Photo of Brown Plaintiff Attorneys: Hayes, Marshall, and Nabrit Jr. celebrating
Photo of the Black Monday pamphlet
Photo of anti integration protests
Photo of white students escorting their black classmates to school
The Road to School Integration
The Supreme Court decided beforehand to not immediately try to enforce the desegregation ruling. Rather, the high court asked the attorney generals of all the states of the nation that had laws allowing segregation in their public schools to turn in plans on how they plan on desegregating their schools. On May of 1955, the Justices made a plan on how to proceed with the desegregation, which was to go on as fast as possible. It was referred to as "Brown II". It took many years before all schools in the nation were desegregated, but the process began thanks to the Brown case. Lerone Bennett quoted Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney, in his article. The quote said that, “Thurgood Marshall had some premonition of this {the struggle the country would go through to completely desegregate after the decision}. He went that night to an NAACP victory party which never really got off the ground. And so, for these reasons and perhaps others, Marshall wandered morosely around the room while his aides made aimless and desultory attempts to generate some enthusiasm ...But it is a matter of record that Thurgood Marshall stopped all of a sudden and said: "You fools go ahead and have your fun, but we ain't begun to work yet.”
After the Brown Decision, the Democratic Mississippi US Representative, John Bell Williams created the term, "Black Monday" to represent the day of the court decision, which was on a Monday. Councils of white citizens organized in the South to protect and defend segregation. The White Citizens' Council was a movement in Mississippi that was led by a circuit court judge named Thomas Pickens Brady. Brady published a guide, called Black Monday, which contained the reasoning of The White Citizens' Council, its desires for the cancellation of the NAACP, the idea of a completely separate state for African Americans, and the ending of public schools.
Many segregationists campaigned in Virginia, where the Davis v School Board of Prince Edward County case took place. The resistance from the segregationists took many forms, like in Prince Edward County, authorities ignored the Supreme Court Ruling to integrate schools and rather closed down the old public schools that were going to be integrated and upheld new private schools for white kids only. The ruling in the Brown Case only banned segregation in public schools, so private schools were unscathed. Robert Redd, a headmaster at a private school said that, “Most blacks simply do not have the ability to do quality school work. . . . We knew desegregation couldn’t work because of the inherent temperamental and intellectual differences.” When the Supreme Court reviewed the actions of the Virginian County, Justice Douglas wrote a frustrated draft ruling that showed his anger over how segregation was named unconstitutional and was banned, but integration still hadn't been enforced.
The first high school to integrate in the South was originally supposed to be Clinton High School in Tennessee. The desegregation was moving along well until the leader of the White Citizens' Council (John Kasper), a segregationist group, came to the town of Clinton. John Kasper's appearance stirred up anti segregation protest and riots, which stopped the integration process. The desegregation of Clinton High School ensued only when multiple white citizens escorted the black students to the school. Unfortunately, one of the escorts was beaten badly because of his actions, which encouraged integration. Because of the assault and the rioting, the school was closed but the opened a few days later with no problems.
