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{ 160 } CHAPTER 8 THE LAW HAS SPOKEN Ten years and one week after the Supreme Court first ruled on school desegregation in Prince Edward County, its decision in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County invalidated school closings as an avenue for circumventing Brown v. Board of Education. Accepting the plaintiffs’ argument that allowing Prince Edward County to avoid desegregation would spark a rash of school closings across the South, the Court identified the closings as racially motivated and therefore unconstitutional. Writing for the Court in its May 25, 1964 decision, Justice Hugo Black stated unequivocally, “There has been entirely too much deliberation and not enough speed in enforcing the constitutional rights which we held in Brown v. Board of Education had been denied Prince Edward County Negro children.”1 The ruling in Griffin, the most important school desegregation case since Brown, set the stage for the more controversial decisions that followed throughout the next decade. Between 1968 and 1971, the Supreme Court struck down the “freedom of choice” escape clause adopted by the majorityof school boards confronted with desegregation suits. In demanding an end to “racially identifiable ” schools, the Court laid the foundation for the controversial busing plans of the 1970s.2 The arguments in Griffin sidestepped the question of whether localities have a constitutional obligation to provide public schools, centering instead on the county’s attempt to evade the Brown decision.3 Noting that “grounds of race and opposition to desegregation” are not an acceptable constitutional basis for abandoning public education, the justices remanded the case to the district court with instruction to provide “quick and effective” relief to the petitioners. They ordered a continued freeze on the expenditure of public funds in support of the Prince Edward Academy and empowered the district court, “if necessary,” to issue a ruling stating that “the Prince Edward County public schools may not be closed to avoid the law of the land while the state permits other public schools to remain open at the expense of the taxpayers.” As a final step, over the dissent of JusticesTom Clark and John Marshall Harlan, the Court majority invested the lower court with the power to The Law Has Spoken { 161 direct the Board of Supervisors to levy taxes to raise adequate funds to resume public school operations on a desegregated basis.4 In the wake of the ruling, Prince Edward municipal authorities engaged the district court in a dance of defiance and delay, pushing the timeframe foraction to its legal terminus before grudgingly agreeing to reopen the public schools. Though some ideologues continued to spout outright defiance, dismissing the Supreme Court decision as invalid and nonbinding, the majority of the Board of Supervisors refused to risk prosecution for contempt of court. In the storied Virginia tradition of dissemblance, they chose instead to comply with only the letter of the law, successfully wagering that so long as they approved a budget for the public schools, the district court would not intervene to dictate the expenditures . The budget adopted was woefully inadequate, a reflection of the supervisors’ intention to keep the reopened schools segregated and substandard , thus ensuring that white parents would continue to choose the Academy for their children. Assuming that black parents would be so grateful to have schools for their children that they would not dare complain about their quality, the supervisors channeled the bulk of county educational funds to the Academy, starved the public schools, and shifted the blame for the chaotic conditions in the reopened buildings onto black students and parents. L. F. Griffin fumed that “the School Board takes the attitude that education for Negro children in Prince Edward County is a privilege, not a right.” The sacrifices that had been endured to secure the reopening of the schools rang hollow in the face of continued obstructionism . “For years, we have suffered the ways of peace and sought from the law the justice we have been denied so long,” Griffin wrote Free School organizer William Vanden Heuvel. “We suffered our children to be destroyed so that the law might speak. The law has spoken. We have yet to see it obeyed.”5 SHIFTING GEARS While a few remained concerned that the Griffin decision did not speak directly to the question of tuition grants, the majority of Prince Edward blacks greeted the ruling with a profound sense of relief.White leaders, who had devoted over $2 million to their cause since 1959, were incensed, as were many rank...

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