Illinois Commission on the 50th Anniversary
of Brown v. Board of Education
Brown, et al v. Board of Education
Judge Arnette R. Hubbard
Circuit Court Judge
The Brown saga is heroic.
Its people are legion and legendary.
Yet, it is not unfair to characterize that legal victory of Brown, et al v.Board of Education as the fulfilled vision of one man, Charles Hamilton Houston.
Born ten months before Plessy v. Ferguson, dead four years before Brown, Charles Hamilton Houston did not live to witness the confirmation by the nation’s highest court that segregation was exactly what he always knew it to be – unlawful and unconstitutional.
Mr. Houston was the architect of a legal strategy created expressly to end racial discrimination in education and voting. His blueprint has since been used successfully by a myriad of others who, like Black Americans, sought relief from unfairness.
Mr. Houston was Resident Vice Dean of the Howard University Law School from 1929-1935. He converted the law school from part-time to full-time. He required his young Black students to master legal principles and procedures. Mr. Houston instilled in them an obligation to strive for justice. Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill, lawyers for Brown plaintiffs Briggs and Davis, were his pupils at Howard Law School. Robert Carter, lawyer for Linda Brown, was trained in the Houston tradition at Howard Law School, graduating in 1940. All 25 lawyers involved in the Brown cases were personally trained by and/or directly influenced by Mr. Houston.
Mr. Houston lived through times when laws prevented people from sitting together in public gatherings such as we did at Chicago State University on May 17, 2004. He lived through times when laws prohibited our sharing a car on a train - as in the case of Homer Plessy; or a seat on a bus – as in the case of Rosa Parks; or a school classroom – as in the case of the 120 children who were plaintiffs in Brown, et al v. Board of Education.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Homer Plessy v. Ferguson on May 18, 1896, provided the language for separating American citizens by race; hence, “separate but equal.”
On this 50th Anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown, it is awe-inspiring to know that across this country, tens of thousands of persons are pausing in recognition of this one event. Such is the significance of Brown.
The full text of the Brown decision can be found on the Commission’s website: www.IllinoisBrownvBoard.org. There you will find links to numerous other websites so that by drilling down or casting about you can explore the details of settings, people, laws and cases that form the landscape of Brown. We hope you will.
Arguments of consolidated Brown cases began Tuesday, December 9, 1952, in the United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson presided.
The courtroom’s 300 seats were filled. At least half of these persons were Black. Outside the courtroom, a line stretched down the corridor, down the steps and into the street. This line is composed of people who would be inside if there were room for them. They know that the arguments to begin today are of great importance to America. They do not know that a decision will not come until May 17, 1954, nor that the implementation order will not come until 1955. Nor do they know that Chief Justice Vinson will die in 1953 and be replaced by Earl Warren of California.
Five cases had been consolidated and were set for argument. They were: Brown, et al. v Board of Education of Topeka ( Kansas ); Briggs, et al v. Elliott (South Carolina); Davis, et al v. County School of Prince Edward County (Virginia); Belton, et al v. Gebhart with Bulah v. Gebhart (Delaware); and Bolling v. Sharp ( Washington, D.C.).
The four cases from the four different states would collectively become popularly known as Brown v. Board of Education. The fifth case, Bolling, was later ruled on separately because D.C. is not a state.
The first case to be argued is Brown, et al v. Topeka Board of Education. Lead counsel for the Plaintiffs Linda Brown et al. is Robert Carter of Ohio, later to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York where he is now a senior judge. For Defendant School District of Topeka is Paul Wilson, an assistant attorney general for the State of Kansas.
Set for 3:15 p.m. the same day, December 9, 1952, is the case of Briggs v. Elliott from South Carolina.
Briggs is the oldest case, having begun in 1948, and the best known. The two opposing lawyers, Thurgood Marshall and John W. Davis, have already gained national prominence. Everyone was waiting for the face-off between them. Of course, the other cases were of equal legal significance. However, everyone was waiting for the Briggs argument.
Who was John W. Davis?
His father, John J. Davis, was pro-slavery, pro-states’ rights, pro-supremacy of rights of property over other rights, anti-union, anti-14th Amendment, and anti-15th Amendment. He thought slaves were property not to be taken away by the government and that the 13th Amendment violated the property rights of individual owners.
His mother was a literate, cultured woman who kept her place in the home and out of public affairs, as did other women of that day.
John W. Davis, lawyer for defendant South Carolina, took his culture from his mother and his politics from his father. That is why the Governor of South Carolina, James F. Byrnes, went to New York City where Davis then lived to persuade him to represent South Carolina. He asked Davis to prevent politicians in Washington, the NAACP and Negro agitators in South Carolina from destroying “the Southern way of life.”
