Marshall had suspected it would be, in favor of the school district. The case, Trimble declared, came down to three questions of law.31 First, was there a salary schedule that discriminated against African American teachers? Trimble ruled that there was not. When Morris and her attorneys had been given access to the school district minutes, they had discovered that such schedules carefully avoided any mention of race. Morris did have a document titled "Special Ad- justment Plan, Negro Teachers, 1940," which had been mysteriously delivered to her mailbox at Dunbar High. However, there was no clear sign that this actually came from the school district and thus, Trimble said, it could not be admitted as evidence.32

Second, was there "a policy, custom or usage to pay colored teachers and principals less salary and compensation solely on account of race and color"?33

Trimble did not explicitly address this point, but rather focused on Morris's contention that teachers should be paid in relation to their qualifications and experience. He said that teachers' pay could not be decided by such a "mathe- matical formula" since a number of different factors affected the performance of a teacher. These might include things such as "character, interest, efficiency, ability to teach, loyalty, or any of those intangibles that enter into the personality

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

188 J O H N A. K I R K

of the individual teacher and affect his value to the system." Members of the school district's board of directors were empowered, Trimble said, to exercise "judgment and discretion," and this should indeed play a role in how teachers' salaries were determined.34

The process of hiring teachers and fixing their salaries was based on a wide range of criteria. The standard application form asked for a large amount of information as a basis for assessment, including age, race, religious affiliation, marital status, number of children, general health, condition of eyesight and hearing, amount of education and professional training, courses taken and grades attained, degrees held, teaching experience, subjects and grades taught, amount of salary in any previous posts, and amount of salary acceptable if hired. Applications often required a photograph of the applicant to be attached. This application was looked at by the superintendent of schools, who sometimes called in the prospective teacher for an interview. References from former work colleagues were also sought. The superintendent then relayed this information and his recommendation to the board of directors. More often than not, they ac- cepted his recommendation, but they also had the power to overrule him. At the end of this process a decision about employment and salary was finally taken.35

Trimble, essentially acting as a character witness for the defendants, expressed his confidence that the system was administered fairly. He reported that he was "very much impressed" by Scobee, the superintendent of schools, who had ex- hibited "sincerity, frankness [and] fairness [in] his demeanor upon the stand."36

As for the school district's board of directors, Trimble noted that they were "men and women of high standing in the community," and declared that "many of the individual members have been known to the Court personally for many years, and others of them a like period by reputation. All of them are men and women of the highest caliber, civic minded, desiring to serve their community."37

Trimble concluded that "the defendants have a right to fix the salary of each individual teacher in the system, according to their real worth and value to the system as teachers, and are not required to set up and adhere to some arbitrary standard of college degrees and years of experience teaching, some mechanical method or means of determining salaries."38 Although mistakes maybe made as, Trimble pointed out, Scobee and members of the board of directors were happy to admit had been the case at times, the merits of such a system outweighed its shortcomings. It was not the job of the court to review such individual errors, but to make sure that the actual processes governing the determination of pay were sound and nondiscriminatory. Trimble was satisfied that they were.39

Finally, did the case raise a constitutional question? Having dismissed Mor- ris's two main contentions, Judge Trimble decided that it did not. In dismissing

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 189

Morris's case, Trimble ordered her to pay the court costs since she had failed to meet the burden of proof required.40

Morris and her attorneys were successful in overturning Trimble's decision before the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court at St. Louis. The case on appeal included another African American woman teacher, Frances B. Hibbler, the wife of attor- ney Myles A. Hibbler, who acted as an intervener in the case on behalf of the CTA membership. This was to ensure that a plaintiff was listed who was currently em- ployed by the Little Rock School District at the time of the hearing. One signifi- cant advantage that African Americans in Arkansas had in appealing lower court decisions was the fact that, through a quirk of political geography, Arkansas was the only southern state that belonged to the Eighth Circuit federal court district. The other states in the district were all from the North or the Midwest. Judges sitting on the appeals court therefore tended to be less steeped in southern racial mores, and there was a much greater likelihood of an impartial ruling.41

