The General Assembly Committee on Schools, commonly known as the Sibley Commission, was a committee created by the state government of Georgia in 1960 in order to study possible approaches to public school desegregation in the state. The committee consisted of 19 members and was led by its namesake, Atlanta businessman John A. Sibley.
In 1959, a federal judge ruled that the system of racial segregation in Atlanta's public schools was illegal based on the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. While the Atlanta school system developed an incremental plan to allow for some token integration, this would have violated existing state laws barring integrated educational institutions from receiving public funding. Griffin Bell, the chief of staff for Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver, proposed the idea of forming a committee to analyze the issue of desegregation and make recommendations to the state government on the matter. This committee would function as a blue-ribbon committee and was tasked with holding hearings throughout the state in order to gage the public's opinion on desegregation. For the hearings, Sibley, who would serve as the committee's chairman, decided to frame the question of desegregation as one of two choices: either following Georgia's existing laws that would result in defunding and the closure of public schools or allow for a "local option" plan where state laws would be changed to allow for each school district to decide for itself how it would handle school desegregation. Sibley promoted the local option plan as a legal path forward to both allow Atlanta to move forward with its limited integration while largely maintaining segregated educational institutions in the rest of the state.
During March 1960, the committee held hearings in each of the state's ten congressional districts and took testimony from roughly 1,800 witnesses, the majority of whom favored maintaining existing state laws that could have resulted in school closures. However, as these hearings were nonbinding, the committee instead drafted a majority report that largely promoted the local option plan and a minority report that promoted the existing system of massive resistance. In January 1961, following the reconvening of the General Assembly and the integration of the University of Georgia, the government adopted many of the recommendations, allowing Atlanta to become the first city in the Deep South to peacefully integrate its public schools. Summarizing the commission, University of Georgia historian Christopher Allen Huff wrote, "Although the Sibley Commission helped to prevent the violence that accompanied desegregation in other Deep South states, it also provided tactics that local school boards could use to slow down the desegregation process. As a result, serious attempts at desegregation across the state would not begin until the late 1960s".
Background Racial segregation in public schools
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States issued their landmark decision in the court case Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. In response, conservative state politicians in the Southern United States adopted a policy of massive resistance where they passed a number of legislative acts designed to delay or outright stop attempts to integrate public schools. In Georgia, where historian Alton Hornsby Jr. described the state's general assembly as "overwhelmingly segregationist", legislators had previously approved a constitutional amendment in 1953 that would have cut state funding to any public institution that voluntarily integrated and converted those school districts from public systems to private schools, and in 1956, the state government passed additional legislation further outlining the transfer of public school property to private entities in the event of mandatory integration. Much of this legislation had been passed under the administration of Governor Marvin Griffin, who was succeeded by Ernest Vandiver in 1959. As part of his campaign, Vandiver promised to uphold the laws signed by Griffin that would have defunded integrated public institutions, often saying "no, not one" with regards to admitting African American students into white-only institutions.
Legal action against segregation in Georgia Because of the ambiguous wording in the Brown case, individual school districts did not have to integrate until they were mandated to do so by a court order. However, following the Little Rock Crisis in 1957, federal courts began to issue more decisions on school segregation cases that hastened integration. On January 11, 1958, 28 parents in Atlanta, selected by the local chapter of the NAACP filed a lawsuit (Calhoun v. Latimer) against the Atlanta Board of Education alleging that the board was enforcing racial segregation in Atlanta Public Schools in violation of the ruling in Brown. On June 5, 1959, presiding Federal Judge Frank Arthur Hooper ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and, later that month, he ordered the board to submit a desegregation plan by the following year. In November 1959, the board submitted a plan that would have seen a limited integration of four of Atlanta's whites-only schools over several years, with one grade being desegregated per year. Despite having a very limited scope and not specifying an exact start date, Hooper approved the plan, which he felt satisfied the requirements set forth in Brown. The board's plan, however, meant that, without a change to existing legislation, Atlanta's public schools would either have to violate federal laws or violate state laws concerning integration, with the latter resulting in the defunding and closing of the school system. Because of this, Hooper postponed the plan's implementation until January 1960, when the Georgia General Assembly was scheduled to begin its legislative session, in order to give the state government time to change their laws barring any publicly funded integrated schools.
