On April 5, 1955, Mississippi Gov. Hugh White signed House Bill No. 237, which stated, “It shall be unlawful for any member of the white or Caucasian race to attend any school of high school level or below wholly or partially supported by funds of the State of Mississippi which is also attended by a member or members of the colored or Negro race.”

Students found in violation of the law were subject to fines and imprisonment in the county jail for up to six months.

The law was passed in a special session of the Mississippi Legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education unanimously held that segregated schools for Black and white children was unconstitutional.

Despite the Court’s ruling, Mississippi and many other states refused to comply, and instead redoubled their efforts to maintain and enforce school segregation with new state laws and extrajudicial threats and violence against those seeking to integrate.

In a previous session, Mississippi lawmakers passed an amendment to the state constitution authorizing the Legislature to abolish the state’s public school system rather than integrate.

While approving a wave of segregationist legislation the first week of April 1955 that included House Bill No. 237, Gov. White said, “I bet I’ve signed 15 bills that are unconstitutional…I will leave any contest on them up to the court in event an issue is raised.”

Other states similarly passed laws to maintain racially segregated schools by explicitly forbidding integrated classrooms, supporting private schools that maintained “white-only” policies, or through “freedom of choice” laws that gave parents the authority to remove their children from integrated classrooms.

The legacy of white resistance to school integration and the backlash against the Brown decision continues to be felt today. For more, see EJI’s report, Segregation in America.