The school district's advocates became increasingly nervous about the out- come of the case on appeal. While still defending their existing practices, they also sought to reach an out-of-court settlement with the teachers. Attorney J. Fairfax Loughborough and school district director Murray O. Reed met with the teachers' attorney Joseph R. Booker in an attempt to broker a deal. They offered equal pay to African American and white teachers at the entry level, equal pay to teachers from accredited institutions according to experience and educational qualifications or training, and equal pay to teachers from nonaccredited institu- tions in accordance with their professional status. In return, they wanted to re- serve the right to use the character and personality of teachers as factors in deter- mining pay, and they wanted the teachers' salary equalization suit to be dropped. When Thurgood Marshall responded to the suggestion with a point-blank re- fusal to drop the suit, based on similar empty promises and double-dealing of school officials he had encountered in the past, the school district unilaterally raised all teachers' salaries equally. Although this made both African American and white teachers better off, it continued the disparity. Loughborough then tried to arrange a meeting with the NAACP attorneys to use this latest move as leverage for calling off the lawsuit. In the middle of these negotiations, Lough- borough suffered an embolism and died. "I am thinking that this was super in- duced by cogitation over the brief filed by you and yours," Booker reported to Marshall. Loughborough's replacement, Archibald F. House, continued to press for a settlement. As the date of the appeal drew closer, the efforts of the school district's attorneys became more desperate. Booker reported a few weeks before the appeal hearing, "Mr. House has just called me again.... he stated . . . he is fearful that 'somebody will be hurt' if we wait too long. These are his words."42

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

190 J O H N A. K I R K

On June 19, 1945, appellate judges John Benjamin Sanborn, Joseph William Woodrough, and Seth Thomas reversed Judge Trimble's ruling. The legal team for Morris was again led by Marshall, who was joined by the chair of the NAACP national legal committee, William H. Hastie, and N A A C P assistant special counsel Edward R. Dudley, with local attorneys Booker and Hibbler assisting (Scipio A. Jones, another of the local lawyers, had died in 1941). Also in atten- dance were American Civil Liberties Union attorneys Luther Ely Smith and Victor B. Harris of St. Louis, Missouri, and Nanette Dembitz of Washington, D.C., acting as friends of the court.43

The appeals judges returned to the two questions that had already been raised in the case: the existence of a salary schedule and whether there was a "policy, custom or usage" to pay African American teachers less than white teachers. On the existence of a salary schedule, the appeals court upheld the finding of the lower court that there was no evidence to suggest one existed. The case hinged, the judges said, solely on the "policy, custom or usage" of pay discrimination. To determine this, the court carefully scrutinized the evidence, which included "pay rolls, the qualifications of teachers, their years of experience, their posi- tions, and the minutes of the Board" in the school district from as far back as 1926. The court found that over a period of almost twenty years new African American teachers entering the school system were routinely paid less than their white counterparts. In 1928, 1929, and 1936, pay raises were awarded to African American and white teachers at different rates—again, consistently lower for African American teachers—and they were, therefore, clearly based on racial factors. Moreover, in 1941 and 1942, the school district had a surplus of funds that it had agreed to distribute among the teachers. A committee com- posed solely of white teachers decided on a formula to distribute the money on an unequal basis that used racial considerations as a determining factor. Based on this evidence, the appeals judges concluded that "very substantial inequali- ties have existed between the salaries paid to colored teachers and those paid to white teachers and that such inequalities have continued over a period of years." The ruling of the lower court was reversed and the case was remanded back to the district court with the direction to enter a declaratory judgment for the plaintiffs with jurisdiction reserved to make sure that the school district abandoned its discriminatory pay policy.44

Victory in the Little Rock suit undoubtedly had its limits. Although the case proved that African American teachers could take on figures of white authority in the courts and win, it also illustrated the potential pitfalls of litigation and black teachers' precarious job status in a white-controlled public education sys- tem. The case cost the jobs of the plaintiff, Sue Morris; the principal of Dunbar

