DRED SCOTT
America in 1857 was, as Kenneth Stampp put it, "a Nation on the Brink." [2] Relationships between the Northern and Southern states had been strained for decades, but during the 1840's and especially the 1850's, the situation exploded. The Compromise of 1850 served as a clear warning that the slavery issue, relatively dormant since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, had returned. As territories carved out of the Mexican cessions of 1848 applied for statehood, they stirred a passionate and often violent debate over the expansion of the South's "peculiar institution." Proslavery and antislavery forces clashed frequently and fatally in "Bleeding Kansas," while the presidential election of 1856 turned ugly when southern states threatened secession if a candidate from the antislavery Republican party won. Into this charged atmosphere stepped a black slave from Missouri named Dred Scott.
Integration
Plessy v. Ferguson ushered in an era of increased discrimination towards blacks. The decision's "separate but equal" doctrine provided justification for segregation in public facilities across the country, including schools. The doctrine stood almost unchallenged for nearly fifty years, until a series of decisions questioning the constitutionality of segregation in institutions of higher learning.
One of the early segregation cases was Sweatt v. Painter. Herman Sweatt was a black who wanted to attend the University of Texas Law School. The law school denied him admission solely because of his race. Texas had set up another law school for blacks, but Sweatt argued that the black school was not equal to the white school. Indeed, it wasn't; it was not as large and, because it was newer, it did not have as good a reputation. Sweatt took his case to the Supreme Court. In 1950, the Court ruled in favor of Sweatt and forced the University of Texas Law School to admit him.
A slightly different segregation case was McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. Oklahoma State University admitted G.W. McLaurin, a black citizen of the state, because the black state colleges did not have comparable programs. The university, however, forced McLaurin to sit in isolated seats in the classrooms, library, and cafeteria. [1] McLaurin argued that this policy was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous decision.
These two decisions had a substantial impact on later segregation cases. Speaking for a unanimous Court in Sweatt v. Painter, Chief Justice Vinson wrote:
"With such a substantial and significant segment of society excluded, we cannot conclude that the education offered [Mr. Sweatt] is substantially equal to that which he would receive if admitted to the University of Texas Law school." [2]
In a New York Times article on the decision, Benjamin Fine noted:
"[Chief Justice Vinson's] statement was immediately seized upon by those who are opposed to the segregation policy. They saw in it an opening wedge that might lead to the final and complete overthrow of all educational segregation in the South. For, they argued, under this interpretation, it would be utterly impossible for any Negro college or university, no matter how adequately equipped or financed, to provide 'equal' opportunities to the Negro student." [3]
This proved to be the case in later Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education. Sweatt and McLaurin contributed to the Brown decision by providing an early precedent saying that "separate but equal" was not neccessarily true in education. They also provided a different interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution than the one used in Plessy v. Ferguson, which served as the precedent until these decisions. In Plessy, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require "social comingling of the races;" in McLaurin, it ruled that isolating McLaurin from the rest of the student body because of race denied him equal protection of the law and therefore violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Sweatt took into account both tangible and intangible inequalities between the white and black law schools; Plessy did not consider the intangible factors. By providing a newer interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment than that of Plessy, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education paved the way for later Supreme Court decisions on desegregation of public schools.
LITTLE ROCK
Although most school districts at least attempted to integrate following the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, some school districts, particularly those in the Deep South, actively avoided desegregation. One of the most famous cases involved Little Rock's Central High School, where Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus joined local whites in resisting integration by dispatching the Arkansas National Guard to block the nine black students from entering the school. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by sending federal troops to protect the students. The crisis in Little Rock showed America that the president could and would enforce court orders with federal troops. When eight of the nine black students successfully completed the school year, they showed America that black students could and would endure the intense hatred that racist white students could dump on them. It was a big step towards integration and an important one, even though it caused nine brave teenagers unspeakable pain.
After the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Little Rock school board accepted the fact that it had to integrate and began working on an integration plan. The school board was not particularly happy about having to integrate, however, and it took three years to work out a minimalistic plan. [1] The plan called for integration in three phases. In the first phase, during the 1957-1958 school year, the senior high schools (grades 10-12) would be integrated. The junior high schools (grades 7-9) would be integrated after successful integration at the senior high level, followed by the elementary schools (grades 1-6). [2]
As the 1957-1958 school year drew near, the board began to plan for integration at the senior high level. It opted to continue operating Horace Mann, the black high school, while admitting only a few blacks to all-white Central High. The board selected 17 black students who had volunteered to attend Central, based mostly on their grades. As the end of August drew near, the number dwindled down to nine.
