Pearsall Plan
Soon after (and as a result of) the US Supreme Court's May 17, 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education prohibiting public school segregation, a North Carolina Governor's Special Advisory Committee on Education was established. It was chaired by North Carolina House Speaker Thomas J. Pearsall and was directed to advise the Governor, the General Assembly, the State Board of Education and local school boards throughout the state. The committee came to be known as the "Pearsall Committee." Its April 5, 1956 report, often called the Pearsall Plan, recommended that a special session of the NC General Assembly be called that summer to consider submitting to the people of the state some recommended changes in the State of North Carolina Constitution. They included:
"1. Authority for the General Assembly to provide from public funds financial grants to be paid toward the education of any child assigned against the wishes of his parents to a school in which the races are mixed--such grants to be available for education only in non-sectarian schools and only when such child cannot be conveniently assigned to a non-mixed public school.
"2. Authority for any local unit created pursuant to law and under conditions to be prescribed by the General Assembly, to suspend by majority vote the operation of the public schools in that unit, notwithstanding present constitutional provisions for public schools."
The 1956 Extra Session of the General assembly accepted the plan. These recommendations are more commonly known as the "Pearsall Plan." Much legal "wrangling" with the US government followed; however, the Federal government ultimately prevailed.
The statutes enacted by the 1956 Extra Session of the General Assembly implementing item #1 above are made available here for researchers wishing to study their impact on non-public schools operating during this era of North Carolina's history. As part of the prior legal framework, they were preceded in 1955 by the State's first separate section of statutes exclusively governing non-public schools. These 1955 non-public school statutes dramatically increased the regulation of non-public schools. With their passage, North Carolina's non-public schools became more heavily regulated than their counterparts in most other states. The 1956 North Carolina statutes that follow were finally repealed in 1969; however, the 1955 non-public school regulatory statutes would continue in force for another 10 years until 1979 when today's non-public school statutes were enacted by the General Assembly.
View former N.C.G.S. 115-274 through 295
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