Acree v. County Board of Education of Richmond County, Ga.

• Decision Date: 18 July 1968
• Docket Number: No. 26369.,26369.
• Citation: 399 F.2d 151
• Parties: Robert L. ACREE et al., Appellants, v. COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION OF RICHMOND COUNTY, GEORGIA et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

399 F.2d 151 (1968)

Robert L. ACREE et al., Appellants, v. COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION OF RICHMOND COUNTY, GEORGIA et al., Appellees.

No. 26369.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

July 18, 1968.

John H. Ruffin, Jr., Augusta, Ga., Jack Greenberg, Charles Stephen Ralston, New York City, for appellants.

Franklin H. Pierce, Augusta, Ga., for appellees.

Before TUTTLE, GEWIN and GOLDBERG, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

This is an appeal from the denial by the trial court of a citation for contempt against the appellees alleging that they had wilfully violated the order of the trial court relating to the desegregation of the schools of Richmond County, Georgia, the trial court's order generally being that enunciated by this court in the case of United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 5 Cir., 372 F.2d 836, aff'd en banc, 5 Cir., 380 F.2d 385, or in the alternative a petition for injunction requiring that the Richmond County Board of Education put into effect an entirely new plan in light of recent Supreme Court decisions.

This court is not adequately equipped for the trial, decision and hearing of original suits for injunction, it being ordinarily a court without original jurisdiction. In extreme cases we have found it necessary to issue original injunction orders. See Meredith v. Fair, 5 Cir., 306 F.2d 374, and United States v. Lynd, 5 Cir., 301 F.2d 818. The court does not find this to be an appropriate case for the issuance of an original injunction because of the state of the record now before us, and especially in view of the requirements recently enunciated by the Supreme Court in Green et al. v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia, et al., 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 decided May 27, 1968, Monroe et al. v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Jackson, Tenn., et al., 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L. Ed.2d 733, decided May 27, 1968, and Raney et al. v. Board of Education of The Gould School District, et al., 391 U. S. 443, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 decided May 27, 1968.

In denying the relief requested, however, we think it quite appropriate to point to the fact that on the undisputed statistics presented to us it is clear that, with respect to the Richmond County Board of Education, a plan of desegregating the schools, generally known as "the freedom of choice" plan, has not worked. It has not produced a unitary school system in which there are no longer Negro schools and white schools, generally known and recognized by all as such. Under these circumstances, it becomes the duty of the respondent Board, not only under the Supreme Court decisions above referred to, but under our Jefferson decree, to take additional important and effective steps. We refer particularly to the following language from the Supreme Court's decision in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia, supra:

"The obligation of the district courts, as it always has been, is to assess the effectiveness of a proposed plan in achieving desegregation. There is no universal answer to complex problems of desegregation; there is obviously no one plan that will do the job in

...