These nine students faced adversity well before the opening of the school year. Whites went to court in an attempt to acquire an injunction which would delay the start of integration. On August 27, 1957, Mrs. Clyde A. Thomason filed suit in Chancery Court. Mrs. Thomason, a member of the anti-integration Mothers League of Little Rock Central High School (a group that included few actual parents of Central High students), testified that "she had been told that the mothers were terrified to send their children to Central because of a rumor that the white and Negro youths were forming gangs and some of them were armed with guns and knives." [3] Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus backed up Mrs. Thomason's claims, although neither cited their source. Judge Murray O. Reed granted the injunction, but Federal Judge Ronald N. Davies later overruled it, ordering the school board to continue with integration.
The students faced opposition from not only the white community but the black community as well. Melba Pattillo, a 15-year-old who was one of the nine, remembered a confrontation with a black adult at church one Sunday:
"I was startled when a woman I'd seen often enough but didn't really know began lecturing me. For a moment I feared she was going to haul off and hit me. She was beside herself with anger. I could barely get my good morning in because she was talking very loud, attracting attention as she told me I was too fancy for my britches and that other people in our community would pay for my uppity need to be with white folks." [4]
Despite the opposition, the nine students prepared to enter Central High on September 3, 1957.
On September 2, 1957, the day before the nine black students were to enter Central High, National Guardsmen surrounded the school. In a televised speech that night, Governor Orval Faubus explained that he had called the National Guardmen because he had heard that white supremacists from all over the state were descending on Little Rock. He declared Central off-limits to blacks and Horace Mann, the black high school, off-limits to whites. He also proclaimed that if the black students attempted to enter Central, "blood would run in the streets." [5]
The black students did not attend the first day of school. Early on Wednesday, September 4, Daisy Bates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who was helping out the nine, called to tell them that they were to meet a few blocks away from the school and walk in together. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine, did not have a phone. She never received the message and attempted to enter the school alone through the front entrance. An angry mob met her, threatening to lynch her, as the Arkansas National Guard looked on. Fortunately, two whites stepped forward to aid her, and she escaped without injury. The other eight were also denied admittance by the National Guard, under orders from Governor Faubus. [6]
On September 20, Judge Ronald N. Davies granted NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton an injunction that prevented Governor Faubus from using the National Guard to deny the nine black students admittance to Central High. Faubus announced that he would comply with the court order, although he hoped that the black students would choose to stay away from Central until integration could occur without violence. [7]
On Monday, September 23, the nine black students, often called "The Little Rock Nine" set off for Central High. Meanwhile, the mob outside the school beat several black reporters there to cover the event. The reporters were saved when word came that the black students had entered the school. The mob went crazy. Mothers yelled to their children, "Come out! Don't stay in there with those niggers!" [8] Inside the school, the black students became the brunts of various jokes. White students spat on them, tripped them, and yelled insults. More serious problems were to come. By 11:30, the city police surrounding the school felt that they could no longer control the mob. The students had to leave the school through a rear entrance.
Asked to describe the situation in Little Rock that night, the editor of the Arkansas Gazette stated, "I'll give it to you in one sentence. The police have been routed, the mob is in the streets and we're close to a reign of terror." [9]
To ensure that the Little Rock Nine could complete a full day of classes, President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock. The 101st patrolled outside the school and escorted the black students into the school. In addition, the black students were assigned a personal guard from the 101st who followed them around the school. Still, they were subjects of unspeakable hatred. White students yelled insults in the halls and during class. They beat up the black students, particularly the boys. They walked on the heels of the blacks until they bled. They destroyed the black students' lockers and threw flaming paper wads at them in the bathrooms. They threw lighted sticks of dynamite at Melba Pattillo, stabbed her, and sprayed acid in her eyes. The acid was so strong that had her 101st guard not splashed water on her face immediately, she would have been blind for the rest of her life.
