School Desegregation, Law and Order, and Litigating Social Justice in Alabama, 1954-1973

805 Pages·2015·4.32 MB·English

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History Dissertations Department of History
Fall 1-5-2014
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Joseph Mark Bagley
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Bagley, Joseph Mark, "School Desegregation, Law and Order, and Litigating Social Justice in Alabama,
1954-1973." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2014.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/4500099
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @
Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator
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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION, LAW AND ORDER, AND LITIGATING SOCIAL JUSTICE IN ALABAMA, 1954-1973

by
JOSEPH M. BAGLEY

Under the Direction of Robert Baker and Michelle Brattain

ABSTRACT

This study examines the legal struggle over school desegregation in Alabama in the two decades
following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision of 1954. It seeks to better understand the
activists who mounted a litigious assault on segregated education, the segregationists who opposed
them, and the ways in which law shaped both of these efforts. Inspired by the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) campaign to implement Brown, blacks sought access to
their constitutional rights in the state’s federal courts, where they were ultimately able to force
substantial compliance. Whites, however, converted massive resistance into an ostensibly colorblind
movement to preserve “law and order,” while at the same time taking effective measures to preserve
segregation and white privilege.
As soon as the NAACP implementation campaign began, self-styled moderate segregationists
began to abandon self-defeating forms of resistance and to fashion a creed of “law and order.” When
black activists achieved a litigious breakthrough in 1963, the developing creed allowed segregationists to
reject violence and outright defiance of the law, to accept token desegregation, and to begin to stake
their own claims to constitutional rights – all without forcing them to repudiate segregation and white
supremacy. When continuing litigation forced school systems to abandon ineffective “freedom of
choice” desegregation plans for compulsory pupil assignment plans, these so-called moderates began
using their individual rights language to justify flight to private segregationist academies, independent
suburban school systems, and otherwise safely white school districts. Political and legal historians have
underappreciated the deep and broad roots of the narrative of white racial innocence, the endurance of
massive resistance, and the pivotal role which school desegregation litigation played in channeling both
into a broader movement towards modern conservatism.
The cases considered here – particularly the statewide Lee v. Macon County Board of Education
case – demonstrate the effectiveness of litigation in bringing down official state and local barriers to
equal opportunity for minorities and in enforcing constitutional law. But they also showcase the limits
of litigation in effecting social justice in the face of powerfully constructed narratives of resistance
seemingly built upon the nation’s founding principles.

INDEX WORDS: Alabama, Civil rights, School desegregation, Integration, Education, Law, Politics,
Litigation, Conservatism, New Right, Social justice, Equality, Constitutional law, Massive resistance,
Segregationists, Segregation, White supremacy, Individual rights, Freedom of association, Liberalism,
Racial innocence

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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION, LAW AND ORDER, AND LITIGATING SOCIAL JUSTICE IN ALABAMA, 1954-1973

by

JOSEPH M. BAGLEY

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the College of Arts and Sciences
Georgia State University
2013
Copyright by
Joseph Mark Bagley
2013
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION, LAW AND ORDER, AND LITIGATING SOCIAL JUSTICE IN ALABAMA, 1954-1973

by

JOSEPH M. BAGLEY

Committee Chairs: Robert Baker
Michelle Brattain

Committee Member: David Sehat

Electronic Version Approved:

