On the 15th, the State Journal summarizes the ambiguous nature of discrimination which the dozen or so Black pupils face in the 10,000-student strong city school system under the headline “Bias in Schools? No and Yes.” Around that time, the school board reveals it wants to build a junior high school in South Madison, probably at the corner of Magnolia Lane and Cypress Way. It would be part of a $9 million building program, which school superintendent Robert Gilberts says will meet the city’s needs until 1971.
And there’s little ambiguity in the State Journal’s final report on August 25, under the headline “Clergy Call Race Moral Problem.”
The Cap Times surveys the employment situation on the seventh, under the headline: Madison Negroes Make Minor Dents in Local Job Bias / Few Firms Change Policy. It reports that CUNA now has six black employees including a journeyman printer, administrative assistant, and assistant director of accounting, and that three of the city’s four department stores employ Blacks, including one store with six Black women operating the elevators. There are no Black clerks in the city supermarkets.
Two days later, it gets personal, under the headline Colson Aiming NAACP Drive At Monied Society / Portrait of a Rights Leader. It reports that Marshall Colston, president of the Madison branch of the venerable civil rights organization, is a mild-mannered militant who “has been honing the local NAACP chapter into a fine cutting tool to carry Negro protests to the unsullied and money heights of Madison society.” Among the initiatives of the 36-year-old state welfare supervisor – a strong local ordinance banning bias in employment and housing. And the activist has little patience for his organization’s more cautious members – especially middle-age whites who joined the group as a liberal gesture while it was devoted to “aimless, meandering” policies.