Speeding Desegregation

Southern school districts in increasing numbers are finding it impossible to defy the Federal Government any longer by delaying the desegregation of their classrooms. After 15 years, "never" is becoming "now." Two weeks ago, 28 Mississippi school districts, their legal ammunition expended, bowed to the U.S. Supreme Court's demand for immediate desegregation and ended dual schools. Last week the court ordered 14 more districts serving 293,000 pupils to do the same. In a 6-to-2 decision, it gave districts in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Florida until Feb. 1 to desegregate their schools. Dissenting were Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Potter Stewart, who favor desegregation but disagreed with the order on procedural grounds.

The Justice Department, which earlier this week announced that it would make every effort to ensure complete desegregation by next fall, has not yet committed itself to enforcing the new court deadline. But lawyers for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund plan to use the decision to push for immediate desegregation in at least 200 cases now pending before the courts.

The decision could thus prove a source of political embarrassment for the Nixon Administration by hastening the end of public school segregation and stiffening Southern resistance. This could force the Administration, which has been assiduously courting the South, to send federal marshals or even troops to uphold a law its own Justice Department has thus far been noticeably reluctant to administer.

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