Office of Graduate Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
Georgia State University
August, 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Rob Baker, for his commitment to this project and for his
steady encouragement. I owe him perhaps most for pushing me at every turn to make this a better and
more meaningful finished product and for always believing that I could get it done. Thanks are due, as
well, to Michelle Brattain and David Sehat, for allowing the dissertation to take on a shape quite
different from that which we envisioned at the time of the prospectus defense. Thanks to all committee
members for their helpful critiques and unwavering support. I am also still indebted to my advisor at
Auburn, David Carter, for setting me on this path of historical inquiry and for making me a better writer.
His mark is also on this manuscript.
I appreciate the inspiration and encouragement of a number of other faculty members at GSU,
especially Marni Davis, Denis Gainty, Mohammad Ali, Larry Youngs, Christine Carter, and Glen Eskew.
Among our excellent staff, Robin Jackson and Paula Sorrell kept me on track in my time here, and for
that I am grateful. A special thanks is due to Carolyn Whiters for her unfailing assistance in innumerable
moments of perceived crisis. I am grateful to the GSU History Department, generally, for funding my
five year odyssey and for providing me with invaluable teaching experience along the way.
I would not have made it through sanely without the support of my GSU graduate cohort,
especially Mark Fleszar and Jeff Marlin – who were with me from start to finish – but also Michelle
Lacoss, Lauren Thompson, Allyson Tadjer, Sarah Patenaude, and Shane Tomashot. I would also like to
thank old friends in doctoral programs at other institutions who have often been my most invaluable
sets of ears, namely Jim Francisco and Paul Fox.
The staff at the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Reading Room were fantastic. I especially
appreciate the assistance of Patrick Kerwin in assuring my access to the Frank Minis Johnson Papers.
Tim Dodge at the Ralph Brown Draughon Library at Auburn University was helpful and always cheerful.
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Norwood Kerr at the Alabama Department of Archives and History was of great assistance. Thanks also
to the staffs at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, the Georgia State
University Pullen Library, the Georgia State College of Law Library, and the Emory University Robert W.
Woodruff Library.
I am forever indebted to Anthony Lee, Willie Wyatt, and Solomon Seay for inviting me into their
homes and allowing me to interview them for this project. Their willingness to share what, to them, is
not an academic project but a very personal story of courage and sacrifice and commitment to equal
justice has been an inspiration. A lifelong advocate for equality, Sol Seay has worked at times on a
chronology of school desegregation in Alabama. If this dissertation is even a partial fulfillment of his
wish that this story be told, then I am satisfied.
I am especially grateful to Professor Brian Landsberg. Not only did he allow me to interview him
about his involvement in this litigation as a lawyer with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, he
let me share in his own pending research and writing on Lee v. Macon County Board of Education.
Rather than shut me out as some sort of academic competitor, Brian embraced the overlapping nature
of our work and provided research assistance, intellectual stimulation, insight, and personal
encouragement. Just as with Mr. Lee, Mr. Wyatt, and Mr. Seay, I hope this dissertation has faithfully
represented his fight for not only law enforcement but social justice.
I could never have achieved any of this without my parents’ support. My mother instilled in me
a desire to learn and a love of reading and writing at the earliest age. My father has been my
benefactor, my great friend, and my strong supporter throughout the process. Finally, I thank my wife,
Kristen, for putting up with day after day after day of nothing but research and writing. I thank her,
mostly, for always believing in me, especially when I did not believe in myself.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................................................. iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................................... vi
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 1
PART I: THE TRIUMPH OF MASSIVE RESISTANCE AND THE LITIGIOUS BREAKTHROUGH, 1954-63 ............ 26
CHAPTER 1: THE NAACP, THE WHITE CITIZENS’ COUNCIL, AND THE FATE OF BI-RACIAL LIBERALISM .. 26
CHAPTER 2: THE FALL OF JIM FOLSOM, THE RISE OF JOHN PATTERSON, AND THE BANISHMENT OF THE
NAACP, 1955-59 ...................................................................................................................................... 72
CHAPTER 3: FRED SHUTTLESWORTH, THE ACMHR, AND THE INITIATION OF LITIGATION, 1956-59 ... 123
CHAPTER 4: THE FIFTH CIRCUIT, THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AND THE PROMISE OF LITIGATION,
1962 ...................................................................................................................................................... 151
CHAPTER 5: THE LITIGIOUS BREAKTHROUGH BEGINS, SPRING, 1963 .................................................. 178
CHAPTER 6: “THE LAST GRAIN OF SALT FROM THE LEGAL HOURGLASS,” SUMMER, 1963 ................. 208
CHAPTER 7: “THE PURSUIT OF ALABAMA’S HAPPINESS” ..................................................................... 262
PART II: THE LITIGIOUS ASSAULT AND THE REARTICULATION OF RESISTANCE, 1964-73 ........................ 290
CHAPTER 8: “NOW A SINGLE SHOT CAN DO IT”: LEE V. MACON AND THE CONCEPTION OF THE
STATEWIDE INJUNCTION, SPRING, 1964 .............................................................................................. 290
CHAPTER 9: RUSSIAN ROULETTE, ALABAMA STYLE: LEE V. MACON, THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT, AND THE
HEW GUIDELINES, 1964-65 ................................................................................................................... 329
CHAPTER 10: “BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP”: DEFYING THE REVISED HEW GUIDELINES, 1965-
66 .......................................................................................................................................................... 371
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CHAPTER 11: “SEGREGATION IS STILL A PERFECTLY GOOD WORD”: FREEDOM OF CHOICE IN PRACTICE,
LEE V. MACON ON TRIAL, 1966-67 ....................................................................................................... 414
CHAPTER 12: “THE COURT IS THE ONLY AUTHORITY TO DO IT”: THE STATEWIDE LEE V. MACON
DECREE, 1967 ........................................................................................................................................ 450
CHAPTER 13: THE FLEETING FREEDOM TO CHOOSE, 1967-68 ............................................................. 497
CHAPTER 14: THE TRAFFIC LIGHT CHANGES: THE GREEN V. COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD EFFECT, 1968 552
CHAPTER 15: THE “FINAL RESTING PLACE” OF ‘ALL DELIBERATE SPEED’ AND THE SPREAD OF
COMPULSORY ASSIGNMENT, 1969 ....................................................................................................... 582
CHAPTER 16: THE COMPULSORY ASSIGNMENT REVOLT IN MOBILE AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES, 1970-
71 .......................................................................................................................................................... 614
CHAPTER 17: “HARVEST TIME”: PROTESTING THE REALITIES OF COMPULSORY ASSIGNMENT
STATEWIDE, 1969-71 ............................................................................................................................ 660
CHAPTER 18: SWANN SONG, 1971-73 .................................................................................................. 704
EPILOGUE: “IF EVER IS GOING TO HAPPEN” ............................................................................................. 751
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................... 780
PRIMARY SOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 780
SECONDARY SOURCES .......................................................................................................................... 786

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