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 191

High, John Lewis; and the head of the CTA, John Gipson. Moreover, the white school district successfully demonstrated that it could still exercise control over African American teachers' pay. In line with other southern school districts, Little Rock adopted the National Teacher Examination, which was used to pro- vide a standardized and allegedly objective test to legitimate African American and white teachers' unequal pay.45 The decision in the Morris case affected only the salaries of Little Rock teachers and not those of other teachers in the state, some of whom faced even worse discrimination. Neither did the case tackle the other myriad problems facing African American educators in Arkansas.46

But the teachers' salary lawsuit did have a profound impact on the African American struggle for freedom and equality in Arkansas, as it did in other states, which went well beyond its original scope and intentions. Importantly, it helped to forge links between local African American activists and the NAACP. Thurgood Marshall's presence in Little Rock energized the previously reluctant African American population there to embrace the organization's agenda for racial change. "He sure did shoot them some straight dope as to their part and membership to be played in the NAACP cause," reported Little Rock's NAACP branch secretary, Mrs. H. L. Porter, of one meeting that Marshall attended. "Then and there at that meeting we collected $68.50 in membership.... Little Rock is cagog' over him."47 In response to this rising local interest, the national NAACP headquarters began to show more interest in organizing in the state. In 1945, the Arkansas State Conference of Branches was founded. In 1952, Daisy Bates, the wife of newspaper editor L. C. Bates and co-owner of the Arkansas State Press, was elected its president.48

Soon after Bates's election the paths of local African American activists and the national NAACP crossed again. After the Brown decision, Bates spearheaded state and local efforts to implement school desegregation. When Little Rock's NAACP branch determined that school officials in Little Rock were not moving forward with desegregation plans quickly enough, with the assistance of regional and later national NAACP lawyers it launched the Aaron v. Cooper (1956) lawsuit. The case, on appeal as Cooper v. Aaron in 1958, delivered another landmark vic- tory for the NAACP when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school districts could not use the threat of violence to delay school desegregation implementa- tion plans. The legal battle formed the backdrop to the dramatic events that unfolded in the city in September 1957 when attempts to desegregate Central High School were blocked by Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who called out National Guard troops, preventing the entry of nine African American students. The situation was only resolved when President Dwight D. Eisenhower federal - ized the National Guard and sent in U.S. soldiers to ensure the safe passage of

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

192 J O H N A. K I R K

the students into Central High.49 The Cooper case had a direct lineage from the earlier success of the Morris suit in a number of ways, including the development of the NAACP'S legal strategy at a national level and the impact that the case had on the growth of the NAACP at the state and local levels. There were also direct personal links between the two cases: the mother and an aunt of one of the Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green, were both teachers, and both had been involved in the teachers' salary equalization suit in Little Rock in the 1940S.50

Sue Morris married a Little Rock pastor, Booker T. Williams, in 1946, after which she went by the name of Sue Cowan Williams.51 In 1952, she was rehired at Dunbar High from Arkansas Baptist College, where she had taught since the mid-i94os. Dr. Leroy M. Christophe, who was appointed Dunbar's principal in 1945, had placed the school district under constant pressure to reinstate her. Christophe, a personal friend of Sue Cowan Williams and a fellow alumni of Talladega College, made the case for her rehiring each year after his appoint- ment. Finally, ten years after she had initially pursued her claim for equal pay, the school district relented. The superintendent of schools, Harry Little, called Williams "and asked me if I had learned my lesson." She reluctantly admitted that she had—"The lesson was not to file suits and—you know, don't do that any more"—in order to pursue her vocation as a high school teacher. Chris- tophe was "very upset over that person[ s request]," Williams recalled. "He said he didn't know how I was going to answer." But she "said, c Y e s ' . . . which [she] didn't want to say." Her desire to be back in the Little Rock school system and back at Dunbar High where she belonged proved too strong for her not to swal- low her pride. When Horace Mann High School was built and opened as a segregated (black) high school in Little Rock in 1956, which involved staffing changes at Dunbar, Williams was promoted back into her old role as chair of the English Department, a position she held until she retired in 1974. After her retirement from Dunbar, Williams went back to Arkansas Baptist College and taught English there and also worked part time for the Little Rock School Dis- trict in the reading-testing program for elementary students.52

