 What brought Falwell and other white evangelicals into common cause with political conservatives was a ruling issued in 1978 by the IRS.This ruling stripped tax-exempt status from all-white private schools formed in the South in reaction to the "Brown v. Board of Education" Supreme Court ruling to desegregate public schools.Falwell had founded one of these schools in Lynchburg, though he and other white evangelicals insisted that their schools were Christian academies, not segregation academies.