North Carolina decided to highlight moderation, acknowledging that school integration was inevitable, rather than promoting active resistance like Alabama, Virginia, and other southern states.
[4] The Pupil Assignment Act, which preceded the Pearsall Plan, provided for parents to receive a monetary grant if a child was placed into a mixed school against their wishes.
Many critics cite the wording of the Pearsall Plan as evidence of it expressing defiance of the Supreme Court rather than being an effort to accomplish desegregation.
Pearsall's son, Mack, said his father had anticipated, "a very tension filled environment – a major change in lifestyles and folkways and mores.
That was avoided, but, by allowing communities not to make any changes, in many places, there were multiple years of stagnancy after the release of the Pearsall Plan, during which nothing was accomplished.
[13] Strategically, the Pearsall Plan decentralized decision making to the school boards, which also enabled elected politicians to get out of the middle of the fight.
The appeals process required submission of materials related to distinct and detailed clauses that were difficult for uneducated and under-educated parents to fill out.
[15] North Carolina lagged behind Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia in terms of the pace of enrolling black students in integrated schools.
[17] Many African Americans in North Carolina were dismayed by the lack of progress, as they had been hopeful about the Brown ruling being a catalyst for school integration.
A poll released in February 1956 stated that forty-seven percent of African Americans in the South did not support the Brown ruling because they feared their children would be spurned and not afforded a truly fair education from white teachers.
Benjamin L. Smith, the white superintendent of Greensboro schools wrote, "After careful deliberation it is my opinion that desegregation is an idea whose hour has arrived.
"[20] Though in general, the sentiments regarding the Pearsall Plan were similar throughout North Carolina, the results of school integration would have a wider ranging effect on the city of Charlotte.
Finally, during the summer of 1957, the Charlotte School Board agreed to enact voluntary desegregation to avoid further national or state-ordered mandates.
This is perhaps due to the fact that at the time of his death, in 1981, the majority of the schools in North Carolina had been forced to integrate, often ending in clashes between the races.
He is highly regarded for his work with the Pearsall Plan despite setting back the integration of North Carolina schools a number of years.