When the 1960s began, six years after the Supreme Court ruling that separate schools are inherently unequal schools, many districts in the South were practicing "ingenious procrastination" rather than progressing toward desegregation. In fact, there was less actual desegregation of southern schools in 1960 than in any other year since the Supreme Court decision. Until 1964 state and school officials played an elaborate game of avoidance. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered the U.S. Office of Education to withhold federal funds from systems failing to desegregate and empowered the U.S. Attorney General to force the process. Although the 1964-1965 school year began in eleven southern states with only 604 of 2,951 school districts having even begun the process of desegregation, by fall of 1965, 2,816 systems had filed plans defining their intentions to comply with the law. This dramatic turnaround was.....
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