NCSB Journal Spring 2026

schools funded by “white” tax dollars.” 32 According to this narrative, Aycock opposed more extreme white politicians who wanted to deny state-funded services to Black people based on racial tax revenue. 33 But this was not the full story. Aycock’s chosen superintendent of public instruction, James Yadkin Joyner, father of Pearsall Committee member Col. William Joyner—assured white officials in the early 1900s that public schools for “Negros” would not burden white taxpayers. [I]n numerous letters to local superin tendents, [Joyner] explained how to save the appearance of equality while discrim inating: “The negro schools can be run for much less expense and should be. In most places it does not take more than one fourth as much to run the negro schools as it does to run the white schools for about the same number of children. The salaries paid teachers are very proper ly much smaller, the houses are cheaper, the number of teachers smaller... if quiet ly managed, the negroes will give no trou ble about it [the discrimination].” Another superintendent, bluntly ques tioning Joyner, “Can we discriminate vs. the negro?" received assurance that they could. “As a rule,” the “progressive” responded, “the funds can be so divided as to give to the negro school practically what the negroes pay [in taxes]...” 34 Governor Hodges, while praising Aycock’s support for using public tax revenue to fund segregated schools, overlooked how Aycock set the stage for unequal support for Black schools in North Carolina. Irving Carlyle recognized that the South’s failure to honor the “equal” part of Plessy was a key fac tor in the Supreme Court’s Brown decision. In his 1956 speech to the State Bar, Carlyle warned that failing to comply with Brown risked further legal trouble: “one of the penal ties inflicted for 58 years of widespread viola tion of the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine of Plessy was the [ Brown ] decision.” 35 No African Americans were invited to the second Pearsall Committee, which was established by the General Assembly. 36 Thomas Pearsall and Governor Hodges argued that consulting with Black leaders would be politically problematic due to pres sure from the NAACP. 37 The continued dis enfranchisement of Black voters in the 1950s led to little consideration of their civil rights or political preferences. The committee

received numerous letters from white North Carolinians urging the preservation of segre gation, with little push from white liberals for compliance with Brown . 38 The Plan devised by the seven-member committee, 39 endorsed by Gov. Hodges and the General Assembly, included features to slow racial integration, in addition to the Pupil Assignment Act of 1955: (1) a local option provision allowing communities to suspend public schools if conditions were deemed intolerable; (2) education grants for private schools for children whose parents opposed inte gration; and (3) repeal of compulsory attendance requirements when segregated schools were not available. 40 When taken together with the Pupil Assignment law of 1955, which required exhaustion of a series of administrative steps before a family could bring a lawsuit chal lenging a district’s failure to comply with Brown on behalf of individually named plaintiffs, the state had found its strategy for delaying racial integration in the public schools. 41 Historian William Chafe aptly summa rized the Pearsall Plan: “Never before had the rhetoric of moderation been used so effec tively to implement a politics of reaction.” 42 By 1965, over ten years after Brown and a year following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only 1.43% of Black pupils were in integrated schools, a lower percentage than Tennessee and Virginia. 43 In contrast to the Pearsall Plan’s safety valve approach, I. Beverly Lake worked with allies in the General Assembly to draft a bill that would have removed the requirements for public education altogether, essentially closing the public schools and reopening them as private schools. 44 This more defiant approach, akin to a nullification resolution, would later serve as the centerpiece of Lake’s segregationist campaign for governor in 1960. 45 From his public pronouncements, it seems that Lake’s aversion to integration was rooted in the same fears that motivated the Patriots of North Carolina to push North Carolina to not comply with Brown .He saw integration as a path that “destroys both [the] school system and [] children’s pride in their racial heritage.” Lake insisted that the The “Lake Plan” and the Fear of “Miscegenation”

School (Transcript, 27). In 1951, the Fourth Circuit had ruled in favor of African American plaintiffs, including Floyd McKissick Sr., who sought admission to UNC’s law school. 24 According to Pearsall, one of the key lessons from the McKissick case was that white citizens, on balance, did not want to defy the law, but at the same time wanted the white “powers that be” to do everything they could within the law to pre serve racial segregation, including exhausting all legal remedies. 25 For a brief time, leaders in Mississippi and North Carolina attempted to pursue “voluntary segregation,” which relied on African Americans accepting second-class citizenship and not pressing for enforcement of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. In Mississippi, Governor White’s committee met with 100 African American leaders, 26 but the leaders unani mously rejected the idea and called for com pliance with Brown . The Pearsall Committee tried a similar approach. Thomas Pearsall and Clarence Poe met with about ten African American leaders (excluding the three Black state employees on the committee). Poe, a long-time propo nent of racial segregation, argued that imme diate integration would destroy public schools. However, the African American leaders strongly supported Brown . 27 Despite this, the committee pushed on, trying to equalize funding to Black schools to discour age parents from seeking integration. 28 Pearsall and other white leaders believed that providing African Americans with good schools would lead them to attend segregated schools. 29 They assumed that the NAACP had already swayed Black leaders, 30 failing to understand that African Americans were seeking full citizenship and an end to Jim Crow. Gov. Hodges embraced the legacy of Gov. Charles Aycock, who had taken office after the 1898 White Supremacy campaign, where he was a leading organizer and spokesperson. 31 In a televised address in August 1955, Hodges portrayed Aycock as a defender of racial segregation in public edu cation, claiming he had moderated his stance by supporting educational opportunities for African Americans, including segregated African Americans Reject the Paternalistic Call for Voluntary Segregation

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THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE BAR JOURNAL