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The Pupil Assignment Law

Soon after its formation, the special committee drafted several legislative recommendations for governor collins, who promptly pushed them through during a special session of the state legislature. the most consequential of these was senate bill 11-xx, also known as the pupil assignment act, which was modeled after a similar north carolina law. it allowed county boards to assign individual students to each school. so long as race was not listed as an official criteria for school assignment, the tactic was a legal way to prevent integration..

Senate Bill 11-XX or the Pupil Assignment Act. (Florida State University Heritage & University Archives, HUA 2018-062, Florida State University Office of the President: Doak Campbell Administrative Files, 1941-1957. Folder 30, item 10).

The law went into effect in the Fall of 1956. The memorandum below suggests rules for implementing the assignment law in public Florida schools. Notice section 8, which describes an arduous appeals process. 

Memorandum to Florida County Superintendents and Suggested Rules and Regulations and Forms for Consideration by County School Boards when Planning Implementation of the Pupil Assignment Law. (Florida State University Heritage & University Archives, HUA 2018-062, Florida State University Office of the President: Doak Campbell Administrative Files, 1941-1957. Folder 30, item 10).

Pupil Assignment was not the only tactic used by segregationists. Florida politicians also passed an Interposition Resolution , claiming that the state has a right to block certain federal laws that encroach on state rights. Governor Collins vigorously opposed the interposition, believing the issue of segregation should be approached through legal means. As Florida Attorney General Richard Ervin explains in the document below, an interposition cannot overrule federal authority and is merely a statement on the position of the state. Still, many lawmakers insisted that integration was "impossible." Ervin cites the Hawkins case and a study on desegregation by the Board of Control as proof that integration would create "public mischief." 

Opinion from Attorney General Richard Ervin to Senator Scott Kelly concerning the meaning and legal effect of an interposition resolution. (Florida State University Heritage & University Archives, HUA 2018-062, Florida State University Office of the President: Doak Campbell Administrative Files, 1941-1957. Folder 31, item 2).

A final option was also put on the table for supporters of segregation: closing public schools. The Last Resort or Local Option Bill was designed as a "safety valve" in the event that the Pupil Assignment Law could not effectively delay integration. The bill was passed in both houses but ultimately vetoed by Governor Collins. 

Statement from Attorney General Richard Ervin to State Representative William V. Chappell Jr. concerning the Last Resort or Local Option Legislation. (Florida State University Heritage & University Archives, HUA 2018-062, Florida State University Office of the President: Doak Campbell Administrative Files, 1941-1957. Folder 31, item 6).

To his credit, Governor Collins eventually reversed his attitude towards integration. At the time of his 1955 inauguration, he was considered a political moderate, but he was still a firm supporter of segregation. Nevertheless, he advocated the rule of law above all else and called on Florida citizens to reject violence and hatred. In the end, he accepted change and even stood by the side of civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. 

Pearsall Plan

Written By Adrienne Dunn

The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Following the Brown ruling, North Carolina enacted legislation that undermined the Supreme Court ruling.

In August 1954 and in response to the Brown decision, Governor William B. Umstead created a “Governor’s Special Advisory Committee on Education,” with Thomas Pearsall, a prominent Rocky Mount farmer and businessman and former North Carolina Speaker of the House, as chairman.  Along with Pearsall, the advisory committee included twelve whites and three blacks. The Committee concluded that integration in the public schools could not be accomplished nor should it be attempted. Trying to delay desegregation, the committee proposed giving local districts control over the assignment of students to particular schools. As a consequence, in the spring of 1955, the General Assembly enacted the Pupil Assignment Act.  It used race-neutral criteria to block options for blacks to transfer to white schools.

After Governor Umstead’s untimely death, Governor Luther H. Hodges continued to stall desegregation. Governor Hodges created a new committee that became known as the Pearsall Committee. Chaired by Pearsall, the seven-member committee included no African Americans. At the conclusion of several meetings, conferences, and hearings, the committee recommended a state constitutional amendment that empowered the General Assembly to enact legislation circumventing integration. The legislation proposed by the committee, which became the Pearsall Plan, amended the Compulsory School Attendance Law so that students might be excused from attending an integrated public school. The Plan also recommended that the state consider special applications requesting state to pay private school tuition grants to parents whose children were assigned to the integrated public schools.

During a special session of the General Assembly in July 1956, legislators adopted the Pearsall Plan with only two dissenting votes. But it needed public approval for the bill to become law.  Many African American leaders and some whites argued that the Pearsall Plan violated Brown , and others criticized the Plan because they claimed it threatened public schools by relinquishing power to local school boards. In the end, North Carolinians voted five to one to uphold racial segregation in the state’s public schools.

Although the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Act, which contained a provision prohibiting discrimination in public education, declared the Pearsall Plan unconstitutional in 1966, token integration and residential segregation allowed the Pearsall Plan to continue.  Finally, the case of Godwin v. Johnston County Board of Education (1969) ruled the Pearsall Plan unconstitutional.

Lindley S. Butler and Alan D. Watson, The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive & Documentary History (Chapel Hill, 1984).; Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley, A History of African Americans in North Carolina (Raleigh, 2002); William S. Powell, ed. Encyclopedia of North Carolina ( Chapel Hill, 2006). North Carolina Board of Education, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/stateboard/about/history/chapters/three (accessed July 28, 2009).

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With All Deliberate Speed : The Pearsall Plan and School Desegregation in North Carolina, 1954-1966.

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Get connected with an expert, pupil assignment act is passed.

October 7, 2021 by Emma Miller

On March 30th, 1955, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Pupil Assignment Act , a law that delayed integration by shifting the responsibility of desegregation from the state to local school boards. It also removed any references to race in all school laws.

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The South’s Pupil Placement Laws:Newest Weapon Against Integration

In its efforts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling and prevent or retard integration, the South has tried many approaches: school-closing laws, “interposition,” scholarship aid for those parents who preferred to send their children to all-white schools, anti-NAACP laws, economic reprisal, intimidation, and violence. But only one technique—the pupil placement law—has met with substantial success in the courts. The technique is now clearly emerging as the South’s major weapon in maintaining school segregation.

The placement laws are designed to perpetuate segregation by integrating the fewest possible number of Negro students whenever federal action forces the issue. The first law was enacted by North Carolina on March 30, 1955, and refined by amendments the following year. Virginia passed the second placement law on September 29, 1956. And in 1957, after the North Carolina law had withstood a major court challenge, the other Southern states rushed to get on the bandwagon. At this writing, the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and the city of Atlanta, Georgia, have all adopted placement laws, and it appears that other states and cities will follow suit.

The clear intention of non-compliance and defiance is being revealed in the hardcore Southern states; there the pupil placement laws are an actual and potential tool of great efficacy. In Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, only about 500 Negro students out of a total of 800,000 have been integrated—a tiny fraction of one per cent. But even more significantly, in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, of a combined total of 1,400,000 Negro students, none have been integrated; nor do the leaders of any of these states intend to integrate a single school. Because the constitutionality of the placement laws has been upheld, it is thus almost certain that no additional major integration—comparable, say, to that which occurred during the first several years after the Supreme Court ruling—can now take place for at least a number of years. These facts no doubt deepen Negro unrest; but they also pose for the nation as a whole the question of whether it seriously intends to assist the Negroes in securing the rights they thought they had won in 1954.

