3 girls skip school in Louisiana dispute
January 9, 1981
Buckeye, La.
Three white girls at the center of a desegregation fight between a state judge and a federal judge skipped school entirely Thursday, beginning an uneasy truce in the legal battle. The girls stayed away from both the all-white high school and from the predominantly black junior high which they had been ordered to attend by a federal judge.
State Judge Richard Lee, who ordered the girls to stay out of school on grounds the Ku Klux Klan might picket, said he would send the girls back when this threat was over.
Lee, who has maintained that the fight is strictly an issue of state power vs. f ederal power, disavowed any support from the Klan.