Gradually, the 101st Airborne left Central High and the black students were left to fend for themselves. By the time Christmas rolled around, they were certainly ready for a vacation. Unfortunately, vacation did not come soon enough for Minnijean Brown, who dumped her lunch tray over the heads of two boys who had been taunting her on December 17th. Even though the boys said that they "didn't blame her for getting mad" after all the insults she had endured over the course of the year, Minnijean was suspended for six days. [10] She was "[r]einstated on probation [on] January 13, 1958, with the agreement that she would not retaliate, verbally or physically, to any harassment but would leave the matter to the school authorities to handle." [11] But she was expelled in February after she called a girl who was provoking her "white trash." The whites in the school were jubilant, making up cards that said, "One down...eight to go!"
It was not to be. The other eight all finished the school year. In May, despite numerous protests and under the watchful eye of 125 federalized Arkansas National Guardsmen, Ernest Green became the first black graduate of Central High, the sole minority student in his 602-member class. [12]
As Ernest Green graduated from Central High, segregationists in Arkansas geared up to prevent the other seven students from doing the same. Once again, the Little Rock School Board asked for an injunction delaying integration until 1961. Although the injunction was initially granted, it was overturned by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 1958. The reversal was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on September 12, 1958. The highest court in the land had told Little Rock that it must integrate.
But Governor Faubus had other plans. After he learned of the Supreme Court decision, he signed a package of segregation bills that had been passed by the Arkansas State Legislature in August, including a bill that granted him the power to shut down the public schools in any part of the state. He then proceeded to close down all four of Little Rock's public high schools, stating, "If Daisy Bates [an NAACP leader] would find an honest job and go to work, and if the U.S. Supreme Court would keep its cotton-picking hands off the Little Rock School Board's affairs, we could open the Little Rock [public] schools!" [13]
Meanwhile, the families of the Little Rock Nine came under tremendous pressure. Three of their parents were fired or forced to resign from their jobs. Some of the families moved away. The five students who remained in Little Rock took correspondence courses from the University of Arkansas while they waited for the public schools to reopen.
Finally, in the summer of 1959, the act which Governor Faubus had used to shut down the schools was declared unconstitutional. He immediately began work on a new law to take its place, but to avoid it, the school board opened the Little Rock high schools early, on August 12th. The only two black students assigned to Central High were both members of the original Little Rock Nine, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls; three other black students were assigned to the newer Hall High. Both Jefferson and Carlotta graduated that spring.
The crisis in Little Rock had a profound impact on America and the rest of the world. It provided indelible proof of the lengths to which some Southerners would go to prevent integration. It also showed African Americans that they could attain the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution if they made themselves heard, on the street and in the courtroom. "The lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and similar struggles in which Negroes, led by Negroes, successfully engaged in after Little Rock would possibly have taken place at some time in the future in any case," noted Daisy Bates. "But that these events occurred when they did is probably due more to the impact of Little Rock than to any other factor . . . . Events in history occur when the time has ripened for them, but they need a spark. Little Rock was that spark at that stage of the struggle of the American Negro for justice." [14]
On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond, and Ezell Blair, Jr., walked into an F.W. Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased some school supplies, then went to the lunch counter and asked to be served. They knew they probably would not be. The four freshmen at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College were black, and this lunch counter was segregated. Still, as one of the students told UPI, "We believe, since we buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we should get served in this part." [17] When they were forced to leave as the store closed, they still had not been served.
This first sit-in had very little effect. C.L. Harris, manager of the store, said of the students, "They can just sit there. It's nothing to me." [18] But when a larger group of students returned the next day, wire services picked up the story, and civil rights organizations began to spread the word to other college campuses. Gordon Carey, a representative from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), came down from New York to organize more sit-ins. Ella Baker of the SCLC contacted students on many college campuses. In two weeks, students in eleven cities held sit-ins, primarily at Woolworth's and S.H. Kress stores. Soon stores put signs in the window, saying "NO TRESPASSING," "We Reserve the Right to Service the Public As We See Fit," and "CLOSED - In the Interest of Public Safety." [19]
The basic plan of the sit-ins was that a group of students would go to a lunch counter and ask to be served. If they were, they'd move on to the next lunch counter. If they were not, they would not move until they had been. If they were arrested, a new group would take their place. The students always remained nonviolent and respectful. Students in Nashville had some "Do's" and "Don'ts" during sit-ins:
Do show yourself friendly on the counter at all times. Do sit straight and always face the counter. Don't strike back, or curse back if attacked. Don't laugh out. Don't hold conversations. Don't block entrances. Another part of the sit-ins was that the students would be dressed up in their best Sunday clothing. James J. Kilpatrick, the editor of the Richmond News Leader and an vehement segregationist, noted that this created an interesting contrast with the whites who came to harass them:
Here were the colored students, in coats, white shirts, ties, and one of them was reading Goethe and one was taking notes from a biology text. [The students often brought schoolbooks with them to sit-ins so they could study.] And here, on the sidewalk outside was a gang of white boys come to heckle, a ragtail rabble, slack-jawed, black-jacketed, grinning fit to kill, and some of them, God save the mark, were waving the proud and honored flag of the Southern States in the last war fought by gentlemen.
