Why was the Brown v. Board of Education decision not immediately effective in ending school segregation?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
- Chief Justice Earl Warren needed a unanimous decision from the Court, so he had to agree to let the Court delay its ruling by one year so it could decide on how to implement desegregation
- In the second Brown ruling, responsibility was handed down to local school boards for desegregation plans, and federal district judges were responsible for monitoring compliance, requiring that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed"
- White resistance: affected states passed laws transferring authority for pupil assignment to local school boards, which prevented the NAACP from bringing statewide suits against segregated school systems; counties and towns created layers of administrative delays to stop implementation; some school boards transferred public school property to new, all-white private "academies"
- The Southern Manifesto: 101 congressmen from the South signed this document, urging their states to refuse compliance with desegregation; President Eisenhower declined to publicly endorse the decision reached in Brown
- Southern Democratic politics: integration of Central High School in Little Rock became a test case of state versus federal power; Governor Orval Faubus defied the court desegregation order and dispatched the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering the school; Eisenhower had to place the Arkansas National Guard under federal command to protect the students as they finally integrated Central High School