NCSB Journal Spring 2026

“nauseating dose” of integration “should not be forced down their throats on the bayonets of their own National Guard.” Lake identi fied the NAACP as “our enemy” for its determination “to bring about complete intermixing of white and Negro children in the schoolrooms of North Carolina.” In contrast to Carlyle, who viewed the role of the lawyer to help guide people to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling, Lake called on his fellow lawyers to “labor, in sea son and out of season, to show our neigh bors, white and Negro, the evil consequences to both races of integration in the schools, so that there will be a massive, passive, law abiding but adamant resistance” to integra tion. The fear surrounding “intermixing” in the classroom was that it would not allow for the “preservation of our racial heritage.” To Lake, the continuation of public schools was not even a secondary concern next to his fear of “the amalgamation of our races”—“let us choose inferior education since that is an evil which another generation can correct, while miscegenation is a tragedy which can never be undone.” It is not surprising that Lake’s remarks met with the full approval of UNC professor W.C. George, president of the Patriots of North Carolina and purveyor of bad race sci ence, who wrote to Lake that the “other day before the Bar Association you said some things that very much needed to be said and you said them very well.” 46 Central to George’s theory on race was the proposition that “the Caucasian race is superior to the Negro race in the creation and maintenance of what we call civilization...the Supreme Court’s [ Brown ] decision is unrighteous because mixing our white and Negro chil dren in the intimacies of school life...would speed-up the mixing of the blood of the races...[resulting] in a hybrid race, probably without the capacity to advance or maintain our civilization.” 47 Lake and George epito mized how completely baseless theories of race that had first gained popularity in the 1920s and led to the popular embrace of eugenics continued to hold sway for a large swath of North Carolinians. 48 The Road Not Travelled: Irving Carlyle’s Lonely Stand for Complying with the Supreme Court’s Brown Decision Irving Carlyle’s remarks to the bar in 1956 stand out not just in contrast to the reactionary bluster of his one-time close fam

ily friend I. Beverly Lake Sr., but in contrast to the timidity of too many in the profession of any age, unwilling to speak out against injustice under color of law. Carlyle attempted to reach his fellow lawyers by reminding them that they have a “a peculiar obligation to speak out at times of crisis when law is on trial before the bar of public opinion” (The North Carolina State Bar, p. 3, Nov. 1956.), unlike Lake, who used his platform to call for “massive, passive resistance” to the Supreme Court and saw public schools as disposable if they would facilitate “race mixing” and “amalgamation.” The inescapable issue for Carlyle was making real the promise of equal justice under law. There are some things that the lawyer knows better than anybody else...he...knows that discrimination by government among citizens on account of race, creed, or national origin is now under almost complete condemnation by law. He knows full well by now that all citizens are entitled to equal protection under law and to live under laws that fall upon all men equally. ... [W]e do great injury to ourselves when we seek to bolster our claims to superior ity by compelling others to surrender their legal rights. And the damage done is far greater when the surrender is coerced by punitive measures taken under color of law. The use of intimidation by law is a backward step unworthy of a great profes sion that is committed to improving the administration of justice for all men. Any decision to defy the Supreme Court and maintain segregated schools was nothing more than the “usurpation of law by a majority to deprive a minority of constitu tional rights,” a move that he thought was “certain to backfire.” Though segregation remained popular in North Carolina, the “test of the law is not is it popular, but is it in accord with basic principles; and when that test has been met, the attitude of the people and not the law must change.” Because Carlyle recognized that the Supreme Court’s decision correctly interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment, he believed that lawyers are indispensable ambassadors to help people adjust to the changes wrought by Brown — which he did not see any realistic chance of being changed by federal law. Carlyle’s biggest critique of the Pearsall Plan was that it was, by design, kicking the can down the road:

During the campaign for the adoption of the Pearsall Plan it was referred to by the proponents as safety-valve, stop-gap, and time-buying legislation. From this accu rate description, and for other reasons, it seems to me to be obvious that the adop tion of the plan has not yet settled the legal problems in the field of school seg regation. The solution of those problems has merely been postponed to some future time. Our concern about the con stitutionality of the plan is still with us. Hence one of our functions is to prepare our own and the public mind for the day when the tune bought by the plan will have run out. What its architects saw as the principal virtue in the Pearsall Plan, Carlyle saw as a ticking time bomb of unconstitutional delay. If lawyers could not do their part to help the public accept the idea of integration as man dated by the supreme law of the land, more trouble would follow. “The highest part of our calling as lawyers is to lead the people towards respect for law and order....I ques tion whether the Pearsall Plan is a step in that direction....” It was not just fealty to law that drove Carlyle’s call for lawyers to help the public accept the Brown decision. As Asa Spaulding recounts, Carlyle accepted an invitation to be the Brotherhood Day speaker at White Rock Baptist Church in Durham in 1960, where he said: “I have come to the conclusion that the decision is right and inevitable, and will be so regarded by history. Truth is on the side of the Court. The core of the truth is that all men are entitled to freedom through the compulsion of law, the power of religion, the abolition of racial discrimination in this country in due course is certain.” 49 As our account has shown, both the state’s white citizens and many distinguished leaders of its legal profession defended con temporary political and social arrangements reflexively after Brown , even when aware of weighty legal, moral, and political objections to their justice. Doing so was understand able, for from their childhood most citizens, including lawyers, had been nurtured to believe in the essential rightness and justice of their society, and lawyers in particular had spent years in rendering service to clients and neighbors who benefited from those arrange The Role of Lawyers in Establishing Justice

SPRING 2026

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