Both Sides Stiffen Stands In Boston's School Dispute

Both sides in the potentially explosive dispute over the alleged existence of segregation in the Boston School system have grown more belligerent during the past few days.

The NAACP, which walked out of a meeting with the School Committee last Thursday, issued a public statement Monday night that strongly attacked both the Committee and its embattled chairman, Mrs. Louise Day Hicks.

Mrs. Hicks and other members of the Committee, meanwhile, have told reporters that their refusal to discuss the possible existence of de facto segregation in Boston is final. The Committee, by a four to one decision at the Thursday session, has decided there is no de facto segregation anywhere in its system.

Having been denied a discussion on the subject with the Committee, the NAACP has decided to pursue its objective on a number of fronts. Pickets are now parading in front of School Committee headquarters daily, and the NAACP is planning to take its petition to court. Upon the advice of the National office, local officials have decided to follow the example of other cities and press for a court order.

Several Federal courts have directed school boards to eliminate racially imbalanced schools, using the 1954 Brown V Board of Education decision as justification. The Supreme Court has refused to review appeals to the decisions, thus giving them tacit approval.

Perhaps as a first step in its plan to make de facto segregation an issue in this fall's school board elections, the NAACP Monday distributed a flier labeling Mrs. Hicks as a "muddling, inept white woman," whose actions could only be regarded with "resentment, intimidation and pity."

The flier said the School Committee has refused to discuss segregation because an admission of its existence "would also make school officials directly responsible for relieving these conditions." Defending its decision to make no concessions on terminology in the dispute, the NAACP declared that "we now feel that regardless of where we had made our stand, the school committee would have wavered and vaccilated, and in the end done nothing."

On Monday the State Board of Education apparently came to the aid of the NAACP, calling for an end to "racial imbalance" wherever it exists in Massachusetts schools.

An offer of meditation by State Attorney General Edward J. Brooke was turned down by Mrs. Hicks Monday as "unnecessary." The School Committee chairman added that she thought Brooke was too far removed from the situation to know all the details.

One possible immediate result of the dispute is a halt to plans for the construction of several new schools in or near Roxbury, a predominately Negro area of Boston. Joseph Lee a member of the School Committee, said the group would be reluctant to build such schools and then be charged with "perpetuating segregation.