In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that separate public facilities were inherently unequal and, thus, unconstitutional, LeMaistre had privately argued to fellow businessmen that the decline of Arkansas that followed resistance to the integration of Little Rock schools proved that Alabama should abandon segregation. But the 1962 riot at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, coupled with Gov. Wallace's pledge to stand in the schoolhouse door to stop integration convinced LeMaistre to confront the issue publicly.