Throughout her life, Williams played an active role in community affairs. As a member of Little Rock's Mount Zion Baptist Church, she belonged to the Modern Priscilla for Girls, Youth in the Choir, the Sanctuary Choir, the Maids, the Matrons, and the Ministers', Deacons' and Wives' Trustees Club. She was also a youth director, director of several church pageants, chair of the Fred T. Guy Memorial Fellowship Hall dedication, and second vice president of the Woman's Missionary Union. Outside of church, she was president of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., president of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, president of four city committees, and a member of the NAACP, the Urban League, the National

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 193

Council of Negro Women, and Little Rock Retired Educators. Among numerous awards she received was a Bicentennial Graphic Tribute to Women in Education from the National Education Association.53 In 1979, Williams was honored at a Dunbar alumni gathering in Little Rock's Robinson Auditorium, where she told more than one thousand former students, "you must be bold enough to change the present, when circumstances demand it; nostalgic enough to restore that part of the old that never changes; and futuristic enough to dream of a com- munity where human rights and justice prevail."54 Williams died in 1994 at the age of eighty-four, preceded in death by her second husband. In 1997, the tenth library in the Central Arkansas Library System, which serves the Dunbar High School area, was dedicated as the Sue Cowan Williams Library in her honor.55

Sue Morris's 1942 lawsuit was an important landmark in Arkansas civil rights history. It was the first successful suit by an Arkansan to challenge African American inequality in the state that led to a permanent structural change: the abolition of unequal wages for black teachers in Little Rock. It paved the way for the establishment of the NAACP as a force in Arkansas, which in turn laid the groundwork for more legal challenges in the state. The NAACP formed a state- wide infrastructure, supported by the New York office, upon which later civil rights activism built. Though Morris's activism has been largely overlooked in Arkansas history, since headlines tend to gravitate toward the internationally known events of the 1957 Little Rock school crisis and the NAACP activism of Daisy Bates, Morris played a crucial role by taking the first steps that laid a foun- dation for the later episode. As historians have discovered in other southern states, the struggle for black freedom and equality predated and outlasted the more familiar civil rights movement activism of the 19508 and 19608. A closer look at those longer struggles reveals the vital role that black women like Sue Morris often played at the local level, gaining early traction for later movement successes. In that sense, Arkansas's civil rights history resembles the events else- where in the South—even though, so far, that story has been explored in far less detail and scope. Stories like Morris's help to highlight the history of the civil rights struggle in Arkansas and its intrinsic connection to other regional and national developments.

NOTES

1. Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 90-92.

2. Thurgood Marshall to Walter White and William H. Hastie, September 30, 1942, group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

1 9 4 J O H N A . K I R K

(General) 1941-1943," National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers, Man- uscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter N A A C P Papers); Sue Cowan Williams (nee Morris), interview with author, Little Rock, Ark., January 8, 1993, Special Collec- tions, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville (hereafter Williams interview); Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 2,1994.

3. Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (New York: Times Books, 1998), 90. 4. Langston Hughes, Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP (New York: Norton, 1962), 135. 5. Mills v. Anne Arundel County Board of Education, 30 F. Supp. 245 (1939). 6. Tushnet, NAACP's Legal Strategy, 20-26,116-22. 7. Alston et al. v. School Board of City of Norfolk et al., 112 F.2d 992 (4th Cir. 1940). 8. Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arkansas, Survey of

Negroes in Little Rock andNorth Little Rock (Little Rock, Ark.: N.p., 1941), 38-43,171, Special Collec- tions, University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock. On African American education in Arkansas, see William H. Martin, "The Education of Negroes in Arkansas," Journal of Negro Education 16 (Summer 1947): 317-24; Thomas E. Patterson, History of the Arkansas Teachers Association (Wash- ington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1981); and C. Calvin Smith and Linda Walls Joshua, eds., Educating the Masses: The Unfolding History of Black School Administrators in Arkansas, 1900- 2000 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press 2003).

