The War against the United States

Abstract

Abstract One year after the Brown decision, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decree reaffirming the constitutional principle that racially segregated schools are unconstitutional. and it turned over to the lower federal courts the responsibility of seeing that local school boards moved with “all deliberate speed” to abide by the ruling. The reaction to this decree varied across the nation. School districts in Mississippi declared that they would defy the Supreme Court. Other school districts-in Poteau, Oklahoma; Fayette County, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee-desegregated without friction. In the following article, published in the Crisis in December 1955, Roy Wilkins discusses the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1955 decree. On May 31, 1955, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decree in the school segregation cases, reaffirming the constitutional principle in its 1954 opinion that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. and turning over to the lower Federal Courts the task of seeing to it that local school boards made plans and took action with all deliberate speed to abide by the ruling.