closed its parks; King recommended that black parents attempt to enroll their children in city schools, expecting to establish cases testing the Alabama Pupil Placement Act. Montgomery Academy was the first segregation academy established in Alabama; others followed in the late 1960s. North Carolina Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Governor William B. Umstead established a committee to consider the effects of complying the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling. The bi-racial committee made up of blacks and whites reported to the General Assembly that desegregation “throughout the state cannot be accomplished and should not be attempted.” Luther Hodges became governor in 1955, and although opposed to integration, he formed a new committee to study the issue, because the Court had ruled that school desegregation must happen “with all deliberate speed.” When it became clear that the federal government was not going to force the issue, the state began to look for ways to circumvent the Supreme Court, using legal means, while avoiding the outright defiance of court orders that was taking place in Virginia where the legislature had adopted a policy of massive resistance. This committee established the Pearsall Plan, named after its chairman, Thomas J. Pearsall of Rocky Mount. In 1956 the Pearsall Plan established a system of local control, freedom of choice, and school vouchers. The Pearsall Plan also gave school districts the option of shutting down schools by public referendum if they were faced with a desegregation order. The freedom-of-choice system allowed students to attend the school their parents wanted them to attend, and the voucher system allowed parents to use state money to support their child’s education in a private school. As in other southern states a number of private segregation academies were founded. In 2019 the North Carolina State Board of Education voted unanimously to approve the conversion of Halifax County’s private Hobgood Academy, founded in 1969 as a segregation academy, to a public charter school. Hobgood’s student population is 88 percent white, while only 4 percent of those attending the Halifax County public Schools are white. This had led to concerns by some teachers that while charter schools in some states have helped low-income students improve academically, in North Carolina they have primarily been used as a means for whites to opt out of traditional public schools. South Carolina In South Carolina, where private schools have existed since the 1800s, there