Missouri Compromised

The old Jim Crow notion that separate schools for the races were all right as long as they were equal has, of course, been unconstitutional since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark 1954 decision on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kans.). Nonetheless, the state of Missouri never got around to deleting a clause from its own constitution calling for "separate schools ... for white and colored children." Last week the state's voters were finally given a chance to do so. With 90% of the tally in, the proposition to kill the clause was passed, but by the surprisingly close margin of 527,000 to 390,000.

The number of voters who wanted to keep the provision in the Missouri constitution was a sad reminder of the latent opposition, never too far below the surface, to integrated schools in the U.S.--22 years after the Supreme Court spoke so emphatically on the issue.

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