On October 5, 1964, the plaintiffs brought this school desegregation suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, African-American minor school children by and through their parents, sued the defendant Person County Board of Education to enjoin the operation of a segregated school system. They were represented by, among others, Jack Greenberg and Derrick A. Bell, for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The district court (Judge Edwin Stanley) denied several early motions for preliminary injunctions but on November 19, 1964 ordered the Board to grant plaintiffs' request to attend formerly all-white schools in the district. Then, on April 29, 1966, he entered a consent decree, under which, among other things, the Board agreed to assign teachers and personnel to schools without regard to race. Judge Stanley also directed the Board to file a more comprehensive desegregation plan, which it did on February 7, 1968. After further back and forth, the district court approved the plan with modifications on August 27, 1968. There were additional modifications in the Board's plan through 1969.

The last entry on the docket (the only available document in the case) was made June 25, 1973; it states that the case had been dormant for, at that point, a year, with all previous plans having been implemented. The court noted that there was "no further reason at this time to maintain the file as an open one for statistical purposes." However, it explained that "Nothing contained in this minute entry shall be considered a dismissal or disposition of this matter, and, should further proceedings in it become necessary or desirable, any
party may initiate it in the same manner as if this minute entry had not been entered."

According to ProPublica, as of 2014, the case remains open, though (obviously) dormant.

Greg Margolis - 02/28/2017


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