Waldo E. Martin

Brown v. Board of Education

1. Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional, 347 U.S. 483, 497, and all provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle. P. 298. 2. The judgments below (except that in the Delaware case) are reversed and the cases are remanded to the District Courts to take such proceedings and enter such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit the parties to these cases to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed. P. 301. (a) School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing and solving the varied local school problems which may require solution in fully implementing the governing constitutional principles. P. 299. (b) Courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles. P. 299. (c) Because of their proximity to local conditions and the possible need for further hearings, the courts which originally heard these cases can best perform this judicial appraisal. P. 299. (d) In fashioning and effectuating the decrees, the courts will be guided by equitable principles—characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping remedies and a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs. P. 300. [p295] (e) At stake is the personal interest of the plaintiffs in admission to public schools as soon as practicable on a nondiscriminatory basis. P. 300. (f) Courts of equity may properly take into account the public interest in the elimination in a systematic and effective manner of a variety of obstacles in making the transition to school systems operated in accordance with the constitutional principles enunciated in 347 U.S. 483, 497; but the vitality of these constitutional principles cannot be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them. P. 300. (g) While giving weight to these public and private considerations, the courts will require that the defendants make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance with the ruling of this Court. P. 300. (h) Once such a start has been made, the courts may find that additional time is necessary to carry out the ruling in an effective manner. P. 300. (i) The burden rests on the defendants to establish that additional time is necessary in the public interest and is consistent with good faith compliance at the earliest practicable date. P. 300. (j) The courts may consider problems related to administration, arising from the physical condition of the school plant, the school transportation system, personnel, revision of school districts and attendance areas into compact units to achieve a

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Slaves achieved their freedom in the Civil War years through their own efforts, such as serving in the Union army or absconding to the Union lines, as well as through wartime legal measures such as Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863). During Reconstruction (1863–77), the government moved to make ex-slaves full-fledged Americans by abolishing slavery officially (Thirteenth Amendment, 1865), defining blacks as citizens (Fourteenth Amendment, 1868), and removing race as a barrier to the vote (Fifteenth Amendment, 1870). Constitutional law now extended civil rights to blacks and gave them the tools to sustain those rights. The Civil Rights Law of 1875 furthered black civil rights by banning racial discrimination in public accommodations, transportation, theaters, and civil arenas such as jury service. This federal statute clarified and expanded the meanings of civil rights and citizenship as outlined in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Precious African American Memories, Post-Racial Dreams & the American Nation

This interdisciplinary essay explores a fundamental paradox at the heart of American race relations since the 1960s: “the changing same.” The more things change; the more they remain the same. Combining historical and social-scientific evidence with autobiographical reflections, this discussion critically probes the paradoxical decline and persistence of two dimensions of our enduring racial quagmire: racial inequality and white supremacy. The essay argues that these powerful and interrelated elements of Americas continuing racial dilemma demand a massive democratic movement to alleviate both at once. This wide-ranging struggle to realize the promise of American democracy requires more than just a revitalized African American Freedom Struggle that is both intraracial and interracial. Progress toward resolving the seemingly intractable problem of racial inequality in the United States demands far more than intensified efforts to alleviate economic inequality; it requires alleviating white supremacy as well.

Roberts v. City of Boston (1849)

Historically, African Americans have understood the importance of public school education to the individual and collective elevation of their people. During the antebellum era, they shared the growing belief, especially widespread in “enlightened” northern communities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, in government’s responsibility to maintain public schools open to the children of all citizens. Particularly within communities such as Boston, the evolving American success ethic, which blacks shaped and imbibed, stressed a common (public) school education as a key to solid citizenship as well as socioeconomic mobility. The following early petition from a group of black Bostonians to the Massachusetts legislature on behalf of a common school education for their children based its claims on the dual assumptions of citizenship and morality. Why do you think they argued their case on these grounds? What is your assessment of the substance and tone of the petition? Why do you think this effort failed?