Creation of a blue-ribbon committee
Griffin Bell's proposal
Following Hooper's 1959 order that Atlanta's schools must desegregate, Governor Vandiver organized a five-member group of lawyers, headed by his Chief of Staff Griffin Bell, to act as his advisory panel on the issue of school segregation. The group traveled to other states in the Southern United States, such as Alabama and Virginia, to observe how they were handling similar court orders to integrate their public schools, though in Bell's opinion, "Nobody had any idea what to do". Upon returning to Georgia, Bell drafted a plan to create a commission, composed of leaders from parent–teacher associations (PTAs), union representatives, and members of the state's business and educational communities, that would travel throughout the state to gage the residents' opinions on school segregation and integration. Additionally, the committee's hearings would allow members of the public to air their grievances and would remove some of the pressure from elected officials, with Vandiver hoping that the hearings would spur citizens to demand a referendum on the issue. Later commentators also state that a major goal of the committee was to convince the people of Georgia to back down on their hardline stances regarding segregation. While the idea of a blue-ribbon committee to address desegregation was not unique to Georgia (precedence existed in the Gray Commission (1955) and Perrow Commission (1959) in Virginia and the Pearsall Committee (1955) in North Carolina), the Georgian commission would differ in that it would hold statewide hearings and take testimonies from both African Americans and white Americans.
While some of Vandiver's other advisors were against the idea, the governor personally supported it. Additionally, the idea was supported by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce President Ivan Allen Jr. In choosing a leader for this committee, Vandiver chose John A. Sibley for the role. Sibley was a well-known local businessman and lawyer who had served as the chief counsel for The Coca-Cola Company, the president of the University of Georgia's alumni association, and the chairman of the Trust Company of Georgia. Sibley had previously worked for the law firm of King & Spalding, where Bell was the current managing partner, and Bell had personally recommended him for the position. In part, Sibley was selected by the governor and his advisors because of his opposition to school integration, and in correspondences between Sibley and Representative Carl Vinson, he expressed support for racial segregation in schools, which he justified in part with a concern over miscegenation. While Sibley was initially reluctant to take the position, he was swayed following a personal meeting with Vandiver where he was told he would have a role in selecting the other members of the commission.
To create the committee, Vandiver called upon Representative George Busbee to introduce legislation for its creation to the Georgia House of Representatives. Busbee was selected because he was from a small town and unaffiliated with leadership in the General Assembly, which Vandiver and his advisors believed would lend the commission an air of independence from the establishment. In late 1959, Vandiver visited Busbee's hometown of Albany and gave a copy of the bill to establish the committee to local Democratic Party leader and segregationist James H. Gray Sr., who passed the bill to Busbee and swore him to secrecy concerning the governor's involvement. Busbee was initially hesitant to introduce the bill, officially titled House Resolution 369–801, because he thought it would be political suicide. The committee was officially created by the state government in February 1960 with the title "General Assembly Committee on Schools", though it was commonly known as the Sibley Commission after its head. In a further effort to distance himself from the committee, Vandiver allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
Members The commission included the following 19 individuals, all white men, who represented both chambers of the state legislature and many business and civic groups across the state. MemberOccupationJohn SibleyPresident of the University of Georgia Alumni AssociationJohn DuncanPresident of the Georgia Farm Bureau FederationJohn W. Greer Jr.Member of the Georgia State SenateClaude PurcellGeorgia State Superintendent of SchoolsHomer RankinPresident of the Georgia Press AssociationZade KenimerChairman of the Georgia Education CabinetCharles Cowan President of the Georgia Municipal Association Mayor of CartersvilleJohn DentPresident of the Georgia Chamber of CommerceJ. W. KeytonMember of the Georgia County Commissioners AssociationSamuel BoykinPresident of the Superior Court Judges AssociationRobert O. Arnold Chairman of the Georgia Board of Regents Mayor of AthensHarmon White Caldwell Chancellor of the University System of Georgia Dean of the University of Georgia School of LawEulond ClaryMember of the Georgia State SenateWallace L. JerniganMember of the Georgia State SenateHowell HollisMember of the Georgia House of RepresentativesRender HillMember of the Georgia House of RepresentativesRobert Battle HallMember of the Georgia House of RepresentativesGeorge B. BrooksMember of the Georgia House of RepresentativesWalstein ParkerMember of the Georgia House of Representatives
Additionally, the committee hired two personal secretaries, Patricia Pruitt and Ann Gaultney, and employed the services of Freeman Leverett, an attorney of constitutional law, as the group's counsel.
Initial meetings
First meeting