This interpretation by an exceptionally able appellate court offers the South, if only the South will accept it (and if our more rabid and influential friends in the North will abate their impatient demands), some basis for a tolerable way of life. In its immediate application, the Supreme Court’s decision in the four suits decided by _Brown_ was not, of course, “the supreme law of the land.” It was, as every court opinion must be, simply the law of the case, disposing of the controversies between the named plaintiffs and the named defendants. Even though such suits are “class actions,” the class in each case is limited by such facts as those of geography; a court order directed against Clarendon County does not require the superintendent of schools in adjoining Sumter County to do anything. Thus, under well-accepted principles of law, the counties and cities of the South that are not under court order stand under no legal obligation to alter their traditional school policies. No law or court order requires them to integrate; no law or court order requires them affirmatively to take any action. True, if a point is made of it, and formal complaint of discrimination is filed, local school officials must then yield to the principles laid down by the Supreme Court; they can yield voluntarily, or they can go through the motions of a predictable court proceeding, but they cannot deny the child by reason of his race the right to attend any public school under their supervision. This deliberate, unhurried view of the school problem tends to madden the professional integrationist. He looks at the progress of desegregation in the South, eight years after _Brown_, and apart from the border States he sees: --------------------------------------------------------------- DESEGREGATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ELEVEN SOUTHERN STATES, MAY 17, 1962 --------------------------------------------------------------- _Negroes in Schools _Enrollment_ With Whites_ _State_ _White_ _Negro_ _Number_ _Per cent_ Alabama 523,000 276,000 0 0.000 Arkansas 320,000 109,000 151 0.139 Florida 927,000 242,000 648 0.268 Georgia 642,000 303,000 8 0.003 Louisiana 450,000 295,000 12 0.004 Mississippi 294,000 287,000 0 0.000 North Carolina 787,000 333,000 203 0.061 South Carolina 364,000 265,000 0 0.000 Tennessee 663,000 155,000 1,167 0.750 Texas 1,892,000 301,000 4,000 1.330 Virginia 657,000 217,000 536 0.247 ----------- Source: Southern School News, May 1962. ---------------------------------------------------------------