When Northern students heard of the movement, they decided to help their Southern counterparts by picketing local branches of chain stores that were segregated in the South. Martin Smolin, a Columbia student who led picketing at Woolworth's, explained, "People have asked me why northerners, especially white people, who have been in the majority in our picketing demonstrations in New York, take an active part in an issue which doesn't concern them. My answer is that injustice anywhere is everybody's concern." And when a reporter asked Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem if he was advocating that Negroes in New York stay out of national chain stores such as Woolworth's, he answered, "Oh no. I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy stay out of these stores." [21]
The first few weeks of sit-ins were fairly quiet. Blacks were not served, but they were not harassed much either. Then, on February 27, sit-in students in Nashville were attacked by a group of white teenagers. Police arrived, but they let the white teens go while arresting the protesters for "disorderly conduct." As each group of protesters was arrested, a new group would take its place. "No matter what they did and how many they arrested, there was still a lunch counter full of students there," explained Diane Nash, one of the leaders of the sit-in movement in Nashville. Z. Alexander Looby, a prominent black lawyer, represented the protesters in court; however, as he began his arguments, the judge literally turned his back. Looby stopped his argument and said, to the judge's back, "What's the use!" [22] The judge found the defendants guilty, and they were fined $150 plus court costs. A few days later, 63 protesters were arrested during sit-ins at Nashville's Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals.
Over Easter Weekend, Ella Baker of the SCLC helped organize a conference of sit-in students from around the nation. Held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the conference was dubbed the "Sacrifice for Dignity." Older organizations such as SCLC, CORE, and NAACP hoped that the students would create a youth organization inside of them. Baker, however, encouraged the students to form an independent organization. They formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") to lead the sit-in effort.
On April 19, Z. Alexander Looby's home was destroyed by a powerful dynamite blast. Looby was considered to be fairly conservative, so the bombing enraged not only the black community but many whites as well. 2,500 students and community members staged a silent march to City Hall that day. When they reached it, Mayor Ben West was waiting for them. Diane Nash asked him, "Do you feel it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race or color?" West said yes. He later explained, "It was a moral question -- one that a man had to answer, not a politician." Nashville merchants were somewhat relieved by West's answer. "The merchants were afraid to move on their own, were almost looking for an excuse to say `Well if that's what the mayor thinks, then maybe we ought to go ahead,'" explained Bernie Schweid. A few weeks later on May 10, six Nashville lunch counters began serving blacks. [23] The students in Nashville had won an important victory.
The sit-ins, however, were not over. By August 1961, they had attracted over 70,000 participants and generated over 3,000 arrests. [24] They continued in some areas of the South until and even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared segregation at lunch counters unlawful. In addition, the technique of the sit-ins was used to integrate other public facilities, such as movie theaters, and SNCC, the student group that rose out of the sit-ins, continued to be involved in the civil rights movement for many years. Perhaps most importantly, the sit-ins marked a change in the civil rights movement. In the words of journalist Louis Lomax, "They were proof that the Negro leadership class, epitomized by the NAACP, was no longer the prime mover in the Negro's social revolt. The demonstrations have shifted the desegregation battles from the courtroom to the marketplace." [25] They showed that nonviolent direct action and youth could be very useful weapons in the war against segregation.
In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) planned a "Journey of Reconciliation," designed to test the Supreme Court's 1946 decision in the Irene Morgan case, which declared segregated seating of interstate passengers unconstitutional. An interracial group of passengers met with heavy resistance in the upper South. Some members of the group served on a chain gang after their arrest in North Carolina. [27] The Journey of Reconciliation quickly broke down. Clearly the South, even the more moderate upper South, was not ready for integration.