9. On Dunbar High School, see James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860- 1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 206-11; Faustine C. Jones, A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1981); Work Projects Administration, Survey of Negroes, 38-40; "History of Dunbar High," National Dunbar Alumni Association website, based on the traveling exhibit The Finest High School for Negro Boys and Girls: Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1929-1955, http://www.mosaictemplarscenter.com/traveling-exhibits/dunbar-traveling-exhibit (accessed Oc- tober 3, 2017).

10. On the Rosenwald Fund, see Stephanie Deutsch, You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Wash- ington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South (Evanston, 111.: North- western University Press, 2015); Mary S. Hoffschwelle, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014); and Alfred Perkins, Edwin Rogers Embree: The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Foundation Philanthropy, and American Race Relations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

11. On the General Education Board, see John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of Americas Greatest Family (New York: Scribner, 1988).

12. Work Projects Administration, Survey of Negroes, 38-40. 13. Tushnet, NAACP's Legal Strategy, 119-20; Williams interview. The full text of the Alston

ruling was published in Bulletin of the Arkansas Teachers Association 12, no. 4 (December 1940): 10-12,16 (available at University of Arkansas Libraries, Pine Bluff). On Carethers, see Lois Pattillo, Little Rock Roots: Biographies in Arkansas Black History (Little Rock, Ark.: Parkhurst, 1981), 28-35.

14. Solar M. Carethers to Melvin O. Austin [sic], February 20,1941; Solar M. Carethers to Walter White, February 22,1941, both in group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers Salaries—Arkansas— Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," NAACP Papers.

15. Leander L. Boykin, "The Status and Trends of Differentials between White and Negro Teach- ers' Salaries in the Southern States, 1900-1946," Journal of Negro Education 18 (Winter 1949): 45.

16. "Memorandum Brief for the Plaintiff," in Morris v. Williams (1942), Civil Docket no. 55, District Court of the United States, Western Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas, 9. See

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sue Cowan Morris 195

appendix, tables 1-18, for a breakdown of individual teacher's pay. Copy in author's possession

courtesy of Sue Cowan Williams.

17. Scipio Jones to Thurgood Marshall, August 12, 1941; Frank D. Reeves to Scipio A. Jones,

August 15, 1941; J. L. Wilson to Thurgood Marshall, December 9,1941, all in group II, ser. B, con-

tainer 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General)

1941-1943," N A A C P Papers. For profiles of the local lawyers, see the website Arkansas Black Lawyers,

http://www.arkansasblacklawyers.com (accessed June 25, 2008).

18. Williams interview.

19. Thurgood Marshall to J. L. Wilson, February 11, 1942; J. L. Wilson to Thurgood Marshall,

February 16,1942; Thurgood Marshall to Roy Wilkins, February 28,1942, all in group II, ser. B, con-

tainer 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General)

1941-1943," N A A C P Papers.

20. Thurgood Marshall to Roy Wilkins, February 28,1942, group II, ser. B, container 174, folder

"Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," N A A C P

Papers.

21. Morris v. Williams, 59 F. Supp. 508 (E.D. Ark. 1944); Arkansas Gazette, March i, 1942.

22. Arkansas Gazette, May 21,1942.

23. Arkansas Gazette, March 8 and 13,1942.

24. Williams interview; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 3,1994.

25. Sue Cowan Morris, "The Woman in the War Effort," Bulletin of the Arkansas Teachers Associa-

tion 15, no. 4 (December 1943): 9-11 (quotations, 11) (available at University of Arkansas Libraries,

Pine Bluff).

26. Thurgood Marshall to Walter White and William H. Hastie, September 30,1942, and Thur-

good Marshall to Friends (J. R. Booker and Scipio Jones), November i, 1942, both in group II,

ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board

(General) 1941-1943"; memorandum from Thurgood Marshall to Consuelo Young, June 21, 1945,

group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—General, 1942-

1946," all in N A A C P Papers; Bulletin of the Arkansas Teachers Association 15, no. 4 (December 1943):

3; Arkansas Gazette, October 3,1942; Arkansas State Press, May 28,1943.

27. Thurgood Marshall memorandum to Walter White, William H. Hastie, and [Prentice?]

Thomas, September 19,1942, group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—

Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," N A A C P Papers.

