1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

12. Conclusions
The Nation's progress in removing the stultifying effects of segregation
in the public elementary and secondary schools—North, South, East,
and West—is slow indeed.
During the period 1959-61, only 44 school districts in the 17 Southern
and border States initiated desegregation programs; 13 of these acted
under court orders; 15 more were pressured into action by pending suits.
Seven years after the Supreme Court decision in the School Segregation
Cases, 2,062 school districts in the South that enroll both white and
Negro pupils had not even started to comply with the requirements of
the Constitution. These include all districts in Alabama, Georgia,
Mississippi, and South Carolina; all but one in Florida and one in
Louisiana. Some of the 775 that have started to desegregate have
barely begun a 12-year progression; others, by making all initial assignments
by race and placing the burden of seeking transfer on Negro
pupils—often under extensive pupil placement procedures—have kept
at a minimum the number of Negroes in attendance at formerly white
schools.
In the North and the West, where segregation by race, color, religion,
or national origin is not officially countenanced, it exists in fact in many
public schools. A Federal court decision in the New Rochelle, N.Y.,
case in January <strong>1961</strong> (affirmed by the court of appeals) which required
the desegregation of a public school in a northern city, was probably
the most significant single event affecting equal protection of the laws
in public education since the Supreme Court's decision in the Little
Rock casein 1958.
Legislative resistance to desegregation has continued in some Southern
States, notably Louisiana. Others, such as Virginia and Georgia,
have shifted from massive resistance to freedom of choice fortified by
tuition grants. The former proved unconstitutional; the new strategy
is now before the courts. The Prince Edward (Va.) case raised the
question whether the closing of the public schools and financing the education
of all children who seek it in private schools is an evasion of a
court order to desegregate. In the St. Helena case the closing of a public
school in accordance with Louisiana State law to avoid the neces-
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