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City housing officials said they have complied with today's...

CLARKSVILLE, Texas -- City housing officials said they have complied with today's federal court deadline for white and black families to swap subsidized apartments to integrate two of the city's public housing projects.

Officials in the town of 4,900, however, said only a few white tenants had moved from the predominantly white Cheatham Heights project to the mostly black Dryden Addition as ordered by the court. The rest of the whites, they said, moved into private housing.

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'It's my understanding that the order has been complied with,' said housing authority attorney Pat Beadle Sr.

U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice on Dec. 2 ordered that the two projects achieve a 50-50 racial balance by today. A lottery was held during a housing authority board meeting to select the 25 black families and 27 white families that had to move.

Housing authority director Rosemary Caviness said 25 black families had made the move, but that of the 27 white tenants selected, five had moved to Dryden and the rest relocated elsewhere.

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Clarkesville Mayor L.D. Williamson said the refusal of whites to comply with the order could force the housing authority out of business. Williamson said the vacancies at Dryden Addition would have to be filled, or they would create a serious financial drain.

Ms. Caviness said she had a waiting list of tenants for public housing, and was awaiting clarification on whether she could show preference to whites in filling vacancies at Dryden.

'We're not completely clear about how the (Dryden) vacancies should be filled,' Beadle said.

Williamson said he worried that if the project is closed because of the vacancies it will be turned over to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would sell the agency to a private investor. That, Williamson said, would mean 'all these people who have been getting subsidized rent will have no place to go.'

Williamson said the blacks were moving against their will.

'We don't have any racial problems,' the mayor said. 'The whites are not mad at the blacks. The blacks are not mad at whites. They're all mad at William Wayne Justice. If given the choice, none of them would have moved.'

Williamson said white residents did not comply with the order to move into black housing because they do not believe in integration.

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'You're dealing with very elderly people. They were not brought up in a time where integration was accepted, and they're still not going to accept it,' Williamson said.

'We did have segregation. We don't deny it, but it wasn't forced segregation.'

Williamson also said Justice's order defied logic because it required blacks, most of them with families who need two- or three-bedroom apartments, to move into white apartments, which have either one bedroom or are efficiencies.

'We have one lady who has three children and herself, which under federal guidelines requires at least two bedrooms,' he said. 'She is living in a one-bedroom home.

'She has less room in her home than Justice said our prisoners should have,' the mayor said, referring to Justice's orders for sweeping reforms in the Texas prison system, includingsingle cells for prisoners.

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