50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

The Brown v. Board of Education Decision—50 Years Later

Pictured in this 1954 handout photo is Louis Redding, center, on the steps of the Supreme Court Building, in Washington, D.C., with other NAACP attorneys who argued the school segregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education. From left are, Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall, Louis Redding and U. Simpson Tate. (AP/WWP Courtesy of the NAACP)

By Michael J. Friedman
IIP Staff Writer

Introduction

This year, 2004, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. This landmark decision declared unconstitutional state statutes that required the segregation of public schools by race. It thus extended federal power to education, an area traditionally controlled by states and localities. Brown also signaled a new determination to interpret more broadly the Constitution’s promise of equality before the law and began an era of active federal intervention to defend and guarantee the civil rights of all Americans.

The United States Constitution (annotated text; historical essay), adopted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, established a decentralized "federalist" system where all powers not specifically assigned to the new central government at Washington were reserved for the states and the people. Since the enumerated federal powers did not encompass education, the public schools became primarily a state and local responsibility, with those governments controlling public school funding and curricula. This tradition contributed to a close identification between schools and their surrounding neighborhoods.

The practice of slavery was another matter left to state law. Abolished in Northern states by the early 19th century, this "peculiar institution," as the Founding Fathers called it, continued in the South, where a plantation-based economy prevailed. After the Civil War of 1861–65, the Constitution was amended to forbid slavery (Thirteenth Amendment, ratified 1865) and to strengthen legal protection for the newly freed slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified 1868) forbade states, among other restrictions, from "deny[ing] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." When many Southern states subsequently moved to impose segregation—limiting each race to its own "separate but equal" public facilities and schools—the Fourteenth Amendment posed a potential obstacle. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1897), the Supreme Court ruled instead that "Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation [of the races]… do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other." Segregation, in other words, did not deprive African-Americans of equal protection.

The Brown decision reversed Plessy in 1954. It held that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," invalidated as contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment state laws mandating school segregation, and began an era of federal efforts to ensure equal educational opportunity for all Americans.

From Plessy to Brown: Race and Education

"Separate but equal" was never very equal in practice. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, for instance, per pupil expenditures during the 1949–50 school year averaged $179 for white students but only $43 for blacks. The county’s 2,375 white students attended school in buildings valued at approximately $674,000 while 6,541 black students were crammed into schools appraised only at $195,000, in part because many of their schools lacked heating and indoor plumbing. Teachers in these black schools were paid one-third less than their counterparts in white schools, while white students received free bus transportation to school and black students were obliged to walk. By mid-century, some 40 percent of American students attended segregated schools, whether by law or de facto (actual, but not legally condoned). In some areas the disparities between their purportedly "equal" facilities were greater even than in Clarendon County.

The legal challenge to school segregation was led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Founded in 1909 as an interracial coalition devoted to improving the plight of African-Americans, the organization had by 1939 established its Legal Defense and Education Fund, and named Thurgood Marshall its Director and Chief Counsel. Building on earlier legal challenges argued by NAACP Chief Legal Counsel Charles Hamilton Houston, Marshall won a number of court victories against segregation in graduate education, where the lack of black institutions made it difficult for segregation advocates to argue that they had provided separate, let alone equal, facilities.

Linda Brown Smith, 9, is shown in this 1952 photo. Smith was a 3rd grader when her father started a class-action suit in 1951 of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., which led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision against school segregation. (AP Photo)

The Brown case itself was filed in 1951 on behalf of the Reverend Oliver Brown, a Topeka, Kansas welder whose daughter Linda was required to attend a black school 21 blocks from her house when a white school was only 7 blocks away. The lawsuit was later consolidated with similar cases from other states, and argued before the Supreme Court by Marshall in 1952 and 1953.

The Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 issued a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Where 19th century decisions like Plessy had parsed narrowly the Fourteenth Amendment, the Brown court looked instead to the impact of segregation. As Warren wrote:

to separate them [African-American schoolchildren] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone…. 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 which they would receive in a racially integrated school system.

From these findings, the Court reached its decision: "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… [have been] deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment." The ruling, the Washington Post editorialized, "affords all Americans an occasion for pride and gratification."

Enforcing Brown

Ending De Jure Segregation

Brown did not end "de jure" (according to law) school segregation overnight, but it did put the law on the side of those who fought to integrate the public schools. In 1955, the Supreme Court revisited the issue, issuing an opinion often called "Brown II." Here the Court assigned the lower federal courts responsibility for enforcing its earlier decision, instructing them to desegregate the schools "with all deliberate speed."

