School Group Takes Stand
Diocesan Press Service. October 10, 1963 [XIV-7]
Episcopal Church-related schools that practice racial discrimination will be barred from membership in the national Episcopal School Association.
This ruling was handed down by the organization's executive committee meeting at a September meeting. It reiterates and reflects the Church's unequivocal position on the question of integrated schools.
The governing board threw its weight behind Presiding Bishop Lichtenberger's Whitsuntide message in which he called racial discrimination within the body of the Church itself "an intolerable scandal," and summoned all diocesan and Church-related agencies, schools and other institutions "to bring their practices up to the standard of the clear position of the Church" on the racial issue.
In another resolution, the executive committee declared that member schools of the Association must re-examine their admission policies and, within six months, "give documentary evidence that they have brought their admission policies into conformity" with the Episcopal Church's anti-segregationist stand.
The committee also requested the Association's executive secretary, the Rev. Clarence Brickman, to obtain descriptions of current admission policies of the Association's 220 member schools across the nation.
The Episcopal School Association is an organization of Episcopal Church-related day and boarding schools below the college level.