By: Megan Morris
Education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. It is the foundation of a good citizen; it is even included in the performance responsibilities of the public. It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms (Starr 343). We come then to the question presented to the Supreme Court in 1954: Does segregation of children in public schools based on race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the minority children of equal opportunity?
In the early 1950's, however, racial segregation in public schools was common in the United States. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most white schools were far superior to those of black students. It began with the Jim Crow Laws that segregated public transportation and buildings then it affected schools. The battle for the resolution of these problems was not fought by legislation, but in the courts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fighting for laws to set standards for integration of the races and eventually to the determent of them.
It began after the Compromise of 1877, where among other things, President Hayes recalled all federal troops stationed in the South when the white citizens of the North gradually turned their backs on the black citizens of the South. This began what was called the "Long Night of racial segregation" (Garraty 612). To keep control of the black population, the first step in segregation was to pass poll taxes, charging for voting so that blacks were unable to afford it. Some polls required literacy tests, which caused people who could not read or understand the reading to void their vote. Poll taxes and literacy tests did not violate the Fifteenth Amendment because they were not directly related to "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (Garraty 613). Another technique for segregation was the Grandfather clause. This clause established that poll taxes and literacy tests did not apply to persons who had been able to vote before 1867, or their children and later decedents. In 1875 a Civil Rights Act was passed that provided that "citizens of every race and color" were entitled to "the full and equal enjoyment" of hotels, trains and all "places of public amusement" (Garraty 614). After the Compromise of 1877, however, whites began to ignore this law. Eventually in 1881 Tennessee passed the first of the Jim Crow laws. Tennessee laws required blacks to ride in separate railroad cars, among other things. The passage of these laws opened doors for other Southern states as well. Florida followed suit in 1887 and Texas in 1889. These laws were extended to separation of the races in all places. After this, segregation became the rule in the South.
In fact, these segregation laws became the rule for the entire country, thanks to the landmark decision by the Supreme Court. In 1896 the Supreme Court heard case 163 U.S. 537, Plessy v. Ferguson. This case upheld the Fourteenth Amendment requiring segregation of the races in public transportation. It began when a light-skinned Louisiana black man, Homer Adolf Plessy, was arrested for riding in the portion of the train reserved for whites only. His defense argued that the law under which he was arrested was unconstitutional. However, the Court stated that under the "equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth amendment, a state could provide separate but equal facilities for blacks" (Plano 352). Unfortunately, the "separate but equal clause" was never entirely defined and no standards were set for the equality of the facilities. This ruling declared the Jim Crow laws legal in private establishments, but separate for public accommodations. For over half a century following the court's decision, the issue of "separate but equal" was settled.
The Plessy case served as justification for the segregation policies of many states until 1954. In 1951, the Supreme Court revisited this "separate but equal" clause but decided that while it may have applied to transportation, it did not for public education. However, this was only after the case worked its way through the courts. The case involved a little black girl named Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas. The child walked one mile through a dangerous railroad switch yard to go to a black elementary school every day. Seeing the unsafe conditions, her father Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in a white elementary school located only seven blocks away. The principal at this school refused to admit Linda to a white elementary school. Brown finally went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the NAACP and sought help for his daughter's situation. The NAACP was overjoyed with Brown's request. They had been waiting for a way to fight segregation in schools. Brown was "the right plaintiff at the right time" (Cozzens 1). Soon other parents joined the NAACP and the Browns in their battle for equality. By 1951 an injunction was requested that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.
The case was heard June 25 and 26, 1951, by the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, with one side arguing that it made the black children feel inferior and the other saying that segregation was a fact of life and the current method only helped them adjust. The NAACP argued that segregated schools sent a message that black children were inferior to white children, thereby making the schools subsequently unequal. An expert witness, Dr. Hugh W. Speer, testified that:
". . .if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent ninety 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" (Cozzins 1).
The Board of Education's only defense was that, because segregation was thought to be a fact of life, segregated schools made the transition to adulthood less painful and made the black children more aware and prepared for the environment at hand. They also argued that segregated schools were not harmful because 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 had.
