“A Tale of Two Browns : Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education”

1. By James Anderson “A Tale of Two Browns: Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education”

2. Objectives: • Understand the historical legacy preceding the Brown v. Board case • How have Supreme Court rulings on school desegregation changed over the years? • Consider the legacy of Brown v. Board • What role did the African American community play in establishing educational equity? • What were the prevalent issues in the African American community regarding segregated schools? • How did Brown vs. Board of Education influence other struggles for educational equality? • Guiding Questions: • What price did communities pay for gains made toward educational equality? • To what extent do individuals and communities play a role in establishing educational equality? • Is ‘separate but equal’ a viable option in education today? Is this a course we should pursue as a society?

3. Civil War Amendments • 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. • 14th Amendment (1868) granted blacks citizenship and legal equality with whites. “No state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.” • 15th Amendment (1869) granted blacks the right to vote.

4. Civil Rights Cases (1883) • The Civil Rights Act of 1875 affirmed the equality of all persons in the enjoyment of transportation facilities, in hotels and inns, and in theaters and places of public amusement. • The Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment only prohibits racial discrimination by states, not by private persons or companies.

5. The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths Caucasian--took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

6. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) • The majority, in an opinion authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown, upheld state-imposed racial segregation. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal.

7. Three Phases by which to examine educational inequality • 1865 - 1896: “relative equality” in education • 1896 - 1954: Jim Crow and legitimized discrimination • 1954 - present: gains in equality

8. 1865 - 1896: “relative equality” in education • Post-Civil War: 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment - equality is added in constitution and legal codes • Literacy rates rise among African Americans, educational funding more equitable than after 1896 • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - establishes “separate but equal” doctrine, “Jim Crow” laws proliferate throughout South

9. 1954 - present: gains in equality? • Ambiguity begins in 1955 when Court rules that schools must desegregate “with all deliberate speed” • Between 1955 - 1960, federal judges hear 200+ desegregation cases • 1957 - Little Rock integration and staunch resistance to integrated schools • Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), permits racially segregated schools to bus students to different schools in order to integrate (white flight) • Thousands of African-American teachers and administrators lose their job.

14. James Anderson, “A Tale of Two Browns: Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education” The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling that dictated “separate but equal” accommodations for African Americans were constitutional. Thus, in 1954, by law, schools could no longer maintain separate, segregated schools. (266)

15. 1963 Two African American students, Vivian Malone and James A. Hood, successfully register at the University of Alabama despite George Wallace's "stand in the schoolhouse door" but only after President Kennedy federalizes theAlabama National Guard. For the first time, a small number of black students in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Mississippi attend public elementary and secondary schools with white students.

16. 1969 The Supreme Court declares the "all deliberate speed" standard is no longer constitutionally permissible and orders the immediate desegregation of Mississippi schools. (Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education)

17. “A Tale of Two Browns: Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education” • A) The Brown decision is part of a struggle for equal rights before the law. Anderson demonstrates that individual equality was not recognized by the “Founding Fathers” in the U.S. Constitution. While a conception of universal rights (all men created equal) was maintained in rhetoric, there was an inability to honor these rights (269). • However, during Reconstruction in the post-Civil War period, the Constitution was amended to declare the rights of all Americans (albeit males); slavery was outlawed, equal protection under the laws was provided for all, and voting rights were extended to all males of appropriate age, regardless of race. Such rights did not last, however. • By 1883, the Supreme Court initiated a countermovement to severally erode the principle of equality before the law (273). The culmination of this movement was the Plessy case that effectively separated the races and retracted the voting and legal rights of African Americans. • This left Blacks in the position to fight for equal protection before the law, which included equal educational access. In this way, the 1954 Brown case was the capstone of a long-struggle for constitutional equality in civil, political, and social areas, which should have been granted in Reconstruction (274). In this sense, Brown was indeed legislation toward equality.

18. “A Tale of Two Browns: Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education” • B) The Brown decision is also part of a history of “substantive inequality” despite any gains made before the law. During Reconstruction, when fundamental constitutional rights were granted, Blacks were able to achieve “relative educational equality.” This means that between 1870 and 1900, although schools were still segregated, Blacks were able to use newly acquired political power to achieve relative equality; funding for Black education was more equitable in this period than it was after 1900, and literacy rates rose significantly. For instance, African Americans constituted 44% of the school population and received 44% of educational funding (275). After 1900, however, “the political disenfranchisement of African Americans coupled with judicial denial of equality precipitated a downward spiral” (276). • Funding for Black education dropped rapidly and educational facilities depreciated in value and student expenditures decreased. In Mississippi, in 1940, for example, approximately half of all black schools met in tenant cabins, lodges, churches and stores (276). In the face of “such powerful and pervasive denial of educational opportunity”, African Americans constructed a “quasi-private” system of education; hence, an alternative system of education emerged. Since not supported by the state, private interests (Black and Northern philanthropy contributions) had to fund separate schools. • In other words, it was up to African Americans to achieve their own education. This inequality extended to high schools; by the 1950s more than two-thirds of African-American high school-age students were still not enrolled in public high schools (278). While many blacks migrated North with perceptions of Northern social equality, blacks in the North remained “victims of discrimination, social ostracism, segregation, and economic subordination” (279).

19. “A Tale of Two Browns: Constitutional Equality and Unequal Education” • While the Brown decision sought to address this system of separate and unequal schooling, the results were disappointing. • Although high school graduation rates drastically increased, schools were slow to integrate, all-black schools were closed (thus many black educators were now unemployed), and black students were subjected to many times horrific experiences in hostile, white schooling environments. • Moreover, schools after the 1954 decision were essentially re-segregated. In fact, many began to call for “adequate” rather than “desegregated” schools (283), this signified serious doubt about the social justice supposedly created by Brown. In this way, Brown was a grave disappointment that did not live up to its transformative ideals.

20. 1954 - present: gains in equality • Milliken v. Bradley (1974) - Court blocks metropolitan-wide desegregation plans to desegregate urban schools • Affirmative Action is introduced and theories on Multiculturalism • A report from Harvard’s Civil Rights Project concludes that America’s schools are in fact re-segregating • Two tales emerge: one of equality and one of inequality

21. 1995 The Supreme Court sets a new goal for desegregation plans: the return of schools to local control. It emphasizes again that judicial remedies were intended to be "limited in time and extent." (Missouri v. Jenkins)

24. Objectives: • Understand the historical legacy preceding the Brown v. Board case • How have Supreme Court rulings on school desegregation changed over the years? • Consider the legacy of Brown v. Board • What role did the African American community play in establishing educational equity? • What were the prevalent issues in the African American community regarding segregated schools? • How did Brown vs. Board of Education influence other struggles for educational equality? • Guiding Questions: • What price did communities pay for gains made toward educational equality? • To what extent do individuals and communities play a role in establishing educational equality? • Is ‘separate but equal’ a viable option in education today? Is this a course we should pursue as a society?