Federal
aid to education had its beginnings in post-WW2 bills to assist local
schools dealing with the increase of students caused by nearby military
bases, and this spurred a long-range policy of general aid to schools
throughout the country followed by federal interference and control.
The United States Constitution delegates no authority to the federal
agent with regard to education.
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
"Documenting Cape Fear People, Places and History"
Carolina Conservative Wary of Federal Aid to Schools:
“Although
Congress adjourned in 1950 without enacting a comprehensive aid
program, [North Carolina Congressman Graham A.] Barden remained
convinced that the public school system in most States were in great
need of assistance….However, he was still insistent that the “Federal
government must not have anything to do with the running of the schools”
and that “tax money should go for public schools only.” While
announcing his intention to continue work for Federal aid, he could not
compromise on these two points.
Representative
Jacob Javits questioned whether Federal funds could be used legally by
segregated public schools. Barden, who was floor manager for the
[H.R.5411] bill, heatedly replied that the question of segregated
schools in the Carolinas was not the business of the congressman from
New York.
All
the bill did, Barden asserted, was to set up a system “that could
operate without friction in the State in which it was located and become
an integral part of the State, and not be part of any of these
crusading programs that some people are so anxious to establish in the
Country.” He suspected that Javits was simply creating dissension with
the aim of settling nothing.
The
President said that the purpose of Barden’s bill was meritorious, but
he objected to the provision requiring schools to conform to State laws
….Baden was disappointed by Truman’s action because he believed that
without the section to which the President objected, the bill’s passage
would have been impossible.
Far
more disturbing to the congressman than Republican control of Congress
was the opinion of Chief Justice Earl Warren in Brown v. Board of
Education….[and] many Southerners began to have second thoughts about
Federal aid programs of all types. The decision probably accounted for
Barden’s sudden disinterest in Federal aid. Immediately following the
decision he wrote:
“The
decision came as such a shock to us that as yet we aren’t able to
evaluate all of its far-flung ramifications….I believe the decision was
unwise, inappropriate and ill-timed, and it appears that political
considerations were a controlling influence on the decree.”
With
the Court’s decisions, knowing that Federal interference was bound to
follow, he turned against the crusade for an aid program. He had always
been opposed to Federal control, and perhaps as early as 1954 he
clearly saw that Federal money would be the chief means of
bringing….involvement by the Federal government in operation of the
schools in the Southern States.
Because
the Brown case dealt with racial matters, a lot of superficial analysts
glibly checked off Barden’s opposition to Federal aid as being racially
motivated. Their judgment was unsound. If the Brown case had dealt with
something such as curriculum content, textbook selection or the like,
his opposition would have been the same. What turned him off was not
race, but the firm conviction that with Federal dollars came Federal
regulators to interfere with the operation of the local schools.”
(Graham A. Barden, Conservative Carolina Congressman, Elmer L. Puryear, Campbell University Press, 1979, excerpts, pp. 101-108)
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