The specific provisions and requirements of the placement laws vary widely from state to state, but the purpose is the same everywhere: the establishment of machinery that will control the school assignment of pupils in such a way as to prevent Negro children from transferring to white schools, or that will limit such transfers, whenever total segregation becomes untenable, to a token number. Theoretically, the laws apply to the placement of all pupils, black and white, in all schools; but actually, intended as tools of racial discrimination, they are not invoked until a Negro pupil applies for a transfer to a white school. The board of that particular white school receives the application, and within a month or two renders its decision—which, in almost every case, refuses the request on the grounds that the applicant does not meet the criteria specified by the local placement law. These criteria are extremely diverse in degree of vagueness and subjectivity; and none refers overtly to race. Ranging from psychological to economic considerations, they include : the psychological qualification of the pupil for both the instruction and the milieu of the white school; the effects of the pupil’s admission upon the academic progress of other students; the effect of the admission upon prevailing academic standards; the suitability of established curricula for particular pupils; the psychological effect on the pupil of attendance at the school; the adequacy of a pupil’s preparation; the possibility of breaches of the peace or ill will or economic retaliation within the community; the possibility or threat of friction or disorder among the pupils or other persons involved; “sociological and psychological factors as will prevent any condition of socioeconomic class consciousness among pupils attending any given school”; and, finally, “other relevant matters.”

To oppose the school board’s decision, an applicant must utilize the machinery for administrative appeal provided by most of the placement laws. Several months are usually needed to exhaust all these possibilities; thus, in most cases, a child is kept from attending the white school for the year he had applied simply by default. When the final administrative decision is at last made, it too is most often negative. But only after this decision can the applicant turn to the courts. There he must prove that the authorities have applied the placement criteria illegally—he must prove, in other words, that he was excluded from a particular school because of his race. More time is consumed in filing a complaint, waiting for the date of the hearing, and then waiting again (approximately six weeks) for the judge’s decision. Dilatory motions, frequently employed by school authorities, can consume as much as six or seven months. If the judge finds that the applicant has failed to prove discrimination, he must then appeal to a higher court. On such appeals, the final verdict—which, of course, may not grant the transfer—can take two or three years.

_____________

Several actual cases will illustrate the difficulties, the expenditures of money and time, that are involved in applying for transfer under the current placement laws. Last summer, in Durham, North Carolina, the parents of 160 Negro children applied for transfers for them (a large number of these applicants were secured through the ceaseless and courageous efforts of the local NAACP). The school board found that, according to the placement laws, none of the applicants qualified. The parents appealed the decisions with the help of an NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund lawyer. The school board granted a hearing in October, after the school year had begun. Not all the parents—about half their number—were able to attend on the night of the hearing, and each parent who did attend was interrogated. The board subsequently announced that the children of all those parents who failed to appear were automatically disqualified. However, it also rejected the applications of all the children whose parents were there, for, said the board, not one pupil met the criteria of the law.

Up to 1959, Virginia’s state placement board had passed on 500,000 pupil enrollments without finding a single Negro student who qualified for a transfer to a white school. When, in 1959, an incredulous federal judge in Norfolk threatened the board with a contempt action, the board gravely went over its files and finally found four Negroes in Norfolk who qualified; the court was satisfied. This year, 1960, the board approved the transfers of another sixteen Negro students among school systems in three Virginia communities, two of which had already been desegregated by court order.

Records of pupil placement actions in Alexandria, Virginia, produced in connection with a parents’ suit, reveal the detailed workings of placement laws. If an applicant’s IQ was below the norm for his age, he was turned down on the grounds that the work in the white school would be too difficult for him. But if the applicant’s IQ was above the average for his age, he was also turned down—because he would be “happier” in the “position of outstanding leadership” that he enjoyed in the lower-norm Negro school. If, finally, the applicant’s IQ was normal for his age, other grounds for exclusion were adduced. In Case Number 4 in the series, for example, where the mental age of the applicant was found to be commensurate with his chronological age, the ruling stated:

He [the applicant] lives at the west intersection of North Columbus Street and Powhatan Street—geographically he is equidistant from Houston [the Negro school] and Ficklin [the white school]. It is estimated that the actual distances which have to be walked, because of the way the streets run, the distance to Houston is somewhat shorter [ sic ] .

For this reason, the applicant was denied admission to Ficklin school.

The Little Rock school board, which began its third year of integrated classes this year, has placed thirteen Negro students in Central and Hall High Schools—four more than when the schools were integrated three years ago. (As a matter of fact, the number had dropped to seven in 1959.) In June 1960 the board had 74 Negro reassignment applications for the fall 1960 semester. The board has already announced that it did not plan to permit any desegregation on the junior-high level, which of course means that it does not intend to discover any qualified applicants among those seeking entrance at that level. At this writing, the board has reviewed and rejected 39 of the 74 transfer applications.

Marion A. Wright, vice president of the Southern Regional Council, has called pupil placement laws “legalistic horseplay” to keep Negro children out of white schools. The NAACP regards many features of the laws as unconstitutional, and maintains further that in theory and practice they place unwarranted and usually insuperable burdens on the average Negro child seeking the educational equality supposedly guaranteed to him by both the Constitution and the 1954 Supreme Court ruling. With this view many legal experts agree, and in fact, the success of the laws in the courts has aroused considerable astonishment among the experts. In 1957 a suit was brought by a group of North Carolina parents asking that their children not be required to go through the procedures of the state’s pupil placement law to secure educational equality. The Fourth Circuit Court ruled against them, and the Supreme Court affirmed the decision. A second major test occurred in 1958 when a suit testing Alabama’s pupil placement law came before the Supreme Court. The Court, in a one-sentence opinion, upheld the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that the provisions of the law were in themselves constitutional. (The Fifth Circuit has also found Arkansas’ law constitutional on its face.) In 1959 the Supreme Court denied another North Carolina suit which also sought to gain admission for a Negro child to a white school without resorting to full procedure of the placement law. And in a third North Carolina case, the Supreme Court upheld the Fourth Circuit’s ruling that because Montgomery County, North Carolina, was operating under a pupil placement law, it did not have to devise a general desegregation plan.

The Supreme Court’s upholding of the Alabama pupil placement law was profoundly disillusioning to many Southern Negroes. To begin with, placement laws from their inception had prevented “class action” suits. The cases that resulted in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling were “class actions”—that is, the Court’s decision became a binding rule for all cases. But under pupil placement laws, each individual aspirant for educational equality is on his own, and is pitted against all the power and pressure that the community and state can bring against him. Even if he finally wins in court, the next applicant faces the same hurdles and barriers. The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed this state of affairs.

Lawyers and civil rights experts believed that the decision also had expressed or implied the following:

• That all applicants must complete the full administrative procedures specified by such laws before seeking relief in the courts;
• That as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, pupil placement laws constitute a statewide or community-wide integration program; and, finally,
• That the courts would not require general desegregation programs where pupil placement laws were in force.

In practice, the constellation of both legal and social power arrayed against the individual Negro pupil and his family prevents most from even applying. Many of those communities in which pupil placement laws are in effect stand ready to apply the severest economic pressures against any Negro parents who file applications on behalf of their children. Moreover, children who win in court face, at best, cool receptions when they come to school—in the lower grades especially—and even the most courageous Negro parents hesitate to visit such a situation upon their children. Thus, it is often difficult for Negro leadership to get any parents to file applications. And to further diminish their number, when the NAACP does make an organized attempt to secure at least token integration, it fights primarily for those applications which indicate the most promise of establishing the discriminatory intention of the laws.

Among the effects within the Southern Negro community of the placement laws and the ensuing various court decisions has been a reaction against the old liberal-legal approach to securing civil rights which has dominated its thinking for a generation. The NAACP, the champion of this approach, accordingly has lost stature in the eyes of many Negroes. Actually, of course, one of the purposes of the placement laws has been to “break the NAACP’s back” by imposing an impossible burden of litigation as the price for even modest progress in school integration. It was the NAACP’s long and relentless legal pressure in the first place, after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, that brought the various placement laws into being; and now the NAACP is making use of every legal means to weaken these laws and ultimately destroy their effectiveness. But meanwhile, the pupil placement roadblock remains substantially effective, and Negro unrest has grown rapidly. It hardly seems too much to say that the lunch counter sit-ins were engendered by the legal experts who wrote the South’s pupil placement laws.

