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

. . . problems related to administration, arising from the physical
condition of the school plant, the school transportation system,
personnel, revision of school districts and attendance areas into
compact units to achieve a system of determining admission to the
public schools on a nonracial basis, and revision of local laws and
regulations which may be necessary in solving the foregoing
problems.
The courts were further instructed to consider the adequacy of the
plans proposed by school authorities to meet the particular problems
listed above and "to effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory
school system . . . with all deliberate speed." 1G
The Supreme Court specifically noted that "the vitality of these constitutional
principles (set forth in the May 17, 1954, decision) cannot
be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them." 1T
THE LITTLE ROCK CASE
Three years later in Cooper v. Aaron, or the Little Rock case 18 the
Supreme Court amplified both the constitutional principle announced
in the School Segregation Cases and its instructions concerning implementation.
In doing so it invalidated an order granting a 2^2 -year
reversion to segregated operation of the Little Rock high schools that
had been desegregated under a court-approved plan in the previous fall.
As to the constitutional principle, the Court said that its previous
decision "forbids States to use their governmental powers to bar children
on racial grounds from attending schools where there is State participation
through any arrangement, management, funds, or property." 19 It
further stated the constitutional rights of these school children "can
neither be nullified openly and directly by State legislators or State
executive or judicial officers, nor nullified indirectly by them through
evasive schemes for segregation whether attempted 'ingeniously or
ingenuously.' " 20
As to implementation, the Court clarified the principles laid down
in the second Brown decision. Good faith compliance with constitutional
principles, it said, requires a prompt start, diligently and earnestly
pursued, to eliminate racial segregation from the public schools. Hostility
to desegregation could be neither a ground for delay nor for reverting
to segregation after a start had been made. In many locations, the
Court observed, obedience to the Constitution "would require the immediate
general admission of Negro children, otherwise qualified as
students for their appropriate classes, at particular schools."" A
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