Introduction: Shades of Brown: Black Freedom, White Supremacy, and the Law

Arguably the most important Supreme Court ruling in United States history, the Brown decision in 1954 not only overturned the doctrine of separate but equal schools as unconstitutional, but it also put other forms of antiblack discrimination on the road to extinction. The unanimous decision reversed the Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had upheld the concept and practice of state-endorsed racial discrimination— Jim Crow—the chimera of separate but equal public accommodations and institutions for blacks and whites. The Brown decision was the culmination of countless interrelated collective and personal battles waged by blacks and of a series of legal efforts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from the early days of its existence in the 1910s and 1920s.

Popular Response to Brown

The following documents provide a national cross-section of editorial opinion in response to the 1954 Brown decision. While clearly reflecting the views of the individual editors and editorial boards that crafted them, these editorials necessarily sought in part to represent the moods and reactions of their constituencies. It is useful to consider these documents as rhetorical efforts aimed at communicating general understandings within specific communities: cultural and journalistic communities on one hand and national, regional, and local communities on the other. In this case, editorial authority derived in part from how well these writers both responded to and represented the prevailing climate of opinion.

Brown v. Board of Education (1952–55)

The central issue in Brown v. Board of Education was the constitutionality of segregated elementary and secondary schools. Could separate actually be equal? Did these typically separate and unequal schools violate the constitutional right of blacks to equality before the law as propounded in the Fourteenth Amendment? Finally, should the legal rationale for Jim Crow — Plessy — be overturned?

Epilogue: The Legacy of Brown

In a penetrating assessment of black participation in Reconstruction politics, W. E. B. Du Bois judged those significant individual and collective efforts to substantiate black freedom “a splendid failure.” He explained that whites thought Reconstruction would fail because of innate black incompetence. The exact opposite happened, however. Black politicians exercised their rights and shouldered their responsibilities competently; in fact, they acquitted themselves as well as, and often better than, their white cohorts. Rather than confirming black incapacity, black Reconstruction confirmed human equality. This exemplary illustration of black achievement in spite of powerful white opposition, Du Bois maintained, was “splendid.”

Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)

During World War I, more than 500,000 southern blacks left for the North. Even more left for the West as well as the North during World War II. These extraordinary mass migrations — the first and second Great Migrations — significantly expanded the black populations in the North and the West. As a result, the black freedom struggle and the issue of black-white relations increasingly became a national rather than a southern regional concern. Indeed, these large-scale migrations profoundly altered twentieth-century United States life and culture.

The Mind of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was unquestionably the foremost black American of the nineteenth century. The extraordinary life of this former slave turned abolitionist orator, newspaper editor, social reformer, race leader, and Republican party advocate has inspired many biographies over the years. This, however, is the first full-scale study of the origins, contours, development, and significance of Douglasss thought. Brilliant and to a large degree self-taught, Douglass personified intellectual activism; he possessed a sincere concern for the uses and consequences of ideas. Both his peoples struggle for liberation and his individual experiences, which he envisioned as symbolizing that struggle, provided the basis and structure for his intellectual maturation. As a representative American, he internalized and, thus, reflected major currents in the contemporary American mind. As a representative Afro-American, he revealed in his thinking the deep-seated influence of race on Euro-American, Afro-American, or, broadly conceived, American consciousness. He sought to resolve in his thinking the dynamic tension between his identities as a black and as an American. Martin assesses not only how Douglass dealt with this enduring conflict, but also the extent of his success. An inveterate belief in a universal and egalitarian humanism unified Douglasss thought. This grand organizing principle reflected his intellectual roots in the three major traditions of mid-nineteenth-century American thought: Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment, and romanticism. Together, these influences buttressed his characteristic optimism. Although nineteenth-century Afro-American intellectual history derived its central premises and outlook from concurrent American intellectual history, it offered a searching critique of the latter and its ramifications. How to square Americas rhetoric of freedom, equality, and justice with the reality of slavery and racial prejudice was the difficulty that confronted such Afro-American thinkers as Douglass. |Frederick Douglass was unquestionably the foremost black American of the nineteenth century. The extraordinary life of this former slave turned abolitionist orator, newspaper editor, social reformer, race leader, and Republican party advocate has inspired many biographies over the years. This, however, is the first full-scale study of the origins, contours, development, and significance of Douglasss thought.