In some instances, though, the Circuit Courts are already beginning to take a closer look at the pupil placement laws. Several recent court rulings suggest that the wall created by the Supreme Court’s favorable 1958 decision on the Alabama statute may not be impenetrable. In 1959, the Fifth Circuit, in a Florida case, held that pupil placement laws did not automatically relieve local school boards from the obligation of beginning a “reasonable start toward full compliance” with the 1954 school decision. In another Florida case this year, the court also ruled that pupil placement criteria must be applied to all students in order to be constitutional—not just to Negro pupils seeking transfer to white schools. In another 1960 case in the Fourth Circuit, the court held that Negroes need not necessarily exhaust administrative procedures under pupil placement laws to seek a decree for a positive desegregation program. In Alexandria, Virginia, the Fourth Circuit warned against the application of the pupil placement criteria solely to Negroes seeking transfer, and further warned against use of the laws to perpetuate separate white and Negro school districts. Thus, these recent rulings suggest conflicts of fact and interpretation which may ultimately result in Supreme Court decisions of broadly applicable rules of law.

Yet meanwhile, the placement laws remain in force with court blessing. Six years after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools violate the Constitution, the Negro who wants equality of educational opportunity for his child often stands substantially alone. In the next few years, as the intention of full defiance or token compliance becomes the clear position of the hard-core South, the nation will find itself coming closer to a genuine decision on whether or not it really intends the Supreme Court’s ruling of 1954 to become the law of the land. The effect of the pupil placement laws is to focus and sharpen this decision.

