Barbara Brown and her mother in front of the Supreme Court building.
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On May 17, 1954 a unanimous decision by the United
States Supreme Court over turned legal precedent and established custom to rule in the case
of Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka that “separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The ruling sent shock waves across the nation
and it took more than a decade of turmoil and violence before this precedent
was enforced across the land.
Previous to this ruling school segregation
flourished not only in the Deep
South but across much of the rest of the nation under the
protection of the 1896 court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson which ruled that “separate but equal” public accommodations were
legal.
The Justices based the
Brown decision on the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution which called for “equal protection under the law.”
Filed in 1951 by 13
parents, the suit was a result of segregation in the Topeka, Kansas
school system under a 1873 state law that allowed—but did not compel—separation
by race. At the instigation of the local
chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) the parents attempted to register their children a neighborhood
schools reserved for whites. The
registrations were, of course, rejected.
The lead plaintiff was Oliver
O. Brown, a welder with the Santa Fe Railroad and the associate
pastor of a local church. The Federal
District Court upheld the law citing the Plessy case. A three judge Appeals Court
acknowledged that segregated facilities could be harmful to the interests of
Black students, but said it was powerless to act because the Topeka schools
were equal in terms of quality of facilities, transportation, curriculum, and
quality of the staff.
At the Supreme Court
level, the case was combined with four other NAACP test cases from Delaware,
North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. In the Delaware case a lower court had
supported the plaintiffs on the grounds that the segregated schools were manifestly
unequal with Black schools housed in substandard building with restricted
budgets that impacted education quality.
According to notes, the
Justices were split as the case moved forward.
Four members, William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Harold Burton, and Sherman Minton were described as
“predisposed” to overturn segregation. Fred
Vinton was leery to act in the absence of action by Congress to
outlaw segregation. Stanley Reed
cited States’ Rights in opposition to Federal action and seemed to
regard segregation as a positive benefit to Blacks. Tom Clark wrote
that, “we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let
them work it out.” Two of the most respected legal scholars on the Court, Felix
Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson were personally opposed to
segregation but were skittish about “judicial activism.”
The makeup and temper of the Court changed dramatically as the case moved
forward when Vinton died and Earl Warren of California was
appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower as the new Chief
Justice. Warren made a majority in
favor of overturning the Kansas law.
Attorneys George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund, and James Nabrit
congratulate each other, following Brown
v Board of Education decision
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Realizing the impact of the decision, the majority members spent a great
deal of time bringing around their dubious colleagues. They felt that anything less than a unanimous
decision would result in years of doubt and instability. One by one, they won over the doubters based
largely on Marshall’s arguments. In the
end, they achieved a unanimous decision that left no doubt where the
Court stood.
Topeka schools, which had only been segregated on the elementary level
anyway, easily adapted without much in the way of opposition. But across the South, the alarm was high and
the angry voices of defiance heard loudly.
The decision made bold front page headlines not only in Topeka but in newspapers North and South.
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Virginia Senator Harry
F. Byrd, Sr. organized the Massive Resistance Movement across his state in
which public schools shut down entirely rather than face integration. In other states white fled the schools and
established private academies.
With only Black and Whites too poor to afford the private schools left
in the public system, they were starved of state and local tax funds.
In 1957 President Eisenhower had to mobilize the 101st Airborne
Division to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central
High School when Gov. Oval Faubus tried to use the state National
Guard to block Black students. As
late as 1963 Alabama Governor George Wallace “stood in the door” of the University
of Alabama to defend segregation. He
was moved aside by his own National Guard, which had been federalized by Lyndon
Johnson.
Northerners who smugly assumed that all the brouhaha was isolated in the
South were shocked when their own school systems were sued and desegregation
orders, including “forced busing” was applied to them. Boston saw ugly resistance through the
‘60’s into the early ‘70’s.
Today schools are generally desegregated, although decisions to limit
bussing have allowed more schools in racially isolated areas to become de
facto single race. Whites still shun
public schools across much of the South and flee majority Black urban school
districts in the North for White exurbs.
And a new generation of conservative judicial activists openly talks
about reverting to the Plessy v. Ferguson
standard. Yet even the most hide bound
conservative on the Supreme Court today would be hard pressed to overturn that
unanimous 1954 decision.
Three cheers for judicial activism when it counted!
Wondering about the caption of woman and child on Supreme Course steps - I've been trying to verify the identities - do you have reference for this being Brown ? Can't seem to find any reference to the original photographer.
ReplyDeleteI found the photo in a Google image search and the original caption. It Identified Brown and her daughter. Unfortunately, I don't remember the source.
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