Nearly a decade and a half later, John F. Kennedy was elected president, in large part due to widespread support among blacks who believed that Kennedy was more sympathetic to the civil rights movement than his opponent, Richard Nixon. Once in office, however, Kennedy proved less committed to the movement than he had appeared during the campaign. To test the president's commitment to civil rights, CORE proposed a new Journey of Reconciliation, dubbed the "Freedom Ride." The strategy was the same: an interracial group would board buses destined for the South. The whites would sit in the back and the blacks in the front. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-only areas and vice versa. "This was not civil disobedience, really," explained CORE director James Farmer, "because we [were] merely doing what the Supreme Court said we had a right to do." But the Freedom Riders expected to meet resistance. "We felt we could count on the racists of the South to create a crisis so that the federal government would be compelled to enforce the law," said Farmer. "When we began the ride I think all of us were prepared for as much violence as could be thrown at us. We were prepared for the possibility of death." [28]
The Freedom Ride left Washington DC on May 4, 1961. It was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision. Unlike the original Journey of Reconciliation, the Freedom Ride met little resistance in the upper South.
On Mother's Day, May 14, the Freedom Riders split up into two groups to travel through Alabama. The first group was met by a mob of about 200 angry people in Anniston. The mob stoned the bus and slashed the tires. The bus managed to get away, but when it stopped about six miles out of town to change the tires, it was firebombed. The other group did not fare any better. It was greeted by a mob in Birmingham, and the Riders were severely beaten. Birmingham's Public Safety Commissioner, Bull Conner, claimed he posted no officers at the bus depot because of the holiday; however, it was later discovered that the FBI knew of the planned attack and that the city police stayed away on purpose. Alabama governor John Patterson offered no apologies, explaining, "When you go somewhere looking for trouble, you usually find it . . . . You just can't guarantee the safety of a fool and that's what these folks are, just fools." [29]
Despite the violence, the Freedom Riders were determined to continue. Jim Peck, a white who had fifty stitches from the beatings he received, insisted, "I think it is particularly important at this time when it has become national news that we continue and show that nonviolence can prevail over violence." [30] The bus company, however, did not want to risk losing another bus to a bombing, and its drivers, who were all white, did not want to risk their lives. After two days of unsuccessful negotiations, the Freedom Riders, fearing for their safety, flew to New Orleans. It appeared that the Freedom Ride was over.
At that point, however, a group of Nashville sit-in students decided to go to Birmingham and continue the Freedom Ride. Diane Nash, who helped organize the group, later explained, "If the Freedom Riders had been stopped as a result of violence, I strongly felt that the future of the movement was going to be cut short. The impression would have been that whenever a movement starts, all [you have to do] is attack it with massive violence and the blacks [will] stop." [31] The Nashville students traveled to Birmingham and asked the bus company to let them use their buses. Attorney general Kennedy also leaned on the bus company and the Birmingham police. He was determined to enforce the Supreme Court's decision that called for integration of interstate travel, and he worried that if the Nashville students remained in Birmingham much longer, violence might erupt. On May 17, the Birmingham police arrested the Nashville Freedom Riders and placed them in protective custody. At 2 AM on Friday, the police drove the Riders back to Tennessee, dumping them by the side of the highway at the state line. After they got a ride back to Nashville, 100 miles away, they went right back to Birmingham.
Meanwhile, Governor Patterson agreed to meet with John Seigenthaler, a Justice Department aide and a native of Tennessee. In the meeting, Floyd Mann, head of the state highway patrol, agreed to protect the Freedom Riders in between Birmingham. Attorney General Robert Kennedy then pressured the Greyhound bus company, which finally agreed to carry the Riders. The Freedom Riders left Birmingham on Saturday, May 20. State police promised "that a private plane would fly over the bus, and there would be a state patrol car every fifteen or twenty miles along the highway between Birmingham and Montgomery -- about ninety miles," recalled Freedom Rider John Lewis. Police protection, however, disappeared as the Freedom Riders entered the Montgomery city limits. The bus terminal was quiet. "And then, all of a sudden, just like magic, white people everywhere," said Freedom Rider Frederick Leonard. [32] The Riders considered leaving by the back of the bus in hopes that the mob would not be quite as vicious. But Jim Zwerg, a white rider, bravely marched off the bus first. The other riders slipped off while the mob focused on pummeling Zwerg. Floyd Mann tried to stop the mob, but it continued to beat the Riders and those who came to their aid, such as Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street for nearly a half an hour after he stopped to help two Freedom Riders. Mann finally ordered in state troopers, but the damage was already done. When news of the Montgomery attack reached Washington, Robert Kennedy was not happy. He decided to send federal marshals to the city.
