Was the Court Right?

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You likely remember from your previous reading that the National Associate for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) staked its claim on impacting equality in the United States on challenging laws and placing their hope and faith in the courts. We often skip from the Plessey Decision (1896) to the Brown Decisions (1954 & 1956) to de�ne the pathway toward desegregation. But, to do so is an error. A major decision reached by the Supreme Court in 1944 was Smith v Allwright. Lonnie Smith sued Harris County Texas election supervisor, S.S. Allwright, because he was denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary because he was African-American.. The essence of the case was that the primary was as, if not more, important as the general election. And, that closing the election to Blacks really limited there voice in the ultimate selection of a public of�cial.

Thurgood Marshall represented Smith before the Supreme Court and argued that the Democratic Party denied Smith his Constitutional Rights under the 14th and 15th Amendments. Effectively, Marshall was challenging the part of the Plessey Decision that mandated that things had to be equal.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Marshall stating:

The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected of�cials without restriction by any state because of race. This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nulli�ed by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election.

It could be argued that this decision launched the Civil Rights Movement. Immediately following the Decision, African-American registrants. Marshall characterized the ruling of Smith as a giant milestone in the progress of Negro Americans toward full citizenship. At the same time, Marshall cautioned that the work of ridding the country of racial discrimination in voting and other areas was not complete and foreshadowed the ruling in Brown v. Bd. of Education:

The collapse of the white Democratic primary, despite fond hopes, has not resulted in full participation by all in the political life of the South. But the story of the struggle to overcome this barrier is particularly meaningful today. For, if nothing else, it indicates the fate which awaits the legal means which some of the Southern states have drafted to preserve segregated schools.

Then in 1954, the NAACP, argued by Charles Hamilton Houston (right) and Marshall (below, left), asserted that racial segregation violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law. Thirteen parents of black elementary students in Topeka public schools sued the Board of Education for their refusal to enroll the students into the closest neighborhood school, which was white. The District Courts ruled in favor of the Board citing the Plessy case. The lower court acknowledged that segregated education was detrimental to black students, however, because the facilities, transportation, curriculum, and quality of teachers were essentially equal (emphasis added), the Board was found harmless (District). The Court in the Plessy case had ruled, in essence, no circumstances existed to challenge precedent. It's known as stare decisis -- let stand that which has been decided.

Under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren (shown on the cover of Time magazine), the Supreme Court accepted the Brown case for review. There were two major tenets to the NAACP argument. The �rst was that the 14th Amendment precludes a state from imposing distinctions based upon race. The District Court ruling had validated this violation when they acknowledged segregated schooling was detrimental to black children.

The second and most convincing argument emphasized the long term psychological affect of segregation. Psychological studies

conducted by Kenneth & Mamie Clark (below, left) argued that segregation attached the stigma of inferiority to black children. The Doll Test presented 4 identical plastic dolls, with the exception of skin color, to black children between the ages of 3 and 7. The skin complexion of the dolls progressively lightened ranging from dark brown to white. These children were asked �rst to identify each doll and then to answer a series of questions, such as which doll was good, which was bad, which was pretty, which was ugly. According to the Clarks, the data from the tests showed that a majority of the black children tested favored the white dolls. [The Clark's] saw the data as indicative of the dehumanizing effects of racism.' They concluded that racial segregation created feelings of inferiority in black children that had adverse effects on both their self-esteem and ability to learn (Teacher's).

It took additional arguments, political wrangling, and nearly 18 months for the Court to reach its unanimous decision. In one of the most signi�cant decisions in the Court's history, the Court ruled: Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race...denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other tangible' factors of white and Negro schools may be equal. . in the �eld of public education the doctrine of separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal (Find Law). It was later in Brown II, that the court ordered the remedy to the �rst decision -- the desegregation of educational facilities progress with all deliberate speed.

To the order, communities across the nation responded, okay, then never. In 1962, eight years after Brown , it was observed that at the current pace, [Southern] schools [would] be completely desegregated in just a bit over SEVEN THOUSAND YEARS (emphasis added) (Payne, 2004). The process of picking up the pace to desegregate schools was hard fought and deadly. One of the most prominent examples is the story of the Little Rock Nine.

Boy were they mad! In 1955, the Little Rock school board unanimously agreed to desegregate the school district during the 1957-58 academic year. The possibility of Little Rock becoming the �rst Southern state capital to desegregate its schools was unacceptable. Membership of the Citizen Councils organized and vowed to deny entrance of the nine registered black students to the high schools.

To protect the protestors, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard. The situation needless to say escalated, forcing the silent and complacent President Dwight Eisenhower to respond. The Department of Justice ordered Faubus to withdraw the National Guard, which he promptly replaced with the local police force. Apparently at least one of the police of�cers was sympathetic to the 9 students and managed to sneak them into the school. When the white parents learned of the betrayal by the police, the tone of the protest became more and more threatening.

Escorted from the high school, the students returned two days later scared but con�dently and de�antly, under the protection of the United States Army, who remained in place until the end of the school year. Pressure from the Citizens' Council forced the school board to reverse its decision to desegregate the district and cancel the next two academic years. Just to stress the point, instead of allowing black teenagers to go to school with white teenagers, the white citizens of the Little Rock school district opted to halt the formal education of all of its students, black and white.

In the 20 years after Brown, both the South and the North saw the legal and forced desegregation of school districts. Court order after court order mandated that school districts achieve racial balance. Busing and the creation of magnet schools emerged as the means. By 1988, the national percentage of black students attending white schools reached its high of 44% (Paulson, 2004). During the 4 decades following Brown, school completion rates for blacks rose, higher test scores were reported, and the numbers of blacks enrolling and completing college degrees rose (Woodstock).

The Brown decision was the modern impetus for the 1960 phase of the Civil Rights Movement. From its immediate directive to force desegregation of schools people moved to tackle the same issue with all public facilities.