On June 23, 1951, the Fourth Circuit’s Chief Judge John J. Parker, joined by District Judge George Bell Timmerman, handed down an opinion in the Clarendon County case. The third member of the court, District Judge J. Waties Waring, strongly dissented to the Parker-Timmerman decision. The majority decree directed county officials to proceed at once with genuine equalization of public school facilities, but the court refused to upset the long-standing doctrine of “separate but equal.” The late Judge Parker was one of the nation’s most widely admired jurists, a North Carolinian who had then had more than twenty-five years’ experience on the bench. His opinion (98 F. Supp. 529), though it subsequently was to be reversed, merits respectful consideration in any study of the South’s position. On the key question developed by the plaintiffs--that segregation in itself is a denial of equal protection--Parker took a calmly judicial approach: This is a “matter of legislative policy for the several States,” he said, “with which the Federal courts are powerless to interfere.” He continued: One of the great virtues of our constitutional system is that, while the Federal government protects the fundamental rights of the individual, it leaves to the several States the solution of local problems. In a country with a great expanse of territory, with peoples of widely differing customs and ideas, local self government in local matters is essential to the peace and happiness of the people in the several communities as well as to the strength and unity of the country as a whole. It is universally held, therefore, that each State shall determine for itself, subject to the observance of the fundamental rights and liberties guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, how it shall exercise the police power, i.e., the power to legislate with respect to the safety, morals, health and general welfare. And in no field is this right of the several States more clearly recognized than in that of public education.