Petitioners, a group of African American school children, prevailed on a suit against respondent, the School Board of Prince Edward County, on the issue of segregation. Respondent was ordered to desegregate local public schools and in response, respondent closed its public schools and opened a series of private schools for whites. Petitioners then filed a supplemental complaint, seeking to enjoin respondents from refusing to operate a system of free public schools and to enjoin payment of public funds to help support private schools which excluded students on account of race. The trial court ruled in favor of petitioners on both issues, but the appellate court reversed, holding that the trial court should have abstained to await state court determination of the contested tuition grants. On review, the United States Supreme Court reversed the appellate court's order of abstention and held that respondent could not give tuition grants to students to attend private white only schools and that the trial court could order respondent to reopen the public schools.

Dorothy E. Davis and others brought action against the County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, and others to have constitutional and statutory provisions requiring the teaching of white and colored children in separate schools declared invalid and, in the alternative, to have inequalities between while and colored schools corrected. The District Judge, Bryan, J., held that constitutional and statutory provisions requiring the teaching of colored and white children in separate schools were not invalid, but that there were inequities in buildings, facilities, curricula, and busses furnished negro children and white children, and that such inequalities should be corrected.

Transmuted, this old case, in its new flesh and pregnant with questions, comes again before us. As Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward et al., D.C., 103 F.Supp. 337, it began in 1951 as a suit to effect the desegregation of the public *334 schools maintained by Prince Edward County, Virginia. It was one of the four school cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873. As Allen et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia et al., the case was again before this Court in 1957, 249 F.2d 462, and, still again, in 1959. 266 F.2d 507.