Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Civil Rights

 

The Brown Decision and the Legal End of Separate but Equal

Along with the ACLU, the NAACP pioneered special-interest litigation as a means of realizing goals that it could not attain through the regular political process. This strategy became a model for women's, environmental, consumer, and other groups beginning during the 1960s. Organized litigation in the federal courts was not new, but the NAACP developed it to a high art, deploying the lawyers of the Legal Defense Fund to argue the most promising cases. The entire point of the strategy was to bring cases before the Supreme Court that would create a beachhead from which the NAACP could expand its attack on legal segregation and overturn its lynchpin, the doctrine of separate but equal announced in Plessy v. Ferguson ( 1986).

During the 1940s, the NAACP scored significant victories. In the area of voting discrimination, for example, it won a particularly important decision from the high court in Smith v. Allright ( 1944), which outlawed the all-white party primary. Local southern officials quickly devised registration techniques that reduced black voter turnout. The NAACP lawyers also successfully hacked away at separate but equal, winning two important cases in higher education, Sweatt v. Painter ( 1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents ( 1950). The strategy of the Legal Defense Fund lawyers in these cases was to stay within the confines of separate but equal, but to expand the doctrine so fully that it would cease to have meaning. The counsel of the NAACP argued that separate but equal should take into account the reputation of the faculty that served blacks, the companionship of one's peers, the quality of the library, and the access of students to the best minds in the class. The Court found that practices such as requiring black students to eat in a roped-off area and to study in a separate part of the library violated separate but equal. The Court added in Sweatt that inadequate facilities for blacks were unacceptable. These decisions left segregation intact, but they eroded the legal position of segregationists.

The NAACP leadership changed in 1950. Following the death of Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall took charge of directing the campaign against segregation. Marshall made the momentous decision to abandon the strategy of gradually expanding separate but equal into irrelevance in favor of a direct assault. Such a strategy seems, in

-322-

retrospect, to have been clear enough and not particularly dangerous. At the time, however, there was profound disagreement within the NAACP ranks as well as among the justices about whether the Court would abandon a precedent that had such great social importance and, in any case, whether it was the institution to tackle the job.

The NAACP took the risk and won. Marshall started litigation in four states and the District of Columbia that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ( 1954), which consolidated the state cases along with Bolling v. Sharpe ( 1954), which applied to the District of Columbia. The cases had originally been argued in 1953, but they were held over for reargument because the justices could not agree about how to proceed. In one of those curious turns of historical fate, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who resisted the NAACP's strategy, died and was replaced by Earl Warren. The new chief justice's leadership, combined with the legal arguments of Thurgood Marshall, proved decisive.



Marshall confronted John W. Davis at the bar of the Supreme Court. Davis was a West Virginian, distinguished corporate lawyer, and a former ABA president who had steadfastly opposed racial integration of the association. Marshall addressed his brief in Brown to more than just the inequities fostered in black schools, arguing that as a matter of history and sociology the Court should decide against separate but equal. Marshall asserted that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had not intended to permit segregation and he produced evidence gathered by social psychologist Kenneth Clark that showed that black children educated in segregated schools had low self- esteem. Davis countered by asserting that the history of the Fourteenth Amendment revealed that its framers were supportive of segregation and that Marshall's social scientific arguments were irrelevant, because the Court was bound to consider only the law. The appropriate standard by which to judge separate but equal, Davis concluded, was whether the states were providing equal funding and physical facilities for blacks, something that he argued (incorrectly) was true. The arguments produced among the lawyers were a microcosm of the clash between a realist and strictly doctrinal approach to constitutional law.

Chief Justice Warren wanted to end segregation, but he had two concerns. First, he knew that the fullest possible public support for the decision depended on fostering the fullest possible agreement among the justices. Second, Warren concluded that the historical and sociological arguments were not dispositive and that resting the decision on them would only invite controversy. These two matters converged into one, because if the Court could broaden the ground upon which it could stand, the possibilities of public acceptance would increase. What Warren hoped to avoid was any nitpicking legal exchanges that would simply give ammunition to the supporters of separate but equal.

"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race . . . deprive the children of the minority groups of equal education opportunities?" Warren asked. He concluded that it did, but he rejected both sociology and history as authoritative. Warren's substantive liberalism showed through. The unanimous opinion found that the doctrine of "separate but equal had no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . . . Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to these findings is rejected." 33 The justices did not overturn Plessy, however; instead they left the decision in place, sweeping it into irrelevance while avoiding further annoyance to southern sentiment. Nor did the justices provide a remedy; they merely

-323-

announced their findings and directed the NAACP to present them with separate briefs about the remedy to be ordered.

The following year the justices heard Brown II. The Court remanded the cases back to the federal district courts, directing that the principles enunciated in Brown I were to be implemented with "all deliberate speed." 34 This ambiguous phrase reflected concern on the part of the Court that too rapid change in the South would prove disruptive and damage the credibility of the original Brown ruling. The strategy was to grant federal district court judges discretion in finding the most appropriate ways within each community to bring an end to segregation with the least social upheaval. The unhappy phrase, however, made it easier for opponents of the decision to obstruct its implementation.

The Brown decisions were milestones in the legal history of American race relations, the use of judicial power by the Supreme Court, and in the possibilities of effecting social change through a well-conceived litigation strategy. All of these lessons became a part of the contemporary legal culture, contributing to a growing sense of rights consciousness. But the law in action and the law on the books proved. difficult to reconcile. Southerners committed to legal segregation did not change their ideas or their habits once the Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional. Moreover, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the transition to a new era of race relations all the more difficult by his halting national leadership.

 


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 755


<== previous page | next page ==>
The Bill of Rights and the Accused | Reaction and Counterreaction: The Post-Brown Movement for Black Civil Rights
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.007 sec.)