Critics have long charged that Faubus' fight in Little Rock against the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that separate schools were inherently unequal was politically motivated. The ensuing battle helped to shield him from the political fallout from the tax increase and to diminish Johnson's appeal. Journalist Harry Ashmore (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his columns on the subject) portrayed the fight over Central High as a crisis manufactured by Faubus. Ashmore said that Faubus used the Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School because he was frustrated by the success his political opponents were having in using segregationist rhetoric to arouse white voters.