Governor Byrnes believed that Davis would help him because he knew that Davis had refused in 1934 to join in a petition aimed at persuading the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from the Scottsboro Boys who had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.
Governor Byrnes knew Davis would accept his plea because in 1935 Davis had refused to testify before Congress in favor of an anti-lynching bill.
Governor Byrnes knew Davis would agree because in 1945 Davis opposed a measure by the New York State Legislature that would ban racial and religious discrimination in businesses and unions in New York.
Governor Byrnes knew Davis would accept because in 1948 Davis bitterly opposed President Truman’s civil rights’ measures.
Governor Byrnes knew that Davis shared his views despite Davis’ New York address.
Thurgood Marshall represented Plaintiffs Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. Marshall, the great-grandson of a slave, was born 1908 in Baltimore, Md. Norma Arisa Williams, his mother, was a school teacher. William Canfield Marshall, his father, was a boat club steward, formerly a dining car waiter.
Marshall did grow up in comfortable circumstances; however, these were not the patrician surroundings of Davis. He lacked the approbation of his country, his state, his government. Marshall lacked the protection of laws to permit him to go and do and be whatever he pleased.
Thurgood Marshall received his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University, an institution in Pennsylvania for Blacks. After graduation, he sought to enter the University of Maryland Law School. He was denied.
Next, Thurgood Marshall sought admission to Howard University Law School. He was admitted. That proved fortuitous both for America and for him. At Howard, Marshall met Charles Hamilton Houston, Resident Vice Dean (and dean in fact), a legal scholar committed to the notion that while America was not what it ought to be, we all had an obligation to make it what it could be. Marshall and other “Brown lawyers” came under Houston’s wings.
A few years after graduating from Howard, Thurgood Marshall was to revisit the question of the University of Maryland Law School’s radical policies, which barred his admission. (More about that later.)
Marshall returned to Baltimore and acquired his license to practice law. In Baltimore, he found another committed leader, Lillie M. Jackson, 45-year-old housewife, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP. Soon, she hired him as the chapter’s counsel at a salary of $25.00 per year.
Marshall began immediately to attack injustice. He made assaults on the unequal pay for teachers, an inequality based on race; on exclusion from public accommodations and other relevant issues of the day.
In 1934, Thurgood Marshall began pressuring his former law professor Charles Hamilton Houston, to join him in a lawsuit in Baltimore. Mr. Houston put him off. It was not that Mr. Houston was uninterested. It was that Mr. Houston was much in demand all around the country. He was a brilliant man. He knew the law. He was willing to go anywhere to apply the law. He was willing to go anywhere to apply the law. Time was a precious commodity for Mr. Houston. Thurgood Marshall was persistent. In 1935, he succeeded in getting Mr. Houston to join him. Together they sued the university of Maryland demanding the admission of Donald Gaines Murray, young Black man from Baltimore, to its law school. On June 25, 1935, at 4:55p.m., the trial judge entered an order requiring Murray’s admission.
That was not a final victory. The university appealed. Thurgood Marshall personally handled the appeal for Murray. In January 1936, the Maryland Appellate Court supported the earlier trial court decision and again ordered the law school to admit Murray. And, he was.
Marshall didn’t stop there. He continued his assault on racial injustice. He worked so diligently and so effectively that in 1939 he was appointed Chief Counsel for the Legal And Education Fund of the NAACP. In 1940, after arguing before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a teacher pay discrimination case, the entire three-judge panel stepped down from the bench to congratulate Marshall on the excellence of his argument. He won.
Millions of cases are tried annually in the United States. Tens of thousands apply to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Few do so. Of the few cases that do make it to the Supreme Court, most are lost. Marshall won 29 of 32 cases there Robert Carter, Linda Brown’s counsel, won 21 of 22.
Among Thurgood Marshall’s Supreme Court victories were cases striking down “White Only” primaries, segregation in interstate transportation, restrictive covenants, and the exclusion of Blacks from graduate schools.
John W. Davis argued his first case in the Supreme Court after President Wilson appointed him to a five-year term as Solicitor General for the United States. As of the date of this face-off in l952, Davis had represented the government and business clients in 138 cases before the Supreme Court, winning many of them.
Here you have it. For the Plaintiffs: Thurgood Marshall. For the Defendants: John W. Davis. Each able. Each experienced. Each determined.
Brown, et al v. Board did not end that day. The Supreme Court ordered further argument on the 14th Amendment and other questions. These arguments were set to be hears in 1953. Marshall Davis faced each other again, in 1953, in the Supreme Court.
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the court, declaring:
“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
I can imagine Thurgood Marshall permitting himself the smile of one who has righted a great wrong ... for Charles Hamilton Houston who had attended segregated Black elementary and secondary schools … for America, which now came closer to its democratic ideals. |
Resolution
1954 Decision