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• Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad
• Negotiated Segregation in Salem
• Primary Source: Ned Hyman's Appeal for Manumission
• Primary Source: A Petition to Free a White Slave
• Primary Source: A Sampling of Black Codes
• Primary Sources: Advertising Recapture and Sale of Enslaved People
• Primary Source: Freedom-Seekers and the Great Dismal Swamp
• Primary Source: Antislavery Feeling in the Mountains
• Primary Source: James Evan's Seasons on a Farm
• Primary Source: Henry William Harrington Jr.'s Diary
• Primary Source: Diary of a Farm Wife
• Primary Source: The Duties of a Young Woman
• Primary Source: Southern Cooking and Housekeeping Book, 1824
• Primary Source: Thomas Bowie's diary
• Primary Source: Court Days
• Primary Source: A Bilious Fever
• Bright Leaf Tobacco
• Primary Source: Frederick Law Olmstead on Naval Stores in Antebellum North Carolina
• Primary Source: Stagville Plantation Expenses Records
• Plantation Records: Property
• Primary Source: Stagville Plantation Expansion Records
• Antebellum Homes and Plantations
• The Life of an Enslaved Person
• Primary Source: Excerpt from James Curry's Autobiography
• Primary Source: Interview with Fountain Hughes
• Primary Source: Harriet Jacobs Book Excerpt
• Primary Source: Lunsford Lane Buys His Freedom
• Primary Source: James Curry Escapes from Slavery
• Jonkonnu in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Cameron Family Plantation Records
• Towns and Villages
• Occupations in 1860
• Businesses by County, 1854
• Thomas Day, Black Craftsman
• American Indian Cabinetmakers in Piedmont North Carolina
• The Nissen Wagon Works
• The Alamance Cotton Mill
• The Invention of the Telegraph
• The North Carolina Railroad
• Estimated Cost of the North Carolina Rail Road, 1851
• The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad
• Primary Source: Railroad Timetables
• The Fayetteville and Western Plank Road
• Primary Source: Jane Caroline North's Traveling Diary
• Joining Together in Song: Piedmont Music in Black and White
• Primary Source: African American Spirituals
• Primary Source: The Gospel Train
• Primary Source: I'm Gwine Home on de Mornin' Train
• Primary Source: Long Way to Travel
• Frankie Silver: Female Folklore Legend
• Primary Source: The Ballad of Frankie Silver
• Primary Source: All Hail to Thee, Thou Good Old State
• Primary Source: The Old North State
• George Moses Horton
• Primary Source: George Moses Horton's "Death of an Old Carriage Horse"
• From Pro-Slavery to Secession
• The Mexican-American War
• The California Gold Rush
• The Compromise of 1850
• A Divided Nation
• Primary Source: Hedrick's Defense
• Primary Source: UNC Dismisses Benjamin Hedrick
• Primary Source: Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South
• Primary Source: Furor Over Hinton Helper's Book
• The Election of 1860
• Timeline of the Civil War, January–June 1861
• Secession and Civil War
• Fort Sumter
• Primary Source: North Carolinians Debate Secession
• Primary Source: A Virginia Boy Volunteers
• Primary Source: A UNC Student Asks to Sign Up
• Primary Source: North Carolina Secedes
• Primary Source: The North Carolina Oath of Allegiance
• Primary Source: "The Southern Cross"
• North and South in 1861
• Timeline of the Civil War, July 1861-July 1864
• The Civil War: from Bull Run to Appomattox
• North Carolina as a Civil War Battlefield: May 1861-April 1862
• The Union Blockade
• Primary Source: Rose O'Neal Greenhow Describes the Battle of Manassas
• Tar Heels Pitch In
• Primary Source: Girls Helping the Cause
• The Burnside Expedition
• War on the Outer Banks
• Primary Source: The Battle of Roanoke Island
• Primary Source: The Burning of Elizabeth City
• The Battle of New Bern
• North Carolina as a Civil War Battlefield, May 1862–November 1864
• Primary Source: The Raleigh Standard Protests Conscription
• Primary Source: Running the Blockade
• Primary Source: Cargo Manifests of Confederate Blockade Runners
• Primary Source: Freed People at New Bern
• Primary Source: The Emancipation Proclamation
• Primary Source: Iowa Royster on the March into Pennsylvania
• African American Soldiers
• The Thomas Legion
• Primary Source: The Capture of Plymouth
• Civil War Casualties
• The Life of a Civil War Soldier
• Small Arms in the Civil War
• Civil War Uniforms
• Soldiers' Food
• Primary Source: Rose O'Neal Greenhow to Jefferson Davis
• Primary Source: "My dear little darling"
• Primary Source: Life in Camp
• Primary Source: A Plea for Supplies
• Civil War Army Hospitals
• Primary Source: Enduring Amputation
• Salisbury Prison
• Primary Source: Vance's Proclamation Against Deserters
• Primary Source: "I am sorry to tell that some of our brave boys has got killed"
• Primary Source: "My dear I ha'n't forgot you"
• Zebulon Vance
• The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony
• Paper Money in the Civil War
• Primary Source: Pleading for Corn
• Primary Source: A Female Raid
• Primary Source: "No one has anything to sell"
• The Shelton Laurel Massacre
• Primary Source: The Home Guard
• Primary Source: A Civil War at Home: Treatment of Unionists
• The Lowry War
• Primary Source: Life Under Union Occupation
• Timeline of the Civil War, August 1864–May 1865
• North Carolina as a Civil War Battlefield, November 1864–May 1865
• Primary Source: The Destruction of the CSS Albemarle
• Wilmington, Fort Fisher, and the Lifeline of the Confederacy
• Primary Source: Lincoln's Plans for Reconstruction
• Primary Source: An Account of Stoneman's Raid
• Sherman's March Through North Carolina
• Primary Source: "Where Home Used to Be"
• Primary Source: The Battle of Bentonville
• The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
• Johnston Surrenders
• Mustering Out of the Confederate Army
• Primary Source: Parole Signed by the Officers and Men in Johnston's Army
• Primary Source: "For us the War is Ended"
• Primary Source: Catherine Anne Devereux Edmondston and the Collapse of the Confederacy
• Primary Source: May 1865 Advertisements
• Primary Source: What Justice Entitles Us To
• Primary Source: Character of Men Employed as Scouts
• Early Schools for Freed People
• Primary Source: Freedmen's Schools the school houses are crowded, and the people are clamorous for more
• Primary Source: Louisa Jacobs on Freedmen
• Primary Source: Address of The Raleigh Freedmen's Convention
• Primary Source: Reuniting Families
• Making Marriages Legal
• Primary Source: Charges of Abuse
• Reconstruction
• Timeline of Reconstruction in North Carolina
• Reconstruction in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation
• Primary Source: Amnesty Letters
• Primary Source: Black Codes in North Carolina, 1866
• Primary Source: Catherine Edmondston and Reconstruction
• Primary Source: Amending the U.S. Constitution
• African Americans Get the Vote in Eastern North Carolina
• Primary Source: Military Reconstruction Act
• Disabled Veterans of the Civil War, Part I
• Disabled Veterans of the Civil War, Part II
• Disabled Veterans of the Civil War, Part III
• Carpetbaggers
• John Adams Hyman
• The 1868 Constitution
• Redemption and Redeemers in the South
• Primary Source: Republican Rule
• Primary Source: Conservative Opposition
• Primary Source: The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
• Primary Source: Governor Holden Speaks Out Against the Ku Klux Klan
• The Kirk-Holden War
• Primary Source: The Murder of "Chicken" Stephens
• Primary Source: "Address to the Colored People of North Carolina"
• The Compromise of 1877
• The Lost Cause
• Life on the Land: The Piedmont Before Industrialization
• A Revolution in Agriculture
• Sharecropping and Tenant Farming
• Primary Source: Life on the Land: Voices
• Primary Source: A Sharecropper's Contract
• The Struggles of a Tenant Farmer
• Primary Source: The Evils of the Crop Lien System
• Tobacco Farming the Old Way
• The History of the State Fair
• The African American State Fair
• Growth and Transformation: the United States in the Gilded Age
• Primary Source: Henry Grady and the "New South"
• Industrialization in North Carolina
• The Growth of Cities
• Immigration in U.S. History
• Railroads in Western North Carolina
• The Dukes of Durham
• The Tobacco Industry and Winston-Salem
• The Textile Industry and Winston-Salem
• Primary Source: Small-Town Businesses, 1903
• Primary Source: New Machine Shop in Plymouth, N.C.
• The Belk Brothers' Department Stores
• Work in a Textile Mill
• Primary Source: Working in a Tobacco Factory
• Life in the Mill Villages
• Primary Source: Mill Villages
• Mill Village and Factory: Voices
• Inventions in the Tobacco Industry
• The Bonsack Machine and Labor Unrest
• Workers' Pay and the Cost of Living
• The Struggles of Labor and the Rise of Labor Unions
• Primary Source: The Knights of Labor
• Primary Source: Opposition to the Knights of Labor
• Primary Source: Tobacco Workers Strike
• Timeline of North Carolina Colleges and Universities, 1865–1900
• North Carolina State University
• A Women's College
• Primary Source: Student Life at the Normal and Industrial School
• Primary Source: Wealth and Education by the Numbers, North Carolina 1900
• The Colored State Normal Schools
• Primary Source: African American College Students, 1906
• The Biltmore Forest School
• Biltmore Estate
• Primary Source: Charles Waddell Chesnutt's "The Bouquet"
• Primary Source: Southern Women and the Bicycle
• Primary Source: Bicycles and the Public
• The Roller Skate Craze
• Advertising New Products
• Cities and Public Architecture
• Sanitariums
• Primary Source: Warm Springs Hotel Advertisement
• Primary Source: Tourism Advertisement for Southern Pines, NC
• Richard Etheridge
• Expansion and Empire, 1867–1914
• The Spanish-American War
• Primary Source: "The duty of colored citizens to their country"
• The Third North Carolina Regiment
• Ensign Worth Bagley
• The Rise of Populism
• Populists, Fusionists, and White Supremacists: North Carolina Politics from Reconstruction to the Election of 1898
• Primary Source: Leonidas Polk and the Farmers' Alliance
• Primary Source: Chatham County Farmers Protest
• Marion Butler and Fusion Politics
