Resolution
1954 Decision |
Illinois Commission on the 50th Anniversary Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka : When talk show host Oprah Winfrey recently celebrated her 50th birthday, she gave thanks to God for letting her be born in 1954-the same year in which the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and, in doing so, heralded the end of de jure segregation, or the legally mandated segregation in education and of public facilities. All African-Americans, whether we were born in that fateful year or not, should be grateful for the Brown decision and for the impact it has had on our civil rights and quality of life. The people now known as African-Americans have been described by a number of monikers over the years; Negro, Colored and Black are among the more polite labels that have been used to classify our ethnicity. Likewise, our status in society has undergone a number of transitions. The first Africans were brought to Jamestown , Virginia , in 1619 aboard a Dutch ship. They were the first blacks to be forced to provide involuntary labor in what is now the United States of America . In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to make slavery legal by statute. On July 2, 1777 , Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery. On July 13, 1787 , the Continental Congress outlawed slavery in the region northwest of the Ohio River via the Northwest Ordinance. In September of that same year, the Framers reinforced black inferiority by allowing a male slave to be counted as three-fifths of a man for the purpose of apportionment of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Constitution. On January 5, 1804 , the Ohio legislature passed "Black Laws" that restricted the legal rights of free Blacks. These laws were part of a trend toward imposing increasingly severe restrictions on Blacks in the North and South prior to the Civil War, and were a precursor to the "Black Codes" and Jim Crow rules that eventually emerged. A federal law banning the importation of African slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808 , though it was largely ignored-with the notable exception of the Amistad case. It would still be more than a half century before slavery would be legally abolished. On March 6, 1857 , the Supreme Court descended to its nadir when it handed down the Dred Scott decision, ruling that Blacks were not citizens of the United States and denying Congress the authority to prohibit or limit slavery in any federal territory. On New Year's Day, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared free all slaves in states in rebellion against the United States . Two years later, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery for good. Three years after that, the Fourteenth Amendment made Blacks citizens of the United States . It would be two more years before the Fifteenth Amendment would give Blacks the right to vote in 1870. It seemed as if Blacks were finally making some headway towards equality. Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill banning discrimination in places of public accommodation in 1875. But by the time the Supreme Court overturned the bill in 1883, it was more than clear that free was far from equal. When the Court delivered its ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, adopting the infamous and malignant "separate but equal" doctrine, it paved the way for the nefarious Jim Crow laws and way of life that relegated the vast majority of Black Americans to being free in name only. An outgrowth of the Black Codes that were enforced in 1865 and 1866, Jim Crow laws were the basis for a caste system that became a way of life for African Americans from Reconstruction to the late 1960s. Fortified by the "expertise" of craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists and Social Darwinists, among others, segregationists purported that Blacks were predestinated by God to be servants and that Blacks were inferior to Whites in every way. This provided the justification for their largely successful efforts to restrict and control practically every aspect of the lives of Black Americans. Under the Jim Crow system, Blacks sat in separate train cars; were restricted to riding at the back of buses; used separate restrooms; drank from separate water fountains; and were only allowed to enter through the back door-that is, when they were allowed to enter at all. That was just the tip of the iceberg under Jim Crow laws, the tentacles of Jim Crow went far beyond merely requiring Blacks to use separate facilities from those used by Whites; Jim Crow laws sought to thoroughly prevent Blacks from having any non-servile interaction with Whites at any time. Here are a few examples: Oklahoma made it illegal for Blacks and Whites to go boating together. An Alabama law made it illegal for Blacks and Whites to play checkers or dominoes together. A Louisiana law made it illegal for blind Blacks to be serviced in the same facilities as blind Whites. Mississippi established separate eating and sleeping facilities for Black and White convicts. And a Georgia law established separate burial grounds for Blacks and Whites. In addition to the indignity of being forced to use separate, inferior facilities, Blacks living under Jim Crow were subjected to grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests that effectively denied them their constitutional right to vote. Jim Crow "etiquette" took the humiliation even further. Among the rules of Jim Crow etiquette: Black men could not offer to shake hands with White men. Blacks could be introduced to Whites, but not vice versa. And while Blacks were to always use courtesy titles when referring to or conversing with Whites, Whites did not use courtesy titles when dealing with Blacks. Stetson Kennedy, author of "Jim Crow Guide", outlined rules Blacks were to adhere to when conversing with Whites. Some of them were: (1) Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying; (2) Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence; (3) Never laugh derisively at a White person. Under Jim Crow rule, Blacks were even forbidden to publicly display affection for each other as Whites found public displays of affection between Blacks offensive. Jim Crow laws were violently enforced, as often by lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan as by law enforcement officials acting as co-conspirators in denying Blacks their basic rights. Blacks who balked at obeying Jim Crow laws were terrorized and often paid with their lives. The Supreme Court set the stage for Jim Crow laws with several of its rulings, most notably Plessy v. Ferguson , but through