License To Learn

Two weeks ago State Senator Hilbun submitted a school licensing bill to the Education Committee of the Mississippi legislature. If adopted, the measure would effectively outlaw any civil rights efforts to educate Mississippi Negroes this summer.

Under the provisions of the bill, all Mississippi schools would be required to secure the approval of the County Superintendent of Education. The Superintendent would make sure that the school not "encourage disobedience to the laws of Mississippi," and that it be "in the public interest." Persons operating "any type school" without such a license would be fined between $100 and $500 and be sent to prison for thirty days to six months.

Since early last fall, the combined civil rights groups in Mississippi have been organizing "Freedom Schools" to teach fundamental elementary and secondary school courses, as well as courses on classical music and art to Mississippi Negoes this summer. Universal education has, of course, long been a civil rights objective, particularly in states with strict literacy tests for voters. The movement's leaders are convinced that Senator Hilbun's bill is aimed directly at their project.

"Our purpose," James Bryant Conant once told the Board of Overseers, "is to cultivate in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are Americans." Over one thousand college students from all over the country, including many from Harvard and Radcliffe, will go to Mississippi this summer for a purpose very much like that which President Conant attributed to Harvard. If Senator Hilbun's bill is passed, it will make a mockery of the most fundamental precepts of education in a democracy.