• George Henry White: a Biographical Sketch
• Primary Source: The Wilmington Record Editorial
• Primary Source: The Democrats Appeal to Voters
• The Wilmington Coup
• Primary Source: The "Revolutionary Mayor" of Wilmington
• Primary Source: Letter from an African American Citizen of Wilmington to the President
• Primary Source: J. Allen Kirk on the 1898 Wilmington Coup
• Primary Source: The Suffrage Amendment
• Voter Registration Cards
• Primary Source: Governor Aycock on "The Negro Problem"
• Wilmington Massacre November 1898
• Primary Source: New Bern Daily Journal on Municipal Electric Services
• Electric Streetcars
• Idol’s Dam and Power Plant
• Primary Source: Max Bennet Thrasher on Rural Free Delivery
• Primary Source: Consequences of the Telephone
• The Road to the First Flight
• Announcing the First Flight
• Primary Source: Newspaper Coverage of the First Flight
• Henry Ford and the Model T
• Primary Source: Women and the Automobile
• Primary Source: Letter Promoting the Good Roads Movement
• WBT Charlotte in the Golden Age of Radio
• Sour Stomachs and Galloping Headaches
• Reform and a New Era
• Primary Source: History of Women's Clubs
• Primary Source: Charles Brantley Aycock and His Views on Education
• Primary Source: Woman's Association for Improving School Houses
• Statewide Prohibition
• Primary Source: Railroad Quarantines
• Winston-Salem's Early Hospitals
• Primary Source: Food Adulteration
• Primary Source: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
• Primary Source: Bulletin on Sanitation and Privies
• Timeline of World War I
• The United States and World War I
• Propaganda and Public Opinion in the First World War
• "Over There"
• The War and German Americans
• The Increasing Power of Destruction: military technology in World War I
• Primary Source: The Importance of Camp Bragg
• Primary Source: Speech on Conditions at Camp Greene
• Primary Source: Diary of a Doughboy
• Primary Source: Letter Home from the American Expeditionary Force
• Primary Source: Governor Bickett's speech to the Deserters of Ashe County
• Rescue at Sea
• North Carolina and the "Blue Death": The Flu Epidemic of 1918
• Primary Source: Bulletin on Stopping the Spread of Influenza
• Primary Source: Speech on Nationalism from Warren Harding
• African American Involvement in World War I
• The Treaty of Versailles
• Timeline of Women's Suffrage
• The Long Struggle for Women's Suffrage
• Primary Source: Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Gertrude Weil
• Primary Source: Proceedings from the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League
• Primary Source: Alice Duer Miller's "Why We Oppose Votes for Men"
• Our Idea of Nothing at All
• Votes for Women
• Gertrude Weil Urges Suffragists to Action
• North Carolina and the Women's Suffrage Amendment
• Gertrude Weil Congratulates — and Consoles — Suffragists
• Lillian Exum Clement
• The Birth of "Jim Crow"
• A Sampling of Jim Crow Laws
• Primary Source: Letter Detailing Triracial Segregation in Robeson County
• Primary Source: George White Speaks Out Against Lynchings
• The Great Migration and North Carolina
• Durham's "Black Wall Street"
• W. E. B. Du Bois on Black Businesses in Durham
• The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company
• Charlotte Hawkins Brown
• Primary Source: Charlotte Hawkins Brown's Rules for School
• Primary Source: 1912 Winston Salem Segregation Ordinance Enacted
• Rosenwald Schools in North Carolina
• Black Student Activism in the 1920s and 1930s
• The Booming Twenties
• How the Twenties Roared in North Carolina
• "Eastern North Carolina for the farmer"
• "Home folks and neighbor people"
• North Carolina Debates Evolution
• Thomas Wolfe
• Asheville Reacts to Look Homeward, Angel
• From Stringbands to Bluesmen: African American Music in the Piedmont
• Hillbillies and Mountain Folk: Early Stringband Recordings
• Jubilee Quartets and the Five Royales: From Gospel to Rhythm & Blues
• The "Flapper"
• Going to the Movies
• Child Labor
• Why Belong to the Union?
• Work and Protest, 1920–1934
• Work and Protest: Voices
• Alice Caudle Talks About Mill Work
• The Carolina Coal Company Mine Explosion
• The Southern Highland Craft Guild
• The Gastonia Strike
• Primary Source: The Loray Mill Strike Begins
• An Industry Representative visits Loray Mills
• A Union Organizer Blames the Mill
• The Strikers Move Into Tents
• Congress Considers an Inquiry Into Textile Strikes
• The Police Chief is Killed
• The Mill Mother's Lament
• The Great Depression: An Overview
• The Economics of the Great Depression
• The Depression for Farmers
• Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
• The Bonus Army
• Roosevelt and the New Deal
• Primary Source: Roosevelt on the Banking Crisis
• The Economics of Recovery and Reform
• Ending Child Labor in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Excerpt of Child Labor Laws in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Statute on Workplace Safety
• The Fair Labor Standards Act
• Tobacco Bag Stringing: Life and Labor in the Depression
• Primary Source: Interviews on Rural Electrification
• Primary Source: Mary Allen Discusses a Farm Family in Sampson County
• The Live at Home Program
• 4-H and Home Demonstration During the Great Depression
• Eugenics in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Records of Eugenical Sterilization in North Carolina
• The Blue Ridge Parkway
• Roads Taken and Not Taken: Images and the Story of the Blue Ridge Parkway “Missing Link"
• The Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Primary Source: Louella Odessa Saunders on Self-Sufficient Farming
• Primary Source: A Textile Mill Worker's Family
• Primary Source: Juanita Hinson and the East Durham Mill Village
• Primary Source: Begging Reduced to a System
• Primary Source: Working as a Waitress
• Primary Source: Federal Writers' Project, "He never wanted land till now"
• Health and Beauty in the 1930s
• Paul Green's The Lost Colony
• Krispy Kreme
• Primary Source: Lasting Impacts of the Great Depression
• The Coming of War
• Timeline of World War II: 1931–1941
• Pearl Harbor
• Primary Source: Roosevelt's "A date which will live in infamy" Speech
• Primary Source: Americans React to Pearl Harbor
• Mobilizing for War
• The United States in World War II
• Timeline of World War II: 1942–1945
• The Science and Technology of World War II
• The USS North Carolina
• Primary Source: Landing in Europe, Through the Eyes of the Cape Fear
• Liberating France
• Primary Source: Soldier Interview on Battle of the Bulge
• Primary Source: Enlisting for Service in World War II
• Primary Source: Basic Training in World War II
• Face to Face with Segregation: African American marines at Camp Lejune
• Primary Source: Black Soldiers on Racial Discrimination in the Army
• Music and Morale
• Primary Source: The Story of a B-17 crew
• Primary Source: Richard Daughtry on Surviving the Blitz
• Primary Source: James Wall on Serving in the Air Force
• Primary Source: Norma Shaver and Serving in the Pacific
• Primary Source: Roosevelt's Fireside Chat 21
• Primary Source: Roosevelt's Fireside Chat 23
• North Carolina's Wartime Miracle: Defending the Nation
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: Introduction
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: WWII and Pearl Harbor
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: Executive Order 9066 and Imprisonment
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: Prison Camps
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: Legal Challenges
• Japanese-American Imprisonment: Closing Facilities and Life After
• Primary Source: Poster Announcing Japanese American Removal and Relocation
• Rosie the Riveter
• Germans Attack Off of North Carolina's Outer Banks
• Primary Source: Wartime Wilmington, Through the Eyes of the Cape Fear
• Primary Source: Margaret Rogers and Prisoners of War in North Carolina
• Covering the Beat: UNC in the WWII Era
• Food for Fighters
• Victory Gardens
• 4-H and Home Demonstration Work during World War II
• Primary Source: 4-H Club Promotional Materials
• Primary Source: 4-H Club Instructions
• Primary Source: Joining a 4-H Club
• Primary Source: Report on 4-H club contributions to the war effort
• Primary Source: North Carolina's Feed a Fighter Contest
• Victory in Europe
• The Atomic Bomb
• Primary Source: Harry Truman on using the A-Bomb at Hiroshima
• Classroom Activity: A Tale of Two Cities
• Victory over Japan
• Primary Source: Veteran Discusses Occupying Japan
• Primary Source: Dead and Missing from North Carolina in World War II
• Into the Postwar Era
• Introduction
• The Cold War: An Overview
• The Origins of the Cold War
• The Korean War
• Living with the Bomb
• The Cold War in the 1950s
• Sputnik and Explorer
• John F. Kennedy
• Bombs over Goldsboro
• The Space Race
• The GI Bill
• The Interstate Highway System
• Interstate Highways from the Ground Up
• Changes in Agriculture 1860-
• Growing Tobacco
• The Influence of Radio
• The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games
• The Andy Griffith Show
• Selling North Carolina, One Image at a Time
• More than Tourism: Cherokee, North Carolina, in the Post-War Years
• The Singing on the Mountain
• Scottish Heritage at Linville
• The Harriet-Henderson Textile Workers Union Strike: Defeat for Struggling Southern Labor Unions
• W. Kerr Scott: From Dairy Farmer to Transforming North Carolina Business and Politics
• Governor Terry Sanford: Transforming the Tar Heel State with Progressive Politics and Policies
• Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
• April 1947: Journey of Reconciliation
• The Piedmont Leaf Tobacco Plant Strike, 1946
• Desegregating the Armed Forces
• Primary Source: A Black Officer in an Integrated Army
• Primary Source: The 1950 Senate Campaign
• Alone but Not Afraid: Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• The Lumbees Face the Klan
• Robert F. Williams and Black Power in North Carolina
• The NAACP in North Carolina: One Way or Another
• Pauli Murray and 20th Century Freedom Movements
• Brown v. Board of Education and School Desegregation
• Primary Source: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

