The Liberal Response

         The joyous reaction from the black community of the nation was evident in the black press and journalism. The NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, had a special edition of its magazine, with the entire special issue only about the Supreme Court Decision. The special edition included the entire text of the case decision, the history of the five segregation in school cases that became the Supreme Court Case. It also included passages from the nation's press on the ruling of the court, and the NAACP official response and plan of action for enforcing the decision; The Atlanta Declaration. Lerone Bennett Jr., a scholar and journalist, wrote in an article that, “....The decision was immediately hailed by a wide variety of Black voices as "a second Emancipation Proclamation" which was, in the words of the Chicago Defender, "more important to our democracy than the atom bomb or the hydrogen bomb.”

          Many of the southern white liberals were happy with the up and coming enforcement of the Brown Decision, as well. A man named Ralph McGill, an important editor of the Atlanta Constitution commended the Court's decision to make the local boards of education and the Southern Court judges, create and enforce desegregation orders. He believed that the desegregation issues had to be tackled down at the local level first. McGill told Chief Justice Warren that the ruling was one of the greatest Supreme Court rulings ever.