50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education
'The stony road we trod'
Following are excerpts from a talk given by Dorothea
Peacock at a Workers World meeting in Boston on May 5:
The road I'm taking for discussion is the
highway to education. The vehicle I'm using to travel along
this highway is Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.,
the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the
public schools in the U.S.
May 17 marks the 50th anniversary of the decision. How did
the separate but equal doctrine come about?
1896 had marked the passing of the Reconstruction era and
the return of the pro-slavocracy government to the Southern
states. States' laws were again adopted reminiscent of black
codes which had been passed right after the Civil War to keep
Black people in their "place."
The laws established, enforced by criminal penalties, were
based on racial segregation under which members of the Black
and white races were required to be separated in facilities
including separate schools, parks, waiting rooms, bus and
railroad accommodations. Where completely separate facilities
proved later on not to be feasible, as in dining cars or
passenger coaches, a curtained partition served to separate the
races. A fine of $25 or 20 days in jail was the penalty for
sitting in the wrong compartment.
[Homer] Plessy, who was "one eighth" Black by [Louisiana
law], refused to vacate a seat in the white compartment of a
railway car and was arrested for violating the statue. [Years
later] a Howard University student studying the Plessy vs.
Ferguson ruling and application became disturbed by this use of
this ruling towards education and other unfair laws. This
student changed his major the same day to study law and became
Attorney Oliver Hill, one of the civil rights lawyers who
argued the Brown vs. Board of Education case.
In April 1951 Barbara Johns, a senior at Robert Moton High
School in Prince Edward County, Va., led her class on strike to
procure better school facilities and publicize the deplorable
conditions of the Black school. Had the superintendent complied
or tried to make better accommodations, the strike wouldn't
have escalated at the school, consisting of a small building
which was overcrowded when opened in 1939. To correct this
situation the county built a number of tar-paper shacks which
had tin stove pipes running from room to room. These pathetic
rooms were heated through the use of oil drums acting as
stoves. Coal was then burned in the drums. During inclement
weather the children changing classes were exposed to rain,
mud, cold and ice as they made their way to shacks on
campus.
It's understandable why on April 23, 1951 students sought
help from the NAACP and the pastor of a local Baptist church.
The students also had the help and support of their parents. A
meeting was held at the Baptist church with NAACP leaders.
After two weeks on strike the students were told that they had
made their point and [should] discontinue striking. The leaders
also informed the students and parents that from now on the
NAACP would be seeking to overturn the Plessy [decision] and
have the Supreme Court declare racial segregation in public
schools unconstitutional.
This was the beginning of the presentation of separate
desegregation lawsuits. Ten civil rights lawyers argued those
cases before nine white judges. The Supreme Court said go back
and consolidate similar cases into one single case, which
became the Brown vs. Board of Education case. [The other cases
mentioned in Chief Justice Earl Warren's opinion of the court,
besides the Virginia lawsuit, included Cumming vs. County Board
of Education, Gong Lum vs. Rice, Missouri ex rel. Gaines vs.
Canada, Sipuel vs. Oklahoma, Sweatt vs. Painter and McLaurin
vs. Oklahoma State Regents.]
Fifty years after that decision the Boston Globe has stated
that "Massach usetts is hyper-segregational beyond regional and
national levels." A task force [was established] to discuss
neighborhood schools and the quality of them. I was at a
meeting among activists, students, parents, teachers, [Boston
School] Superin tendent Thomas W. Payzant, school committee and
councilors. The theme of the meeting was neighborhood schools
and what will make a quality school of your choice. Students
were asking for tools which are necessary for an education.
Parents, activists and friends sat for two hours poring over
needs. The answer was, we have to take these issues to the
review board--which will not be considered or take effect for a
year and a half!
[A recent] Workers World editorial stated that "while
winning formal, legal equality was a huge step forward, just
like ending colonial rule, it did not end racist oppression any
more than neocolonialism has ended the great gap between rich
and poor nations. The problem still exists that a small class
of super-rich capitalists run this country and the world. They
need racism to stay on top just as they need every other tool
that divides the workers they exploit. Having advanced this
far, however, Black people are in a much stronger position to
not only participate in but play a leading role in the next
phase of the struggle, which will be for genuine equality of
all peoples based on a working-class redistribution of
society's wealth--with affirmative action and reparations to
eradicate the terrible inequalities inherited from the
past."
Stony is the road we trod!
Reprinted from the May 20, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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