Brown (1954) and Brown II (1955) disallowed school segregation and ordered desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”

Segregationists objected. Senator Harry Byrd (D–VA) invoked “massive resistance to this order” and a hundred congressmen endorsed the Southern Manifesto (1956) defying “judicial encroachment.” Five state legislatures amended laws so no white child would be forced to attend a desegregated school; four denied funds to racially mixed schools; and eight adopted resolutions upholding the right to close public schools. Ten enacted statutes banning the NAACP, alleging it was a communist front. Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan harassed African American parents who signed NAACP petitions for pupil transfers and whose children attended white schools. When a black woman enrolled at the University of Alabama in the fall of 1956, whites rioted. Little Rock, Arkansas became a battleground the next year when the governor defied a Federal Court order to enroll nine black students at all-white Central High School. The president eventually deployed the 101st Airborne Division to protect them. Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its schools (1959–64). Resisters undermined America's reputation abroad and escalated civil rights enforcement. Defiance waned after the Supreme Court overruled states’ freedom-of-choice plans (1968) and permitted busing for school integration (1971).