Opinion ID: 2158543
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: First Howard High School and Claymont High School.

Text: Ethel Louise Belton, as well as the other plaintiffs in this case, pupils of high school age, made application to enter the Claymont High School and were refused admittance as pupils solely on account of race or color. The plaintiff, Ethel Louise Belton, was at the time of trial fifteen years of age, and was attending Howard High School in the tenth grade, the lowest grade of the senior high school. She and all the other plaintiffs are residents of the Claymont Special School District in New Castle County, in which a public school with grades 1 to 12 (both elementary and secondary grades) is maintained for white pupils by the school authorities of the State and of the special school district. Howard High School is a public school with grades 7 to 12 (junior and senior high schools only), maintained for Negro pupils by the Board of Education of the City of Wilmington, with some supervision by the State Board of Education and substantial financial support from the State. It is the only public school in New Castle County offering a complete high school course to Negroes. The Claymont School is distant from plaintiff Belton's home about a mile and a half; the Howard School in Wilmington, about nine miles. The State provides no transportation from Claymont to Wilmington. Under the administration of Howard High School is the Carver building in which certain vocational courses are given. Plaintiff Belton takes certain academic courses at the Howard building. On two days of the week, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, she leaves that building and walks to the Carver building, a distance of about nine city blocks, to take courses in shorthand and typewriting, which are given between the hours of three-thirty and five-thirty. No other plaintiff testified, and the record fails to show whether any of them takes or expects to take any of the vocational courses given in the Carver building, nor, if so, whether he is or would be required to take it after three o'clock in the afternoon. Plaintiffs assert that the educational facilities and opportunities afforded them at Howard High School are substantially inferior in many respects to those offered at the Claymont School to white pupils similarly situated. The following is a summary of the evidence relating to the facilities of the two schools: