However, simply saying that segregation was illegal was not enough to change the attitudes of some people, particularly white southerners. Segregation had been in place for a very long time. During the civil war, the Northern states had fought the Southern states for the abolition of slavery. When the South was defeated, and forced to let their slaves go or pay them, they introduced segregation, as their way of ‘keeping blacks in their place’. As the South’s hatred towards black people began to grow, many did not want to share facilities with blacks. ‘Jim Crow’ laws, named after a 19th century comedian’s act that ridiculed black people, were introduced in some states. These made it the law for businesses to have separate facilities – toilets, water-fountains, benches and other things – for black and white people. Some places were entirely white only. All this was to ensure that blacks had the poorest standards of education, lowest paid jobs and were generally treated inferior to white people.
Such deep-rooted attitudes in white southerners meant they reacted with anger to the Supreme Court’s decision. 67% of Southerners disagreed with the desegregation of schools compared with only 31% of the whole of the USA. The Southern states were determined not to comply with this law and argued that ‘state rights meant each state should be allowed to decide for themselves on such issues. An organisation called the Ku Klux Klan had been set up after the civil war. Its main aim was to prevent blacks from gaining equal rights. They used violence and terror to intimidate any American, black or white, who agreed or fought for a policy of equal rights. Members included police officers, judges and politicians, so convictions against the KKK were rare. Support and members of the Ku Klux Klan increased to an all time high when desegregation became law. Lynchings and beatings by the KKK, which had declined since the 1960’s, began to increase again. Riots broke out, bombings took place and NAACP supporters were killed in retaliation to the Supreme Court’s decision. In 1956, in six Southern states, not a single black child was attending a school with white children and in the other states, only small steps had been taken towards desegregation.
Probably the most famous case of a white school refusing to let black students attend after this law was passed happened at Little Rock, Alabama. Here, in September 1957, the Arkansas government used the National Guard, reserve soldiers under the control of the local state, to prevent nine black students from enrolling at Little Rock High School. This was illegal, so when faced with legal action, they withdrew the soldiers. However, the nine black students were left unprotected from the mob of whites that gathered to do everything they could to try and stop the pupils attending Little Rock high School. Faced with the dangerous situation, President Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers to protect the black students for the next 12 months. The fact that all these paratroopers were needed to protect just 9 students showed the deep-rooted racial hatred and discrimination that existed. However, it also showed that the government was serious about desegregation and were listening to what civil rights protestors were saying.
The desegregation of schools became such a major problem in the USA because so many, especially in the South, disagreed with blacks being treated the same way as whites and using the same public facilities as whites. Hatred for black people was deep-rooted in white Southerners. They also believed that it was not up to the government to decide such laws, it should be left to individual states. The short-term problems were mainly caused by a white backlash. Desegregation was seen as a step towards equal rights for black people and this caused the racist whites of the South to do all they could to try and stop it from happening. It proved that simply changing the law was not enough to create equal rights, the views and attitudes of white Southerners needed to change aswell before discrimination was non-existent.
