The piece believes that the Supreme Court decision communicated its intent to accept the continued viability of segregation of public schools, provided that the report in question demonstrated that the schools had been equalized between the black and white facilities, that if the Supreme Court had intended to rule segregation per se unconstitutional, it would have gone ahead and done so, rather than awaiting the lower court's findings on the report from the county.

The piece finds this decision therefore a "hopeful note" and reaffirms its stance that once equality of facilities was established, the constitutional requirements were met and it became the prerogative of state legislatures to decide whether to maintain segregation in the public schools or not. It asserts that neither the Federal judiciary nor the Congress was empowered under the Constitution to force the states to abandon segregation. It also indicates, as it had previously, that the wisdom of segregation and its continued existence "in a framework of historical, cultural, ethical, Christian and human standards," was a separate question, that in some states segregation posed no practical problems whereas in others, racial tensions were such that it would be preserved into the foreseeable future. It finds that in those latter states, the people first had to rid themselves of the "bonds of custom, tradition and habit", which could not be abolished by Federal authority.

As indicated, the editorial's finding of a "hopeful note" was misplaced, as the Briggs case would be subsumed under the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, holding that segregation, per se, was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, Plessy v. Ferguson having failed in 58 years to accomplish its objective on any consistent basis of providing "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites and so failing, in the end, to meet Constitutional requirements for Equal Protection. In placing undue reliance on the Court's remand rather than immediately ruling on the Constitutional issue, it fails to take into account the general stance that the Supreme Court will always seek the narrowest available ground for ruling, avoiding Constitutional issues when narrower grounds exist for resolving a particular issue, or as in this case, where overruling a precedent might be avoided. To maintain that option, it had first to have the lower court make findings on the report, rather than making its own findings on the forwarded report ab initio. It should not have been taken as a cue, therefore, that it did not intend reversal on the basis of segregation per se being unconstitutional.

And again, we suggest, contrary to some opinions, though a contention which is obviously not susceptible of proof on either side, the fact of the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson in September, 1953, after oral arguments had been completed in Brown but before a decision had been rendered, had little or nothing to do with the eventual outcome of the case, after Chief Justice Earl Warren was appointed in his stead and ordered re-argument of the case. Chief Justice Warren, no doubt, was instrumental in forming unanimity in the resulting decision, whereas, had Chief Justice Vinson lived, simply because of the political dynamics of the court at the time, with, for instance, Justices Robert Jackson, former Attorney General under FDR, Sherman Minton, former conservative Democratic Senator, and Harold Burton, former moderate Republican Senator, on the Court, the resulting decision might have been split, but still, we suggest, given the progression of decisions, with, for instance, the Sweatt v. Painter decision of 1950, striking down segregation in the University of Texas Law School for the State having not met separate but equal standards in its black law school, having been a unanimous decision delivered by Chief Justice Vinson, the outcome would have been likely in favor of striking down segregation per se as unconstitutional, even though earlier decisions had stopped short of doing so.

In other words, the patience of the Court had run by 1954 regarding overall good faith attempts by the states to correct inequalities in the school facilities, both at the higher educational level and in the primary and secondary schools. Yet, the Court wanted to provide the appearance of giving as much deference as possible to the states before so ruling, requiring, in the end, overruling a prior Supreme Court precedent, which the Court is always reluctant to do, violating, as it does, the time-honored rule of stare decisis, considered, except in the most extreme circumstances, virtually sacrosanct in the law to provide stability to society.

The very fact that the 1955 implementing decision in Brown used the language "with all deliberate speed" indicated the continued deference by the Court to some form of gradualism in the process of desegregation, to meet the consistently heard objections as set forth in this editorial regarding the resistance to integration ultimately leading to violence, or, short of violence, extreme reactionary behavior, not conducive to learning.

