Yes, in its first Brown decision in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. However, the Court deferred ruling on a remedy, or solution, to fix the problem of segregated schools across the country. In Brown v. Board of Education II (1955), the Court instructed trial court judges to monitor cases before them to ensure that public schools were integrated “with all deliberate speed.” In some jurisdictions, local school authorities focused more on the adjective “deliberate” than the noun “speed.” This resulted in a situation where public schools were not integrated in some Southern states until the 1970s.