Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Georgia resisted attempts at racial integration. In 1957, 80 white religious leaders signed what became known as the “Ministers’ Manifesto” calling for an end to segregation in the city's schools. A year later, Atlanta newspapers published another open letter from Emory faculty and administrators reiterating the need to integrate the public schools; nearly the entire theology faculty signed the letter.