774
T
he 1954 Brown v. Board of
Educationdecision prohibited
racial segregation in the nation’s pub-
lic schools. But many states and school
districts ignored federal court orders
to comply with the desegregation
order. Although Eisenhower put down
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’s
public challenge to federal authority
in 1957, he did little else to ensure
compliance with Brown. President
Kennedy, similarly, was reluctant to
alienate white southern voters. He
named to the federal judiciary
staunch supporters of school segrega-
tion. One of his appointees, E. Gordon
West of Louisiana, called the Brown
ruling “one of the truly regrettable
decisions of all time.”
The accompanying maps show
the slow progress of school deseg-
regation in the South. In 1954,
3,870 southern school districts had
both white and black students.
( The South here includes Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,
Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.) In
only three of these districts did any
white and black students attend
school together: Arkansas (two) and
Texas (one). Only one of the twenty-
three school districts in Maryland
was desegregated. The percentage
of African American students
attending schools with whites in the
South was slightly above zero.
In 1964 compliance with the
Supreme Court’s ruling had
improved somewhat in the border
states, but little in the Deep South. Of
the 2,586 school districts in the
South that now had black and white
students (the number of school dis-
tricts had declined as a result of con-
solidation), 1,150 reported that they
were desegregated. Only 3 of Louisiana’s 67 districts were
desegregated, 4 of Mississippi’s 150 districts, and 9 of
Alabama’s 118 districts.
In Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, South
Carolina, and North Carolina, fewer than 4 percent of black
and white children attended school together.
MAPPING THE PAST
School Segregation After
theBrown Decision
ARKANSASKANSASNEBRASKAMISSOURIIOWATEXASNEW MEXICOOKLAHOMACOLORADOLOUISIANAINDIANA
ILLINOISOHIOALABAMAMISS. GEORGIASOUTH
CAROLINANORTH
CAROLINAVIRGINIAWEST
VIRGINIAKENTUCKYTENNESSEEPENNSYLVANIA
N.J.
MD. DEL.FLORIDAARKANSASKANSASNEBRASKAMISSOURIIOWATEXASNEW MEXICOOKLAHOMACOLORADOLOUISIANAINDIANA
ILLINOISOHIOALABAMAMISS. GEORGIASOUTH
CAROLINANORTH
CAROLINAVIRGINIAWEST
VIRGINIAKENTUCKYTENNESSEEPENNSYLVANIA
N.J.
MD. DEL.FLORIDAMEXICOGulf of
MexicoATLANTIC
OCEANMEXICOGulf of
MexicoATLANTIC
OCEANAfrican Americans attending schools
with whites in the South and border
states, 1954 and 196419641954Percentage
Data not available
0 4 10 20 57 68More substantive progress had occurred in the border
regions, where black and white students were far more likely
to attend school together. In Kentucky, for example, 68 per-
cent of the black students attended school with whites; fig-
ures in other southern states were Maryland 51 percent,
West Virginia 63 percent, Missouri 42 percent, and