The Pupil Assignment Act: North Carolina's Response to Brown v. Board of Education

• With All Deliberate Speed: The Pearsall Plan
• Perspective on Desegregation in North Carolina: Harry Golden's Vertical Integration Plan
• Primary Source: Billy Graham and Civil Rights
• The Little Rock Nine
• Desegregation Pioneers
• Youth Protest: JoAnne Peerman
• Primary Source: Interview with William Culp
• Primary Source: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
• The Impact of Busing in Charlotte
• Opposition to Busing
• Perspectives on School Desegregation: Fran Jackson
• Perspectives on School Desegregation: Harriet Love
• Religion and the Civil Rights Movement: Malcolm X Visits North Carolina in 1963
• The Women of Bennett College: Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement
• The Greensboro Sit-Ins
• Primary Source: Picketers Wanted
• The Freedom Riders
• Desegregating Public Accommodations in Durham
• Desegregating Hospitals
• The March on Washington, 1963
• The Precursor: Desegregating the Armed Forces
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964
• The Struggle for Voting Rights
• The Selma-to-Montgomery March
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965
• The Lumbee Organize Against the Ku Klux Klan January 18, 1958: The Battle of Hayes Pond, Maxton, N.C.
• Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society
• The North Carolina Fund
• Primary Source: Billy Barnes on Fighting Poverty
• Harold Cooley, Jim Gardner, and the Rise of the Republican Party in the South
• Primary Source: UNC Students Against The Speaker Ban
• Primary Source: Jesse Helms' Viewpoint on the Speaker Ban
• The Women's Movement
• Primary Sources: Segregated Employment Ads
• Primary Source: Bill Hull on Gay Life in Midcentury North Carolina
• The Aftermath of Martin Luther King's Assassination
• Interpreting Historical Figures: Howard Lee
• Interpreting Historical Figures: Senator Sam Ervin
• Outline of the Vietnam War
• The Vietnam War: A Timeline
• Something He Couldn't Write About: Telling My Daddy's Story of Vietnam
• A Soldier's Experience in Vietnam: Herbert Rhodes
• A Soldier's Experience in Vietnam: Tex Howard
• A Soldier's Experience in Vietnam: John Luckey
• A Soldier's Experience in Vietnam: Robert L. Jones
• A Soldier's Experience in Vietnam: Johnas Freeman
• The My Lai Massacre - March 16, 1968
• Anti-War Demonstrations
• Campus Protests
• Nixon, Vietnam, and The Cold War/ Nixon's Accomplishments and Defeats
• The Wilmington Ten
• The 1971 Constitution
• North Carolina's First Presidential Primary
• The Election of 1972
• The Equal Rights Amendment
• The Greensboro Killings
• Early Childhood
• Country Memories
• Rebecca Clark and the Change in Her Path in Education
• Race Relations
• The Carter Years
• A Society in Transition
• The Reagan Years
• The Presidency of George H. W. Bush
• The United States in the 1990s
• The War on Terror and the Presidency of George W. Bush
• The Raleigh News and Observer
• "Senator No"
• The 1984 Senate Campaign
• Urban Renewal and the Displacement of Communities
• Urban Renewal and Durham's Hayti Community
• Research Triangle Park
• The Closing of a Factory
• Key Industries: Banking and Finance
• Key Industries: Biotechnology
• Key Industries: Furniture
• Key Industries: Hog Farming
• Key Industries: Information Technology
• Economic Change: From Traditional Industries to the 21st Century Economy
• Key Industries: Tobacco
• The Environmental Justice Movement
• Moving Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
• Coastal Erosion and the Ban on Hard Structures
• The Impact of Hog Farms
• Regulating Hog Farms
• Cane Creek Reservoir
• Air Pollution
• Drought and Development
• The Mountains-to-Sea Trail
• Hugh Morton and North Carolina's Native Plants
• Grandfather Mountain: Commerce and Tourism in the Appalachian Environment
• Ten years Later: Remembering Hurricane Floyd's Wave of Destruction
• Hurricane Floyd's Lasting Legacy
• How Does a Hurricane Form?
• Understanding Floods
• Mapping Rainfall and Flooding
• The Evacuation
• Rising Waters
• Damage from Hurricane Floyd
• Floyd and Agriculture
• Cleaning Up After the Flood
• The Problems of Flood Relief
• Preventing Future Floods
• Reclaiming Sacred Ground: How Princeville is Recovering from the Flood of 1999
• Natural Disasters and North Carolina in the second half of the 20th Century
• Languages and Nationalities
• Latino Immigration
• Five Faiths
• A Hindu Temple in Cary
• The Montagnards
• Immigration from Africa
• Population and Immigration Trends in North Carolina
• Appendix A. Reading Primary Sources: an introduction for students
• Appendix B. Wills and inventories: a process guide
• Appendix C. John Lawson
• Appendix D: Rip Van Winkle
• Appendix E: The Confessions of Nat Turner
• From 1788–1840
• From 1820-1860
• From 1870–1900
• From 1896-1929
• Appendix G: North Carolina's Governors
• Appendix H. The Election of 1860: Results by State
• Appendix I: Remembering the Revolution
• Appendix J: Reading Narratives of Enslaved People from the WPA interviews
• Appendix K: Organization of Civil War armies
• Appendix L: A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
• Appendix M: Memorial Day
• Appendix N: Pilot Training Manual for the B-17 Flying Fortress
• Reading Primary Sources: thinking about thinking
• What is the nature of this source?
• Who created this source, and what do I know about her, him, or them?
• When was the source produced?
• Where was the source produced?
• What do I know about the historical context of this source?
• What do I know about how the creator of this source fits into that historical context?
• Why did the person who created the source do so?
• What factual information is conveyed in this source?
• What opinions are related in this source?
• What is implied or conveyed unintentionally in the source?
• What is not said in the source?
• What is surprising or interesting about the source?
• What do I not understand about the source?
• How does the creator of the source convey information and make his or her point?
• How is the world descibed in the source different from my world?
• How might others at the time have reacted to this source?
• How does this source compare to other primary sources?
• How does this source compare to secondary source accounts?
• What do I believe and disbelieve from this source?
• What do I still not know — and where can I find that information?
• Appendix A: Transcription of Letters
• Appendix B: John Adams to Abigail Adams Letter 1, July 3, 1776
• Appendix C: John Adams to Abigail Adams Letter 2, July 3, 1777
• Reading Newspapers: advertisements
• Appendix A: Transcribed Carolina Watchman Ads, January 7, 1837
• Appendix B: Carolina Watchman Ads, January 7, 1837
• Reading Newspapers: editorial and opinion pieces
• Appendix A: Abner Jordan, Narrative of an Enslaved Person
• Reading Newspapers: Reader Contributions
• Reading Newspapers: Factual Reporting
• Analyzing Political Cartoons
• Partners and Contributors
• Staff and Advisors
• ANCHOR FAQs
• Pacing Guide
• ‹ Primary Source: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
• With All Deliberate Speed: The Pearsall Plan ›

Table of Contents

• Introduction to NC Digital History, ANCHOR
• Two Worlds: Prehistory, Contact, and the Lost Colony (to 1600)
• Colonial North Carolina (1600-1763)
• Revolutionary North Carolina (1763-1790)
• Early National (1790-1836)
• Antebellum (1836–1860)
• Civil War and Reconstruction (1860-1876)
• North Carolina in the New South (1870-1900)
• North Carolina in the Early 20th Century (1900–1929)
• The Great Depression and World War II (1929 and 1945)
• Recent North Carolina
• Guides for Reading Primary Sources
• About ANCHOR

By Kyle Porter, NC Government and Heritage Library, 2018; Jordan Scott, 2018.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board arrived in two stages. The first phase came in 1954, with the Court decision that segregated schools were unconstitutional. But, the issue of how dismantle systematic school segregation remained. The second stage was U.S. Supreme Court's response in May of 1955, calling for enforcement of desegregation “with all deliberate speed”. What did that mean? Many people who lived through these events, as well as civil rights lawyers, have observed that "deliberate" meant "slow". In fact, after more than ten years following the Brown decision, less than 1% of historically segregated schools had been desegregated. This article will talk about North Carolina's response to Brown v. Board.

Responding to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954, Governor William Umstead established a committee to study the issue for North Carolina. By December of that year, the committee determined that desegregation of the state's public schools "cannot be accomplished and should not be attempted". The all-white body of the North Carolina General Assembly voted on a resolution that declared North Carolina’s public education system quality would suffer from school desegregation and integration efforts.

Governor Umstead passed away in November of 1954 and was succeeded in office by Governor Luther H. Hodges who also approved the committee’s decision. The committee proposed to give local school boards control over enrollment and school assignment in the state’s public schools. In April of 1955 the General Assembly passed " An Act to Provide for the Enrollment of Pupils in Public Schools ". More commonly known as the Pupil Assignment Act, the strategically crafted legislation gave local districts broad authority in making student school assignments. The legislation was seemingly race-neutral, but it allowed local districts to create a number of criteria that black students had to meet in order to obtain school re-assignment. In many cases the criteria were non-sensical. This made it difficult for black students who wanted to transfer to White schools. The law also made it difficult for parents and civil rights attorneys to pursue legal action against the State, forcing them to take action in a piecemeal approach by suing individual school districts. At the time North Carolina had over one hundred and fifty school districts, making it virtually impossible to bring systematic legal action. The Pupil Assignment Act was successful in slowing down legal processes for desegregation. Ten states followed suit, drafting similar measures and legislation in the middle to late 1950s.

The Pupil Assignment Act did not go unchallenged. Kelly Alexander, Sr., president of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), spoke out in January of 1955 against the Pupil Assignment Act and planned to counteract discriminatory tactics employed by the State and local governments. Black banker and attorney John H. Wheeler testified before the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Education in February of 1955, voicing his opposition to the Pupil Assignment Act and its discriminatory effects on African Americans. That same year, the Pupil Assignment Act was amended, but the amendment did not support desegregation.

