Supreme Court orders school desegregation proceed 'with all deliberate speed,' delegating enforcement to district courts with no deadline

The Supreme Court issued its implementation decree in Brown II on May 31, 1955, ordering desegregation of public schools "with all deliberate speed" — a phrase borrowed from Justice Felix Frankfurter's own writing and chosen to compromise between the NAACP's demand for immediate integration and Southern states' demand for delay. The Court delegated enforcement to federal district courts, which were instructed to supervise compliance "as soon as practicable" without a deadline. Thurgood Marshall had requested an 18-month implementation schedule; the vague standard instead gave Southern school districts a legal roadmap for delay that stretched desegregation litigation into the 1970s.