In 1954, the civil rights movement was just getting started. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, of course, was instrumental in the desegregation of schools with this Brown decision. The NAACP championed this and other civil rights legal challenges. And I remember that ordinary citizens had a wake-up call considering this small child who had to go a considerable distance to school when there was a school much closer to her home. Another factor was World War II in which many African-Americans served in the armed forces. Finally, schools were segregated only in some states; most states did not have legally segregated schools. It was obvious to many people that "separate but equal" was not working and was unfair.
Since the class discussion wasn't accomplishing the teacher's goals, she could assign a paper in which each student wrote about his/her own personal experiences with racism or other forms of discrimination. Then, she could read some or all of the papers aloud to the class, without divulging the authors of these papers.
The next assignment could be to assign each student to an interracial group of 4 to 6 students. Have each group discuss the racial hostility situation and propose a solution to the problem. They could present their solution with a panel discussion, posters, or some more creative method.