As support for school desegregation began to increase, in 1955 Governor Hodges convened a commission to study the issue. The commission was chaired by Rocky Mount buisnessman Thomas J. Pearsall and included no African Americans. The result was the passage of the Pearsall Plan . The plan gave even more independence to local districts and White families in school assignment and stayed in effect until 1969 when it was declared unconsitutional.

To read the digital scans of the Pupil Assignment Law and Pearsall Plan click the link below:

1955, An Act to Provide for the Enrollment of Pupils in Public Schools, Chapter 366 of the General Statutes (passed as Senate Bill 9).

1956, An Act to Amend Article 21, Chapter 115 of the General Statutes, Relating to the Assignment and Enrollment of Pupils in Public Schools

Bibliography

Gershenhorn, Jerry. “Defying Brown, Defying Pearsall: African Americans and the Struggle for Public School Integration in North Carolina, 1954-1971.” New Voyages to Carolina : Reinterpreting North Carolina History (2017). 269-289.

• Online access to Gershenhorn's article is available through databases (JStor, ProjectMuse) that are closed to the public

NCpedia. “Pupil Assignment Act.” Accessed July 24, 2018. https://www.ncpedia.org/pupil-assignment-act

Related Topics

• Pupil Reassignment Act  (NCpedia)
• White Resistance to School Desegregation  (NCpedia)
• NC NAACP  (NCpedia)
• NC School Legislation 1956  (UNC Law School)
• Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand" (Library of Congress)

Primary Sources

Kelly Alexander, Sr. Papers Concerning the NAACP at UNC Charlotte, J. Murrey Atkins Library Collection includes 180 primary source items

Read the text of the Pupil Assignment Act N.C. Pupil Assignment Act, 1955

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) from the National Archives

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) from the National Archives

Fourteenth Amendment , Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Following its decisions in Brown I and II , the Supreme Court addressed numerous states’ and localities’ refusals to comply with its mandates. Four years after Brown I , for example, the Court in Cooper v. Aaron described various actions taken by Arkansas state authorities, including amending the state constitution to direct the Arkansas state legislature to “oppose” the Supreme Court’s Brown decisions. 1 Footnote Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 8–9 (1958) . See also id. at 4 ( “As this case reaches us it raises questions of the highest importance to the maintenance of our federal system of government. . . . Specifically it involves actions by the Governor and Legislature of Arkansas upon the premise that they are not bound by our holding in Brown v. Board of Education ” ). The issue before the Court in Cooper concerned the first stage of an Arkansas local school board’s desegregation plan—admitting nine Black students to a high school of over 2000 students in Little Rock, Arkansas. 2 Footnote Id. at 9 . See also id. at 8 ( “While the School Board was thus going forward with its preparation for desegregating the Little Rock school system, other state authorities, in contrast, were actively pursuing a program designed to perpetuate in Arkansas the system of racial segregation which this Court had held violated the Fourteenth Amendment .” ). The Governor had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block their attendance, 3 Footnote Id. at 9–11 . and after the Guard withdrew under court order, the President of the United States sent federal troops to facilitate the admission of the nine students in late September of 1957. 4 Footnote Id. at 12 . Following these actions, the local school board petitioned to postpone all further steps to desegregate and withdraw the Black students already admitted to the high school, 5 Footnote Id. at 12–13 . pointing to the continued public hostility which the school board alleged had been provoked by other state authorities. 6 Footnote Id. at 12 ( “Their position in essence was that because of extreme public hostility, which they stated had been engendered largely by the official attitudes and actions of the Governor and the Legislature, the maintenance of a sound educational program at Central High School, with the Negro students in attendance, would be impossible.” ). A unanimous Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s denial of that petition, 7 Footnote Id. at 14 . stating: “The constitutional rights of respondents are not to be sacrificed or yielded to the violence and disorder which have followed upon the actions of the Governor and Legislature.” 8 Footnote Id. at 16 .

While racial segregation in public education is commonly associated with K-12 schools, numerous public institutions of higher education—such as public colleges, law schools, and doctoral programs—had White-only admissions policies that barred Black students from matriculating solely because of their race. 9 Footnote See generally , e.g. , United States v. Fordice, 505 U.S. 717, 721 (1992) (discussing the historical background of Mississippi’s public higher education system; stating that “Mississippi launched its public university system in 1848 by establishing . . . an institution dedicated to the higher education exclusively of white persons” ); Sipuel v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 332 U.S. 631, 632 (1948) (analyzing an equal protection claim concerning a Black student who was “concededly qualified” for admission to Oklahoma’s only public law school, but had been denied admission “solely because of her color” ); Knight v. Alabama , 14 F.3d 1534 , 1538 (11th Cir. 1994) ( “In very broad terms, for more than a century following its admission to the Union in 1819, Alabama denied blacks all access to college-level public higher education and did so for the purpose of maintaining the social, economic, and political subordination of black people in the state. . . . Following Reconstruction, blacks were excluded from the universities attended by whites, relegated instead only to vastly inferior institutions that did not even begin to offer college-level courses until required to do so by a 1938 Supreme Court decision.” ). For more information, see Christine J. Back & JD S. Hsin , Cong. Rsch. Serv., R45481, “Affirmative Action” and Equal Protection in Higher Education (2019) , https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45481 . After Brown , the Court weighed in on circumstances like those in Cooper v. Aaron in the higher education context as well, this time involving the state legislature and Governor of Mississippi’s efforts to block the admission of the first Black student to the University of Mississippi. 10 Footnote See United States v. Barnett, 376 U.S. 681, 683–86 (1964) . Ultimately, the University admitted the student, James Meredith, upon federal court order, under the escort of United States Marshalls. 11 Footnote See id. at 686 . For further discussion, see also Meredith v. Fair , 313 F.2d 532 (5th Cir. 1962) (per curiam) and Meredith v. Fair , 313 F.2d 534 (5th Cir. 1962) (per curiam), cert. denied in both cases , 372 U.S. 916 (1963) .

