Desegregation in the Public Schools of Mississippi

Abstract

Supreme Court decision of May 17, 19545, found the Mississippi Legislature in an extra session called by the governor of the state. This body had been in session for some time, working strenuously to devise a system of taxation whereby salaries and facilities for Negro and white schools could be equalized and kept separate. While the legislative mills were grinding slowly, the Supreme Court of the nation made its momentous decision against segregated public schools. effect of the epochal decision upon the Mississippi Legislature and the entire state was indescribable. walls of Jericho had come tumbling down suddenly and the resounding crash reached the ears of everybody everywhere. A period of painful silence followed for a time, only to be broken by the clarion voice of Mississippi's senior senator at Washington: We will not obey nor abide by the decision of the statement seemed a signal for the local papers to begin releasing pent-up energy on the Supreme Court's far-reaching edict, and at the same time, display pardonable pride in the fact that a few senators and some of the populace requested copies of the speech that defied the decision handed down by the high Court. Jackson Daily News, running true to form, termed the Court's decision purely political and then proceeded to picture dire consequences resulting from mixing the races in public schools. Its vision of the flow of blood as an inevitable sequence of integration in schools was repeated in a speech before a session of the Editors and Publishers Convention and the charge of foreseen carnage would be properly placed on the marble steps of the Supreme Court building in the nation's capital. Disapproval of the Court's findings were. widespread over the state of Mississippi, a thing generally expected. However, a different note was sounded by the Delta Democrat Times. In the issue of that paper dated May 18, 1954, editor Hodding Carter of Greenville, Mississippi, writing under the caption, The Court's Decision, had this to say in the first paragraph: The Supreme Court's decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional was to be expected by almost everyone who has followed the historical struggle between defenders and opponents of racially separated school systems. More significant than surprising, too, was the unanimous nature of the decision. Justices who made it are men from every section of the nation, men of various social backgrounds and beliefs and political outlook. That they should be so united in this case can be interpreted only as meaning that they were completely convinced that morality and democratic tradition were on their