28. Morris v. Williams, 508.

29. Thurgood Marshall to White and Thomas, October 3,1942; Thurgood Marshall to Consuelo

Young, June 21, 1945; Thurgood Marshall, "Memorandum Re: Little Rock Teachers' Case," Sep-

tember 22,1942, all in group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little

Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," N A A C P Papers; Arkansas Gazette, October 3,

1942; Arkansas State Press, October 9, 1942; Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood

Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-61 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 120.

30. Thurgood Marshall to John H. Lewis, July 16,1943; John H. Lewis to Thurgood Marshall, July 19,

1943; Thurgood Marshall to J. R. Booker, May 29,1945, all in group II, ser. B, container 174, folder

"Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," NAACP

Papers; Arkansas State Press, May 28,1943; Patterson, History of the Arkansas Teachers Association, 90.

31. Morris v. Williams, 59 F. Supp. 508 (E.D. Ark 1944), 508.

32. Ibid., 508-12.

33. Ibid., 510.

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

lp<5 J O H N A . K I R K

34. Ibid., 513.

35. Ibid., 513-14- 36. Ibid., 514. 37. Ibid., 515. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 515-16. 40. Ibid., 516-17. 41. Patterson, History of the Arkansas Teachers Association, 90; Bulletin of the Arkansas Teachers

Association 18, no. i (January-March 1946): 13 (available at University of Arkansas Libraries, Pine Bluff). The U.S. Eighth Circuit district covers Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

42. J. R. Booker to Thurgood Marshall, May 18, August 21, and October 21, 1944, March 13, May 23, and May 28,1945; Thurgood Marshall to J. R. Booker, May 20 and October 27,1944, all in group II, ser. B, container 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," N A A C P Papers; Arkansas Democrat, September 21,1944.

43. Morris v. Williams, 149 F.2d 703 (8th Cir. 1945). 44. Ibid.; Arkansas Gazette, January 6, 1944; press release, June 21, 1945, group II, ser. B, con-

tainer 174, folder "Teachers' Salaries—Arkansas—Little Rock—Morris v. School Board (General) 1941-1943," N A A C P Papers; Tushnet, NAACP's Legal Strategy, 90.

45. Scott Baker, "Testing Equality: The National Teacher Examination and the NAACP's Legal Campaign to Equalize Teachers' Salaries in the South, 1936-1963," History of Education Quarterly 35 (Spring 1995): 49-64; Arkansas Democrat, September 21,1944.

46. Xavier Zinzeindolph Wynn, "The Development of African American Schools in Arkansas, 1863-1963: A Historical Comparison of Black and White Schools with Regards to Funding and the Equality of Education," EdD thesis, University of Mississippi, Oxford, 1995, 209-43.

47. Mrs. H. L. Porter to William Pickens, June 9,1940, group II, ser. C, container 9, folder "Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1947," N A A C P Papers.

48. John A. Kirk, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida 2002), 70-74.

49. On the Cooper v. Aaron case, see Georg Iggers, "An Arkansas Professor: The N A A C P and the Grassroots," in Little Rock, U.S.A.: Materials for Analysis, ed. Wilson Record and Jane Cassells Record (San Francisco, Calif.: Chandler, 1960), 283-91; Tony A. Freyer, Little Rock on Trial: Cooper v. Aaron and School Desegregation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).

50. Ernest Green, interview in "Teachers Worked behind the Scenes," American Federation of Teachers website, https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2oo4/teachers-roles -ending-school-segregation (accessed October 3, 2017).

51.1 am grateful to Rhonda Stewart at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock, for this information. See Stewart, "Sue Cowan Williams," in Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=i8centryID=4o63.

52. Williams interview; Patterson, History of the Arkansas Teachers Association, 90-91; Smith and Joshua, Educating the Masses, 78; Arkansas Gazette, July 27,1979.

53. Arkansas Gazette, June 2,1994. 54. Arkansas Gazette, July 22,1979. 55. Sue Cowan Williams Library, https://www.cals.org/about/locations/williams.aspx (accessed

October 3, 2017).

This content downloaded from 147.97.128.194 on Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:31:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms