<P> Supporters of the earlier decision were displeased with this decision . The language "all deliberate speed" was seen by critics as too ambiguous to ensure reasonable haste for compliance with the court's instruction . Many Southern states and school districts interpreted "Brown II" as legal justification for resisting, delaying, and avoiding significant integration for years--and in some cases for a decade or more--using such tactics as closing down school systems, using state money to finance segregated "private" schools, and "token" integration where a few carefully selected black children were admitted to former white - only schools but the vast majority remained in underfunded, unequal black schools . </P> <P> For example, based on "Brown II," the U.S. District Court ruled that Prince Edward County, Virginia did not have to desegregate immediately . When faced with a court order to finally begin desegregation in 1959 the county board of supervisors stopped appropriating money for public schools, which remained closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964 . </P> <P> White students in the county were given assistance to attend white - only "private academies" that were taught by teachers formerly employed by the public school system, while black students had no education at all unless they moved out of the county . But the public schools reopened after the Supreme Court overturned "Brown II" in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, declaring that "...the time for mere' deliberate speed' has run out," and that the county must provide a public school system for all children regardless of race . </P> <P> In 1978, Topeka attorneys Richard Jones, Joseph Johnson and Charles Scott, Jr. (son of the original Brown team member), with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, persuaded Linda Brown Smith--who now had her own children in Topeka schools--to be a plaintiff in reopening Brown . They were concerned that the Topeka Public Schools' policy of "open enrollment" had led to and would lead to further segregation . They also believed that with a choice of open enrollment, white parents would shift their children to "preferred" schools that would create both predominantly African American and predominantly European American schools within the district . The district court reopened the Brown case after a 25 - year hiatus, but denied the plaintiffs' request finding the schools "unitary". In 1989, a three - judge panel of the Tenth Circuit on 2--1 vote found that the vestiges of segregation remained with respect to student and staff assignment . In 1993, the Supreme Court denied the appellant School District's request for certiorari and returned the case to District Court Judge Richard Rodgers for implementation of the Tenth Circuit's mandate . </P>

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