Some states were determined to resist the Brown rulings. A key turning point occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas. When the federal court there ordered the placement of African-American students in an all-white high school, Governor Orval E. Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent their enrollment. On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded with an address to the nation in which he warned:

The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts, even, when necessary with all the means at the President’s command.

Unless the President did so, anarchy would result.

There would be no security for any except that which each one of us could provide for himself.

The interest of the nation in the proper fulfillment of the law’s requirements cannot yield to opposition and demonstrations by some few persons.

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

Eisenhower dispatched Army units to Little Rock and placed the National Guard under federal command. He ordered both to implement the court order by enforcing the black students’ lawful right to attend the previously all-white school.

Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, similarly applied the full power of the federal government to enforce school desegregation, most notably at the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama. Kennedy’s reasoning, in a speech delivered on September 30, 1962, was similar to Eisenhower’s:

Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law—but not to disobey it. For in a government of laws, and not of men, no man—however prominent or powerful—and no mob—however unruly or boisterous—is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long defy the commands of our courts and Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors. . . .

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically authorized the Attorney General of the United States to file lawsuits to force school desegregation. With the federal government prepared to enforce Brown, the end of de jure school segregation was inevitable. Brown marked the indispensable turning point. Once the Supreme Court applied the Constitutional "equal protection of the laws" requirement to school segregation, the practice could not long survive. Today no American child attends a legally segregated school. Brown thus represents the belated but very real triumph of equality before the law.

Combating De Facto Segregation

While we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Brown and the end of legally sanctioned de jure school segregation, many students still attend de facto segregated schools. The causes of de facto segregation vary and are complex. Unquestionably racism and the lingering effects of past racism play a role. So too do housing patterns. In both North and South, racial and ethnic groups often cluster in their own neighborhoods. For some, this is a matter of choice; for others a matter of economics, and in some cases informal (and at times formal, if illegal) discrimination.

Even though local control and financing of public schools predates segregation, it is another source of educational inequality. Because most American municipalities raise the bulk of their revenues by taxing real property (land plus improvements), those where property is more highly valued can devote greater resources to their public schools. Many Americans believe that quality schools in turn enhance the value of their homes, the single largest asset most will ever own. Less affluent Americans reside disproportionately in less af.uent communities, and hence disproportionately attend less generously funded schools. Often these schools lag in academic achievement.

States and municipalities have employed a number of strategies to combat de facto segregation. Some have proved more successful than others. The record today re.ects substantial but still incomplete progress. One desegregation strategy was to assign students to schools outside their own neighborhoods. Because this could require the transport of students by bus, this approach was commonly known as "busing." Most prevalent during the 1970s, busing programs were typically established by court order and proved controversial with many parents. Busing opponents acted from several motives. Some parents were unwilling to send their own children to what they perceived as inferior schools, while others opposed long bus rides and wanted their children to attend their neighborhood school. Because they proved politically divisive, courts rarely order new busing programs today.

Recent desegregation techniques have proved more successful. Some districts have created magnet schools. These typically offer special programs not available in other schools. Because they are open to voluntary enrollment of students from every neighborhood within a school district, magnet schools can promote diversity. A few jurisdictions have adopted voucher programs. These typically allot parents a credit redeemable against tuition at the school of their choice. President George W. Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" initiative supports and extends a number of state programs that allow some parents to transfer their children from underperforming to better performing public schools. Both of these programs assume that the risk of losing students will force underachieving schools to improve. Other measures focus instead on how schools are financed. Many states have assumed from their municipalities a greater share of education costs. This tends to equalize school funding, particularly in states whose courts have ordered a move away from property taxes as the primary method of school support.

Conclusion

In 1954, the public schools of Prince Edward County, Virginia, were completely segregated. Black residents filed a legal action and their case became one of those consolidated into the Brown litigation. Today, according to Time magazine, Prince Edward’s public schools have achieved a level of integration far above the national average, and the students' test scores are rising. This achievement is Brown’s legacy, as are similar success stories throughout the land. Legally sanctioned de jure school segregation no longer exists. America’s progress in overcoming the many legacies of racism contributes to the reduction of de facto segregation. Americans continue to apply creative strategies and look forward to the end even of this less formal legacy of our past. Today U.S. schools welcome young people of ever more diverse origins and backgrounds, and seek to educate them all.