In addition to cases involving public confrontation by state authorities, the Supreme Court, in the early 1960s, 12 Footnote Around this time, the Court repeatedly expressed concern over delays in racial desegregation. See, e.g. , Bradley v. Sch. Bd. of Richmond, 382 U.S. 103, 105 (1965) (stating that “more than a decade has passed since we directed desegregation of public school facilities ‘with all deliberate speed,’” and “[d]elays in desegregating school systems are no longer tolerable.” ) (citations omitted); Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U.S. 526, 529–33 (1963) (reversing lower court judgment inviting city to submit “a plan calling for an even longer delay in effecting desegregation” ; observing that it “is now more than nine years since” the Court’s Brown decision and stating that “ Brown never contemplated that the concept of ‘deliberate speed’ would countenance indefinite delay in elimination of racial barriers in schools, let alone other public facilities not involving the same physical problems or comparable conditions” ). also ruled on various other state and local practices designed to evade or delay school desegregation, such as school closings 13 Footnote In Griffin v. Prince Edward County School Board , the Court addressed a Virginia county’s closing its public schools in 1959, in response to a federal court’s desegregation order. 377 U.S. 218, 222–23 (1964) . A private foundation was formed to operate private schools exclusively for white children in the county, and the state and county enacted tuition grants for children to attend private schools and tax concessions for those who made financial contributions to private schools. Id. at 223–24 . Discussing these state actions, the Court observed that the segregated schools “although designated as private, are beneficiaries of county and state support.” Id. at 230–31 . The evidence, the Court concluded, “could not be clearer” that the public school closure and private school operations put in place were “to ensure, through measures taken by the county and the State, that white and colored children . . . would not, under any circumstances, go to the same school.” Id. at 231 . The Court concluded that enjoining the state and county from paying tuition grants and giving tax credits was “appropriate and necessary” while public schools remained closed and further stated that the district court could require state authorities to levy taxes to raise funds adequate for reopening and maintaining a desegregated school system, “if necessary to prevent further racial discrimination.” Id. at 232–33 . The lower court could also issue an order to reopen schools “if required to assure these petitioners that their constitutional rights will no longer be denied them.” Id. at 233–34 . “The time for mere ‘deliberate speed’ has run out.” Id. at 234 . On other school closing legislation, see Bush v. Orleans Parish Sch. Bd. , 187 F. Supp. 42, 188 F. Supp. 916 (E.D. La. 1960) , aff’d , 365 U.S. 569 (1961) ; Hall v. St. Helena Parish Sch. Bd. , 197 F. Supp. 649 (E.D. La. 1961) , aff’d , 368 U.S. 515 (1962) . and minority transfer plans. 14 Footnote In Goss v. Knoxville Bd. of Educ. , the Court addressed the transfer plans of two Tennessee localities that allowed students to transfer from a school where they would be in the racial minority to a school where they would be in the racial majority. 373 U.S. 683, 684–87 (1963) . “Here,” the Court observed, “the right of transfer . . . is a one-way ticket leading to but one destination, i.e. , the majority race of the transferee and continued segregation.” Id. at 687 . The Court further noted that race was the only factor for the transfer, with no “provision whereby a student might with equal facility transfer from a segregated to a desegregated school,” which “underscores the purely racial character and purpose of the transfer provisions. We hold that the transfer plans promote discrimination and are therefore invalid.” Id. at 688 . See also Monroe v. Bd. of Com’rs of Jackson, 391 U.S. 450, 458 (1968) (holding that a “free transfer” plan “does not meet respondent’s ‘affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.’” ) (quoting Green v. Cnty. Sch. Bd., 391 U.S. 430, 437–38 (1968) . A grade-a-year plan was implicitly disapproved in Calhoun v. Latimer, 377 U.S. 263 (1964) , vacating and remanding 321 F.2d 302 (5th Cir. 1963) . Numerous jurisdictions also adopted “pupil placement laws,” which automatically reassigned students to the segregated school they had previously attended, unless a state entity changed that assignment at its discretion. 15 Footnote See Green , 391 U.S. at 433 (describing Virginia’s Pupil Placement Act, which had divested local school boards of the authority to assign children to schools, and automatically reassigned children to the school they had previously attended unless a state board, upon a student’s application, assigned them to another school at its discretion). See also , e.g ., Northcross v. Bd. of Educ. of Memphis, 302 F.2d 818, 820–21, 823 (6th Cir. 1962) (describing the Tennessee Pupil Assignment Law, enacted in 1957, which among other things, assigned “all children who had previously been enrolled in the schools to the same schools that they had attended under the constitutional and statutory separate racial system” until graduation, unless both parents requested a transfer); Holt v. Raleigh City Bd. of Educ. , 265 F.2d 95 , 98 (4th Cir. 1959) ; Gibson v. Bd. of Pub. Instruction, 272 F.2d 763, 765–66 (5th Cir. 1959) . While some lower courts had held that parents and students could not challenge such practices in federal court unless they had exhausted state law procedures, 16 Footnote See , e.g. , Covington v. Edwards , 264 F.2d 780 , 781–83 (4th Cir. 1959) (affirming the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ desegregation claims because they had failed to exhaust the state law’s administrative procedures for seeking review and remedy relating to school assignments), cert. denied , 361 U.S. 840 (1959) ; Parham v. Dove, 271 F.2d 132, 137–39 (8th Cir. 1959) (concluding that the plaintiffs were required, among other things, to exhaust state law procedures for challenging racially segregating school assignments before filing suit in federal court). the Supreme Court rejected such arguments. 17 Footnote McNeese v. Cahokia Bd. of Educ., 373 U.S. 668, 669–71, 674 (1963) (where plaintiffs brought a legal challenge under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging intentional racial segregation in Illinois public schools, rejecting the argument that plaintiffs were required to exhaust administrative remedies under an Illinois statute before filing suit in federal court). “The right alleged,” the Court explained, “is as plainly federal in origin and nature as those vindicated in Brown v. Board of Education ,” and not “in any way entangled in a skein of state law that must be untangled before the federal case can proceed.” 18 Footnote Id. at 674 .

Various jurisdictions also implemented “freedom of choice” plans 19 Footnote See generally United States v. Jefferson Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 372 F.2d 836, 878 (5th Cir. 1966) (describing the actions of school boards located throughout the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and stating that school boards first failed to take action “that might be considered a move toward integration,” then adopted Pupil Placement Laws “likely to lead to no more than a little token desegregation,” and stating that “[n]ow they turn to freedom of choice plans,” which “as now administered, necessarily promotes resegregation” ). Other lower courts had first approved such plans, subject to the reservation that they be fairly administered. See, e.g ., Bradley v. Sch. Bd. of Richmond , 345 F.2d 310 (4th Cir. 1965) , rev’d on other grounds , 382 U.S. 103 (1965) ; Bowman v. Cnty. Sch. Bd., 382 F.2d 326 (4th Cir. 1967) , vacated , 391 U.S. 430 (1968) . which generally provided that each child in a school district could choose which school to attend each year. In its 1968 decision Green v. School Board of New Kent County , 20 Footnote 391 U.S. 430 (1968) . the Court addressed whether a Virginia county school district’s “freedom of choice” plan was sufficient to satisfy the mandate of Brown II . 21 Footnote Id. at 431–32 . The county’s two schools—one formerly designated only for White students and the other for Black students 22 Footnote Id. at 432 . — remained segregated by race through 1964. 23 Footnote Id. at 433 . Under the county’s 1965 “freedom of choice” plan, each student chose between those two schools each year, and if no choice was made, students were assigned to the school previously attended. 24 Footnote Id. at 434 . The school board argued that its plan satisfied its constitutional obligations, and asserted that for the Court to rule otherwise would read the Fourteenth Amendment to require “compulsory integration.” 25 Footnote Id. at 437 . The Court rejected that argument as “ignor[ing] the thrust of Brown II ,” which requires “the dismantling of well-entrenched dual systems.” 26 Footnote Id. Brown II , the Court stated, “clearly charged [public entities] with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” 27 Footnote Id. at 435–38 . Emphasizing the county’s “deliberate perpetuation” of a racially segregated school system well after its Brown decisions, 28 Footnote Id. at 438 . the Court concluded that the county’s plan “cannot be accepted as a sufficient step” to transition to a unitary school system 29 Footnote Id. at 441 . and held that a “freedom of choice” plan “is not an end in itself” in the context dismantling a dual school system. 30 Footnote Id. at 440 . In the three years under the county’s plan, the Court further observed that the system remained racially segregated and “burden[ed] children and their parents with a responsibility which Brown II placed squarely on the School Board.” 31 Footnote Id. at 441–42 . The Court ordered the Board to create a new plan and “fashion steps which promise realistically to convert promptly to a system without a ‘white’ school and a ‘Negro’ school, but just schools.” 32 Footnote Id. at 442 . See also Raney v. Bd. of Educ. of Gould Sch. Dist., 391 U.S. 443, 444–48 (1968) (addressing a “freedom of choice” plan and holding that it was inadequate to convert the state-imposed segregated school system into a “unitary, nonracial school system” ). The Court in other cases further held that school desegregation encompassed not only eliminating dual systems as they relate to student assignments, but also the merging of faculty, 33 Footnote Bradley v. Sch. Bd. of Richmond, 382 U.S. 103 (1965) (faculty desegregation is integral part of any pupil desegregation plan); United States v. Montgomery Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 395 U.S. 225 (1969) (upholding district court order establishing a minimum racial ratio for faculty and staff so that at each school in the district had a substantially similar ratio of black and white teachers and staff). staff, and services into one system. 34 Footnote More generally, the enactment of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enforcement of that statute by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) also influenced the analysis of federal courts. See , e.g. , Davis v. Bd. of Sch. Comm’rs , 364 F.2d 896 (5th Cir. 1966) ; Kemp v. Beasley, 352 F.2d 14 (8th Cir. 1965) . HEW’s guidelines were also references for state and local officials.