School Desegregation

Archive Report

Southern Resistance to Desegregation

Convening of the Mississippi legislature in special session on Jan. 11, for the purpose of advancing a program to equalise the state's separate school facilities for white and Negro children, signalized the determination of the Deep South to challenge the Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregation in the public schools. The opinion delivered by Chief Justice Warren for a unanimous Court on May 17, 1954, stated specifically that observance of the old doctrine of “separate but equal” would no longer suffice to avert collision with constitutional bars to racial discrimination. Yet Mississippi is moving to comply only with the old rule, not the new standard.

Mississippi and three other states—Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina—already have prepared the way for possible direct action to ...

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