NCSB Journal Spring 2026

Lawyers’ Role in “Making Haste Slowly,” Forestalling Integration Following Brown v. Board of Education O n Monday, May 17, 1954, Mary Irving Campbell (née Carlyle) was at R.J. Reynolds High School, nearing the end of her senior year. An announcement was made while the students were in the cafe ter i a : t h e Supreme Court had decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas , hold B Y D A V I D N E A L , J OH N C H A R L E S B O G E R , J A M E S W I L L I A M S

ing that “in the field of public education,

the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no

place.” 1

ise of racial integration. 2 Mary’s mother, Mrs. Irving Carlyle, was the president of the Reynolds High PTA at the time. Just a few weeks later, during the final PTA meeting of the school year, she called on the community

to not defy or attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision: “We as teachers and parents must provide the climate of opin ion in which the law can operate in a peaceful way and without undue tension.” 3

It wasn’t long before some of her class mates in the all-white public high school—a school that drew from the neighborhoods of Winston-Salem’s ruling class—began jeering and putting up signs in defiance of the prom

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