Martin Luther King, Jr., flew to Montgomery and held a mass meeting, surrounded by federal marshals, in support of the Freedom Riders. As night fell, a mob of several thousand whites surrounded the church. The blacks could not leave safely. At 3 AM, King called Robert Kennedy and Kennedy called Governor Patterson. Patterson declared martial law and sent in state police and the National Guard. The mob dispersed and the blacks left safely.
After the violence at the church, Robert Kennedy asked for a cooling-off period. The Freedom Riders, however, were intent on continuing. James Farmer explained, "[W]e'd been cooling off for 350 years, and . . . if we cooled off any more, we'd be in a deep freeze." The Riders decided to continue on to Mississippi. They were given good protection as they entered the state, and no mob greeted them at the Jackson bus terminal. "As we walked through, the police just said, `Keep moving' and let us go through the white side," recalled Frederick Leonard. "We never got stopped. They just said `Keep moving,' and they passed us right on through the white terminal into the paddy wagon and into jail." [33] Robert Kennedy and Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland had reached a compromise. Kennedy promised not to use federal troops if there was no mob violence. Both men kept up their end of the bargain. Unfortunately, the Freedom Riders were now at the mercy of the local courts. On May 25, they were tried. As their attorney defended them, the judge turned his back. Once the attorney finished, he turned around and sentenced them to 60 days in the state penitentiary.
More Freedom Riders arrived in Jackson to continue the Freedom Ride, and they were arrested too. Freedom Riders continued to arrive in the South, and by the end of the summer, more than 300 had been arrested.
The Freedom Riders never made it to New Orleans. Many spent their summer in jail. Some were scarred for life from the beatings they received. But their efforts were not in vain. They forced the Kennedy administration to take a stand on civil rights, which was the intent of the Freedom Ride in the first place. In addition, the Interstate Commerce Commission, at the request of Robert Kennedy, outlawed segregation in interstate bus travel in a ruling, more specific than the original Supreme Court mandate, that took effect in September, 1961. The Freedom Riders may not have finished their trip, but they made an important and lasting contribution to the civil rights movement.
In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was the norm across America. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts.
In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." [4] Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools. [5]
The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown's case from June 25-26, 1951. At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal. One of the expert witnesses, Dr. Hugh W. Speer, testified that:
"...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation." [6]
The Board of Education's defense was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood. The board also argued that segregated schools were not neccessarily harmful to black children; great African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver had overcome more than just segregated schools to achieve what they achieved. [7]
The request for an injunction put the court in a difficult decision. On the one hand, the judges agreed with the expert witnesses; in their decision, they wrote:
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. [8]
On the other hand, the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had overturned Plessy yet. Because of the precedent of Plessy, the court felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education. [9]
Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951 and their case was combined with other cases that challenged school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The Supreme Court first heard the case on December 9, 1952, but failed to reach a decision. In the reargument, heard from December 7-8, 1953, the Court requested that both sides discuss "the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868." [10] The reargument shed very little additional light on the issue. The Court had to make its decision based not on whether or not the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had desegregated schools in mind when they wrote the amendment in 1868, but based on whether or not desegregated schools deprived black children of equal protection of the law when the case was decided, in 1954. [11]
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous Court:
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. [12]
The Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools across America.
The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional. [13] It was a giant step towards complete desegregation of public schools. Even partial desegregation of these schools, however, was still very far away, as would soon become apparent.
On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but under Louisiana law, he was considered black and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states" [3] . In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana. He found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car [4] . Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which upheld Ferguson's decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy's case and found him guilty once again. Speaking for a seven-person majority, Justice Henry Brown wrote:
"That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the [Fourteenth A]mendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." [5]
The lone dissenter, Justice John Harlan, showed incredible foresight when he wrote
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution." [6]
Over time, the words of Justice Harlan rang true. The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. Not until 1954, in the equally important Brown v. Board of Education decision, would the "separate but equal" doctrine be struck down.
