I believe the South will maintain what I have termed essential separation of the races for years to come. This means very nearly total segregation in education, where the intimate, personal, and prolonged association of white and Negro boys and girls, in public schools, in massive numbers, as social equals, is more than community attitudes will accept. The sad example of Prince Edward County, where a resolute rural people abandoned all public schools, offers an instructive lesson to the advocates of frontal assault. “We see the wisdom of Solon’s remark,” Jefferson once observed, “that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.” This essential separation also takes in such wholly social institutions as private clubs. I cannot foresee the integration of Protestant churches in the South. And whatever the Supreme Court may do in time to the miscegenation laws, ostracism, swift and certain, awaits those who would cross this marital line. But my guess would be that in areas of higher education, in many fields of employment, in professional associations, in such quasi-public fields as hotels, restaurants, and concert halls, doors that have been closed will open one by one. And a South that once would have regarded these innovations with horror will view them at first with surprise, then with regret, for a time with distaste, and at last with indifference. As the migration of the Negro out of the South continues, other parts of the nation, at once benefited and handicapped for want of the South’s experience in coexistence, will grapple in their own fashion with the cultural and economic assimilation of the Negro. They will not find it easy, but they can rely upon this: The South will not intrude its views upon theirs. This is a big country, a great country; it remains the freest country on earth, and the Negro people are a part of it. The law has done what it can for Negroes as a whole; the law will do more, in specific situations. The rest is up to time, and up to the Negroes themselves. Appendix Appendix BROWN et al. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA et al. [347 U. S. 483] Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Kansas[1] Argued December 9, 1952.--Reargued December 8, 1953.--Decided May 17, 1954. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.[2]