WASHINGTON, June 1, 1955 (UP) -- The Supreme Court's school desegregation order promised today to touch off a flood of lawsuits that could be passing through the courts for decades. Before the final chapter on the controversial issue is written, the high court undoubtedly will have to spell out in case after case what it considers prompt and reasonable.
The compromise integration order was so generally worded that its interpretation by lower courts is bound to be challenged repeatedly by one side or the other.
One southern leader in Congress predicted complete integration of southern schools might take years and involve much more litigation. And Rep. John Bell Williams (D., Miss.) predicted "not years but generations of litigation..."
Shortly after the court handed down the order yesterday, southern officials again asserted their firm opposition to admitting white and Negro children to the same schools, either now or in the near future.
Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi are relying on plans recently set up by their legislatures or by constitutional amendments to withstand the order for years to come.
The Supreme Court may have to decide some day whether a state can abolish its public schools -- as some southern states propose to do - and set up private systems for whites and Negroes.
The National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, mainspring of the litigation over school segregation thus far, called a strategy meeting in Atlanta Saturday to plan its next move.
The immediate impact of the court's order will be felt only in four school districts in Kansas, the District of Columbia, South Carolina and Virginia. They were parties to the original segregation cases decided by the Supreme Court last year.
In areas not immediately covered, Negro groups are expected to file suits promptly in the U.S. courts charging that the local school systems are discriminatory. If the lower courts find that this is true after hearings, they would then proceed along the lines of the Supreme Court's decree.
