Reading Room Document

Opinion of the Attorney General of Kentucky on Racial Integration of its Public Schools

The memo analyzed the exclusion of Black students in two segregated Kentucky schools with the support of the state attorney general on the purported basis that enrollment was “illegal” until the local school boards created a formal integration plan. The OLC’s memo acknowledged that the primary responsibility for integration laid with local school boards, but noted that the school boards had adopted no plan for integration whatsoever, and that the opinion supporting the exclusion of the students was likely rooted in political opposition to integration.

September 24, 1956