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theories of interposition and nullification, put forth in the 1830s by South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, who argued that states could "nullify" federal law. Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed its public schools for five years, believing children were better off uneducated than integrated. Ten years after Brown, more than 97% of all Southern black children still attended segregated schools.

A second phase occupied the five years from the Civil Rights Act of 1965 until 1969. The Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination wherever federal funds were spent, and for the first time, under a Southern President, Lyndon Johnson, the federal government took an active role. The percentage of black children in school with white ones rose from 3 to 13%.

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But there were great costs too. In North Carolina, from 1963 to 1970, the number of black elementary school principals dropped from 620 to 170; the secondary school principals went from 209 to 10. By 1973, only 3 were left.

By 1972, 3,051 Black North Carolina school teachers - one-fifth of the state's black teachers - had lost their jobs as black and white schools merged. Across the South, and estimated 31,000 black school teachers lost their jobs. Lost as well was history - revered school names, mottoes, mascots, traditions. Black students found themselves in formerly all-white schools which retained the identity that had acquired in the segregated past. Wherever black school buildings were retained, their names were changed. Plaques, trophy cases - all the artifacts that honored black achievement disappeared.²⁴

In the 10 years after the 1965 Act, the Department of Justrice brought actions against more than 500 school districts and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare filed more than 600 complaints.

But it was a full 13 years after Brown that the Court - in the 1967 Green decision - declared "separate but equal" extinct - and required school districts to produce

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²³ Margold Report.

²⁴ Teacher firing information from Along Freedom Road by David Cecelski, UNC Press, (1994).