On May 17, 1954 a unanimous decision by the United
States Supreme Court overturned 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.
Before 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 an 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 at 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 buildings with restricted budgets that
impacted education quality.
Although lead plaintiffs the Browns are best remembered, the case was consolidated with others from three states and the District of Columbia. In Virginia 15-year old Barbara Rose Johns was deeply involved in all of the planning for her challenge to school segregation. She is memorialized, center, in the Capitol Square Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond.
Arguing for the NAACP was Thurgood Marshal. Defending the Board of Education, somewhat reluctantly—and some claim less than diligently—was Kansas Assistant Attorney General
Paul Wilson.
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.
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.
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.
Not only was school integration bitterly opposed across the South for more than a decade, it was also fiercely protested in the North when it was applied to the de facto segregation created by discriminatory housing patterns.
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!
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