THE PINEY WOODS 189 finally eliminated the term “all deliberate speed” and forced the immediate integration of all Mississippi schools. By 1970, virtually all of the public schools in Mississippi were integrated. While Mississippi schools integrated, they did not always completely desegregate. Hattiesburg, for example, created a fully integrated high school, but three of the four elementary schools remained majority African American in the 1980s, with one white majority elementary school. Many urban districts in the state became majority African Americans as whites relocated to majority white school districts in suburban areas. The Hattiesburg and Laurel school districts were majority white in 1970, but both were majority African American just thirty years later. Racial geography proved to be a significant barrier to integration. Reversing disenfranchisement laws that kept African Americans from voting was equally problematic. State law required voters to fill out a twenty-one-question voter application and be able to interpret any of the 285 clauses of the state constitution. A white circuit clerk administered the test and had the final say as to whether the potential voter passed or failed. Few African Americans managed to achieve voter status, and those who did had only white Democratic candidates for whom to vote. A project called Freedom Summer, launched in 1964, represented an attempt to bring attention to this plight. One goal of Freedom Summer was to register African Elaine Armstrong, on campus in 1965 signaled significant long-term change. In 2015, 32 percent of the total undergraduate population of the University of Southern Mississippi were African Americans, and the racial makeup of the university’s students closely resembles that of the state as a whole, where 37 percent of Mississippians are African American, according to the 2010 census. In 2006, a Forrest County jury posthumously overturned Kennard’s conviction, and today the Student Services Building at the University of Southern Mississippi bears his name. Primary and secondary school integration did not come with the “all deliberate speed” required by the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the next major step toward ending segregation. Included in the original bill were stipulations that: outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin at gasoline stations, hotels, motels, inns, restaurants, sports arenas, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; encouraged the desegregation of public schools and allowed the United States attorney general to file suit as a method to enforce these actions; and prohibited state and local governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, color, religion, or national origin. The first school desegregation cases in Mississippi were filed in 1964, but it was the 1969 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case that Freedom Summer failed in its goal to register large numbers of African American voters. Instead, federal intervention in the form of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally gave African Americans in the state an even playing field when registering to vote. PHOTO COURTESY OF AREA DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP SOFIDEL AMERICA Sofidel America is a manufacturing facility located in Hattiesburg. Sofidel was founded in 1966 in Pocari, Italy and is a worldwide leader in sanitary and domestic paper production. Sofidel America was established in 2012 and the Hattiesburg location began production in 2016. This project represents a corporate investment of $120 million.