Eleven months after its historic proclamation that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," the U.S. Supreme Court last week heard a parade of lawyers suggest ways to enforce its ban on racially segregated schools. The simplest proposal came from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Its representatives wanted the court to set a firm deadline for complete integration, not later than September 1956. Lawyers for Southern and border states pleaded for delay. Delaware's Attorney General J. D. Craven resisted any definite deadline, saying: "We are a divided and a troubled people ... I think it would be presumptuous of me to name a date."
S. E. Rogers, representing South Carolina's Clarendon County, said: "We are not in the position of Kansas, [with] only a few Negroes. We are not in the position of the District of Columbia, where our school authorities are not responsible to the people . . . We are an agricultural community . . . The problem could not be solved by just moving away—we are tied to the land."
A Question of Honesty. In an interchange with Rogers, Chief Justice Earl Warren brought forth a significant admission: the Southerners' request that enforcement be left, without deadlines, to U.S. District Courts really cloaks an intention to resist desegregation. Warren asked: "You are not willing to say that there would be an honest attempt to conform to this decree, if we did leave it to the District Court?"
Blurted Rogers: "No, I am not. Let us get the word honest out of there."
Warren: "No, leave it in."
Rogers: "No, because I would have to tell you that right now we would not conform. We would not send our white children to the Negro schools."
Justice Warren seemed on the verge of losing his temper. He started to reply, stopped, then said curtly to Rogers: "Thank you."
A Matter of Opinion. Other Southern states sent envoys to plead delay. Florida's Attorney General Richard Ervin quoted Isaiah: "He that believeth, shall not make haste." North Carolina's Assistant Attorney General Beverly Lake referred to an old case. "This court," said he, "allowed the city of New York four years ... to decide what to do with its garbage." Texas' Attorney General John Ben Shepperd drew a laugh by citing a public-opinion poll, which showed that 45% of sampled Texans are dead set on keeping segregation, only 14% favor desegregation. The same polling agency, said Shepperd. predicted Truman's 1948 election. Queried Justice Felix Frankfurter: "That makes it scientific?"
U.S. Solicitor General Simon Sobeloff, a Marylander, offered "the counsel of moderation, but with a degree of firmness." This, he explained, meant no deadline for completing integration, but a deadline of 90 days (plus extensions if needed) for submitting plans to the District Courts. The lower courts should be told not to allow time "for the purpose of paralyzing action or of emasculating the court's decision." said Sobeloff, adding that the "prestige of this court is such that people will be disposed to abide by the law and not invent spurious reasons for delay."