It is, in short, overly facile to suggest that the death of one member of the Court resulted in overturning Plessy in Brown—even though one might take from this editorial support for that conclusion, an editorial which, while logical in one sense, also miscalculated, perhaps out of its own hope that the question of segregation or integration would be left to the states in the end. It is completely wrong, however, in its assessment of the Constitution, that the Federal courts had no authority to declare segregation unconstitutional, when the 14th Amendment had been ratified in 1868, extending all rights, privileges and immunities recognized in the Constitution to the states. The piece is reflecting the old states' rights argument which had led to the Civil War regarding the ability of the Federal Government to abolish slavery, as finally accomplished eight months after the war with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. In so ignoring the provisions of the 14th Amendment, the piece appears to side with Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia and Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina, both of whom it had recently severely criticized and both of whom believed that the Constitution did not provide for the right of education—an absurd notion in the premises when considered in the abstract, especially in light of the Ninth Amendment—and that such was left up to the states to administer, including the question of segregation of the schools. But the point was that if the schools could not be rendered equal in a segregated status, as a practical matter, there was no way to satisfy the Equal Protection Clause with "separate but equal" schools. To view it otherwise defies both logic and 58 years of experience prior to Brown. How long did the states need to supply "equal" facilities? segregation, itself, ignoring the sort of intangible attributes of an integrated school which were stated in Sweatt regarding graduates of the University of Texas Law School versus those of the fledgling black law school in the state, including association with those who would receive the most prestigious in-state jobs upon graduation and around whom generally lawyers would be practicing within the state. The same analysis might be applied in a different context with respect to primary and secondary schools.

This states' right ideal was a stupid argument, though premised in the rational notion that white backlash to elimination of segregation would be so bad in certain areas of the South that the change in that direction had to be taken very gradually on a generational basis, as education on the matter improved. But, there came a point where no significant progress was being made and the constant need for policing of that progress was being lost in the cracks of the judicial system over time, especially as test cases were expensive to bring on an ad hoc basis into the court system, especially if required to go all the way to the Supreme Court each time for relief. Moreover, without any contact between the races except on an unequal economic plane, blacks cast in the role generally of menial jobs vis-à-vis the white population, coupled with still lingering fears in the South from its punitive experiences, transmitted generationally, during Reconstruction, there would inevitably be no progress in race relations without contact on an equal basis in places such as the classroom, entailing also playing music together, playing sports together, etc., with the consequent realization of common bonds in humanity and human experience, generally lacking at that point in society in the workplace, in places of worship, and in places of education, certainly in the private social clubs. The only "breakthroughs" of the racial barriers had occurred in entertainment, including some college and professional sports, ultimately, however, removed from the personal experience of most people, therefore limited to a vicarious level, which did not afford the needed actual social contact between the races to bring about the realization of commonality.

These ideas, of course, are not new, and were becoming prevalent, in some corners of more educated white society in the South, as early as the 1930s, and so we can fault the editorial writer for lacking that vision. That would be especially true if the editorial writer had been Pete McKnight, who had roomed across the hall from W. J. Cash in the Frederick Apartments in Charlotte during the period 1938 through 1940, as he should have gleaned such notions from Cash, either in talking to him or from his 1941 book, that is, if read correctly and not as a "pussyhead". But, we do not know who wrote this particular editorial.

We note again that Judge J. Waties Waring, the dissenter in Briggs who argued that segregation was, per se, unconstitutional, by his own account to Samuel Grafton in the April 29, 1950 issue of Collier's, at page 49, had his eyes opened as to the realities of the South and its strange past career, through reading The Mind of the South and Gunnar Myrdal's tome, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, a reality which at first he had been reluctant to embrace but, after re-reading parts of those works, experiencing some anguish in doing so, came finally to accept the truth of the problem thus exposed, which needed remedy, only available through integration of society generally.

Incidentally, "pussyhead" refers to anyone thinking with the brain of a cat, and so one need not be offended unless the puss 'n' boots fit. No, your cat is not especially bright. Instinct is not on the level of intellect, which implies the ability to learn, recall and objectively reason, including discernment of the nuances of expression involving irony, persona and other refined literary tools, necessary for instilling of salutary lessons to which the pupils are especially resistant for the fact of long-term prior conditioning to the contrary. Cats are really dumber than dogs, and that is pretty dumb. Sorry, but it's true. Your pet is dumb and you do not wish to emulate its intellectual attributes, no matter how cute or refined you may think they are. The same is true of other non-human animals.

"For a Better City and County" praises the decision of the Mecklenburg County Commissioners in appointing the previous day a County Planning Board, a decision which it finds was long overdue and desperately needed to afford proper planning and zoning of the county, to avoid the losses in human and property values which would come from haphazard, unplanned, congested growth, avoiding the kind of catastrophes which had occurred the previous week from the fire which had swept through "Stump Town", killing one person and rendering six families homeless in the destruction of eight shanties on the outskirts of Charlotte.