With All Deliberate Speed : The Pearsall Plan and School Desegregation in North Carolina, 1954-1966.

Abstract

The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education legally ended the operation of segregated schools in the South. In North Carolina, a series of legal challenges began under the Pupil Assignment Act and, later, the Pearsall Plan to delay the desegregation of the state's school systems. In an effort to avoid massive public demonstrations, violence, and the closing of public schools as a result of public outrage, the Pearsall Plan transferred control of pupil assignments, along with the power to request the closing of schools, to local school boards. The decentralization of desegregation allowed communities to determine the level of social change comfortable to the majority of an area's residents. As a result, no school in any of the over one-hundred independent school systems in North Carolina lost a single day of classes on account of civil disobedience. This thesis examines the background, development, and effect of the Pearsall Plan on North Carolina's educational, political, and social systems. It also outlines the factors that led North Carolina's leaders to deliberately embark down a path with one known ending: the declaration of the unconstitutionality of the Pearsall Plan. The decisions of these individuals and the outcome of their efforts comprise the focus of this thesis.