the effort of a third-grader named Linda Brown; acclaimed legal strategist Professor Charles Hamilton Houston; and his protégé, the talented, young legal director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a man by the name of Thurgood Marshall; the Court would eventually bring about the end of Jim Crow and the segregation that accompanied it. Eight-year-old Linda Brown had to walk a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her Black elementary school in Topeka , Kansas , even though a "Whites Only" school was only blocks away from her home. When Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the White elementary school, the principal rebuffed him. Mr. Brown sought help from the Topeka Branch of the NAACP. The Brown case was heard in U.S. District Court in June 1951. Seeking an injunction to prohibit the segregation of public schools in Topeka , the NAACP argued that making Black children attend separate schools sent a message to them that they were inferior to White children, and for that reason separate schools were inherently unequal. The Board of Education argued that segregated schools prepared Black children for the segregation they would experience during adulthood, and that attending segregated schools did not necessarily harm Black children. Citing the Plessy precedent, the Board alleged the court was "compelled" to rule in their favor. Mr. Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court in October 1951.Their case was combined with other school segregation cases in Delaware , South Carolina and Virginia . The Supreme Court first heard the case on December 9, 1952 , but did not render a decision. Thurgood Marshall reargued the landmark case on December 7-8, 1953 . Marshall successfully argued the case by passionately and relentlessly hammering away at the notion that Blacks were somehow, by virtue of their blackness, less entitled to the rights and privileges guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment than other citizens. He asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment was clearly and specifically intended to "strike down all types of class and caste legislation." Furthermore, he insisted that the Court had to rule in their favor unless it could be proven that the Framers of the Constitution had deliberately and expressly intended for segregation in public education to be excluded from protection under the amendment. In his closing argument, Marshall hammered away at the crux of the segregationist belief system; that Blacks deserved to be treated differently than other people because they were somehow inferior to other people. He told the justices, "The only way this Court can decide this case in opposition to our position is that there must be some reason which gives the state the right to make a classification ... in regard to Negroes and we submit the only way to arrive at this decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings. Marshall went on, "In order to arrive at the decision that [the segregationists] want us to arrive at, there would have to be some recognition of a reason why of all the multitudinous groups of people in this country you have to single out Negroes and give them this separate treatment." He continued, "It can't be because of slavery in the past, because there are very few groups in this country that haven't had slavery some place back in the history of their groups." Marshall continued to press the issue, "It can't be color, because there are Negroes as white as the drifted snow, with blue eyes, and they are just as segregated as the [darkest] colored man." In a final, brilliant and impassioned summation, Marshall concluded, "The only thing it can be is an inherent determination that the people who were formerly in slavery, regardless of anything else, shall be kept as near that stage as is possible, and now is the time, we submit, that this Court should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for." On May 17, 1954 , the nation's highest court unanimously ruled to overturn the Plessy decision and to strike down the doctrine of "separate but equal." Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the Court's 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 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." Far beyond desegregating schools, the Brown ruling communicated to Blacks and Whites alike, that we are as good as everybody else, that we are inferior to no one, that we are entitled to and deserve all of the rights and privileges and benefits of every other citizen of the United States. The Brown decision made it clear that African-Americans were full-fledged, first-class U.S. Citizens. The ruling was the culmination of generations of Blacks struggling to achieve their basic human rights; it signified the end of Jim Crow and legalized oppression of African-Americans ... and it served as the turning point, the catalyst, in the awakening of Black demands for equality in employment, housing, public accommodations, government contracts, and now Reparations. The years following the Brown decision brought about swift, meaningful and lasting changes for African-Americans socially, politically, culturally and economically. In 1955, Rosa Parks would refuse to sit on the back of a bus in Montgomery , Alabama , an event which spawned over a year of bus boycotts that eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed bus segregation in the city. In 1960, sit-ins in Greensboro , North Carolina , fueled a wave of similar protests throughout the South. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, eventually inspired protests in major cities throughout the country, culminating in the August 28 March on Washington-the largest civil rights demonstration ever-where Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have A Dream" speech. The ultimate outcome of this monumental effort-which was spawned by the Brown case- was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal to discriminate against any person on the bases of race, color, religion or national origin in public places. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas , Thurgood Marshall proved that we as African-Americans have within our own ranks the tools that are necessary for us to advance, compete and succeed. One Black reporter described Monday, May 17, 1954 , the day the Court delivered the Brown opinion, as "the day we won, the day we took the white man's power and won our case before an all-white Supreme Court with a Negro lawyer. And we were proud." |
 |
Illinois Commission on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Contact: Executive Director Ollie McLemore |