The injunction request put the court in an awkward position because of the legality of the "separate but equal" clause. On one hand, it understood the idea that segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and caused a sense of inferiority that "affected the motivation of a child to learn" (Cozzin 1). Yet, the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had overturned it. Because of this precedent, the court felt compelled to rule in favor of the Board of Education.
Despite this disappointment, Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951. Their case was combined with other cases that also challenged school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The case was first heard December 9, 1952, but they failed to reach any decision. The reargument was heard on December 7, 1953. The Court asked both sides to discuss the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and the "separate but equal clause". The Court decided that these sources "cast some light, but it is not enough to resolve the problem" with which they were faced, "at best they are inconclusive" ("Education II" 2). When the case was decided in 1954, the Court did not have to decide whether or not the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 had meant desegregated schools, but whether or not desegregated schools deprived blacks students of equal protection of the law.
Finally, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous Court:
"Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system" (Education II 3).
Plessy v. Ferguson and the "separate but equal" doctrine was finally struck down for public education. Several months later, the Court placed upon local school authorities the responsibility for developing plans for the gradual integration of segregated schools. The Supreme Court also instructed the federal district courts to require the local school authorities to develop and carry out plans for integration "with all deliberate speed" (Starr 340). This decision, however, only affected the segregation of public schools and did not abolish the act in other public areas. It did declare that permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in twenty-one states unconstitutional. Today Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ranks among the most important in American constitutional history (Plano 336). Nevertheless, most minority students still attend schools with predominantly minority enrollments (Plano 337).
The Supreme Court had labored over the doctrine of "separate but equal" for more than fifty years when the 1954 decision was made. Since then, there have been six cases involving the doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528, and Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, the validity of the new doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in the fact that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Some of these court cases include: Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S.337; Sipuel v. Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629; and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (Education I 2). In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy should be held inapplicable to public education.
The Brown case also created a national-state relation and helped begin the civil rights movement that officially ended and enforced the ban on Jim Crow laws and the "separate but equal" doctrine. In 1964, a major enactment to erase racial discrimination in most areas of life was put into effect by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although this Act accomplished many things, there are three important changes to the American way of life: (1) outlawed discrimination in voter registration; (2) barred discrimination in public accommodations; and (3) authorized the national government to bring suits to desegregate public facilities and schools (Plano 363). It was the most far-reaching civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It was debated for eighty-three days in the Senate, the longest in its history. Title VI of the Act, which "authorizes the cutoff of federal funds to state and local programs practicing discrimination" (Plano 364), proved to be the most effective provision of the Act. For example, a dramatic jump in southern school integration took place when the national government threatened to withhold federal funds from schools failing to comply with desegregation orders. Decisions like these initiated a social revolution, since supported by major national Civil Rights Acts and by state and local legislation.
Even today such laws insure that racial discrimination is prohibited, but is it still what the people of the nineties want? A very recent study preformed in 1998 by the Public Agenda found attitudes on integration anony parents of both races'. Surprisingly, parents thought that "school integration is a good idea but hardly worth the trouble it brings" (Green 1). They would rather focus attention on high standards and tough discipline in their schools. It found a "lack of passion for integration" from both races and although it is an "attractive ideal," black and white parents both believe its "implementation comes with serious downside, and uncertain gains" (Green 1). More shockingly, 61 percent of white parents said an influx of a large number of black students would probably cause more social problems, cause more discipline or safety problems or cause test scores and reading levels to drop because they saw the issues in terms of class. They admit it is not the student's race, but the "socioeconomic status of their families that concerns them" (Green 2).
Racial and ethnic prejudice has existed as long as humankind has and is particularly malevolent because of this country's slave holding past. Shelby Steele was noted as saying:
"It is better to see integration as the inclusion of all citizens into the same sphere of rights . . . that our Founding Fathers themselves enjoyed" (Cozic 201).
The fabric of America was changed by the genius of the civil rights movement. It made clear in the early 1950s and 1960s that to profoundly understand the enemy you must know that it is not the ideal America, but the limitation of the unspoken principle of true democracy that they were entitled too. In addition, the integration process is also certainly about racial harmony, but more fundamentally about the extension of democracy. The idea of racial integration is quite simply the most democratic principle America has evolved, since all other principles depend upon its reality and are diminished by its absence (Cozic 203).
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