Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education

On 29 October 1969 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education that “effective immediately . . . each of the school districts here involved may no longer operate as a unitary school system within which no person is to be effectively excluded from any school because of race or color.” Thirty of the thirty-three Mississippi school districts named in the case were ordered to open as fully operational unitary school systems no later than 1 February 1970. The rest of the recalcitrant South was expected to follow suit. The Alexander case remains one of the most significant court rulings in school desegregation. It began, as had earlier suits, with black parents frustrated with the delaying tactics of their school districts.

In 1968 Beatrice Alexander filed suit in the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi against the Holmes County Board of Education. Concurrently, eight other black petitioners filed similar lawsuits against their school districts. The district court refused to hear their cases. The petitioners applied to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for summary reversal of the lower court’s refusal to hear the case. The Fifth Circuit ordered the district court to give these cases “highest priority.” The district court consolidated the nine cases under United States v. Hinds County Board of Education and began hearings in October 1968.

On 13 May 1969 the district court ruled in favor of the school districts, approved their desegregation plans utilizing freedom of choice (FOC), and praised them for their efforts in desegregating their schools. The court noted no instance of a black child being denied admission to any school through FOC. The plaintiffs, along with the Department of Justice (DOJ), who had filed suits against nineteen other Mississippi school districts, appealed to the Fifth Circuit for summary reversal. The motion was granted on 25 June 1969.

The hearing began on 2 July 1969. The next day, the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and the DOJ. In sharp contrast to the lower district court, the Fifth Circuit ruled that “freedom of choice” had failed to achieve desegregation. They instructed the thirty-three school districts named in the suit to work with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to prepare desegregation plans eliminating all vestiges of a dual system of segregated schooling. The Fifth Circuit set 11 August 1969 as the deadline for all thirty-three districts to submit desegregation plans to the district court and 27 August 1969 as the implementation date. On 25 July 1969 the Fifth Circuit changed the implementation date to 1 September 1969. As ordered, on 11 August 1969 the Office of Education submitted desegregation plans on behalf of the school districts.

In an intriguing turn of events, primarily related to the 1968 election of Richard Nixon and his retreat from an aggressive federal enforcement of school desegregation in the South, HEW Secretary Robert Finch sent a letter on 19 August 1969 to Judge William Harold Cox, chief judge of District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. Finch requested that the desegregation plans submitted the previous week be withdrawn and HEW be given to 1 December 1969 to submit new plans with an unspecified implementation date. On 21 August 1969 US Attorney General John Mitchell filed a motion in the Fifth Circuit to modify the 3 July order in support of the HEW’s request for a new submission date. The Fifth Circuit orally granted leave to the district court to hear the extension motion. On 26 August 1969 the district court recommended the delay be granted. On 28 August 1969 the Fifth Circuit withdrew its 1 September implementation date and set 1 December 1969 as the new date for submission of desegregation plans. Suddenly the HEW, long-considered by most school districts an adversary, seemed to support the same argument southern school districts had been making for the last fifteen years: we need more time. The United States Commission on Civil Rights lambasted this new delaying ploy as a “major retreat in the struggle to achieve meaningful school desegregation.”

On 30 August 1969 the plaintiffs applied to Justice Hugo Black, circuit justice for the Supreme Court, for a stay on the Fifth Circuit 28 August 1969 order and a reinstatement of the 3 July order. On 5 September 1969 Justice Black reluctantly denied their application stating it was “deplorable” that he had to uphold the 28 August ruling because he could not rule with certainty that the full Supreme Court would agree with the request for relief. Alexander and her fellow plaintiffs filed writ for certiorari on 23 September 1969, which was granted by the Supreme Court on 9 October 1969. The nine consolidated cases under the name Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education proceeded to a hearing on 23 October 1969.

On 29 October 1969 the Supreme Court ruled once again on school desegregation. This time the court made crystal clear the time frame for implementation. “All deliberate speed” now meant “immediately.” They remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit, which set 31 December 1969 as the deadline for implementation plans to be in place. On 4 January 1970 Governor John Bell Williams told his radio audience: “I speak to you in a fateful hour of our state. . . . The moment that we have resisted for fifteen years, that we have fought, hopefully to avoid, or at least, to delay, is finally at hand.” The next day, a bitterly cold one, twelve school districts, under the Alexander ruling, opened their doors for the first time as unitary school systems.