Segregation of education in AMerica

On May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka decision that racial segregation in the public schools violated the Fourteenth
Amendment, it sparked national reactions ranging from elation to rage. As some
Americans celebrated this important ruling and its impact on democracy, their early
belief in Brown’s power to eliminate racial inequities in the public schools now reflects a
hopeful naiveté and the beginning of a decades-long struggle to fulfill its promise.
Whether one supported or opposed the Brown decision, it would have a profound
impact on the direction of the nation’s educational system that transcends its original
intent. While this case led to the growth of the modern civil rights movement and the
expansion of educational opportunities for children apart from race, such as those with
special needs, its complex history also reflects our nation’s difficulties in overcoming
systemic racism and class discrimination.

As Jim Crow segregation became the law of the land after Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896,
white southern leaders questioned the need for the continuance of African American
education and segregated schools remained unequally funded.[1] In an effort to
alleviate these conditions, African American parents and educators relied upon what
historian V. P. Franklin describes as cultural capital or non-financial assets to better the
conditions of their schools. In these often one-room schools, parents worked with
teachers to maintain the physical structures while also supporting cultural events and
athletic programs. In addition to cultural capital, as historian James Anderson argues,
these families often paid a “black tax” or a double tax because they had to pay local
taxes and use their own funds to support their own underfunded black schools. Black
teachers also knew that their duties went far beyond academic instruction; they were
often required to use their own funds and working outside school grounds to help their
students both inside and outside the classroom. Despite their lower salaries in
comparison to white teachers, these educators held important positions within black
communities. They reflected the human aspect of the concept of cultural capital as
black communities during segregation placed the economic and social progress of their
children in their hands.[2]

In the 1930s, Charles Hamilton Houston, Special Counsel for the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and former chair of Howard
University’s Law School, established the field of civil rights law as he developed an
innovative and bold strategy that would eventually dismantle segregation in public
universities and schools. After his former student, Thurgood Marshall, successfully sued
the University of Maryland’s law school forcing it to admit a black student, Marshall
joined Houston at the NAACP and sued for equity among black and white teachers.
Relying upon the Fourteenth Amendment, they won most of their cases. Southern
districts retaliated by developing unfair testing systems to determine salary ranges. The
NAACP then sued graduate and professional programs and schools in southern public
universities to admit black students, arguing that they had no other opportunities for
equal training.[3]
Although Houston died in 1950, Thurgood Marshall took up his strategy to end
segregation. This massive undertaking was not without criticism as some prominent
black leaders thought that the NAACP should sue for equity for black schools instead.
Marshall thought that an overall desegregation decision would eliminate the expensive
and time-consuming need to go district by district. His case, based upon precedent from
the 1946 Mendez v. Westminster case, combined five similar cases that grossly
reflected racial discrimination. Marshall and his team of NAACP lawyers relied upon the
expert legal, historical, and psychological testimonies from Pauli Marshall, John Hope
Franklin, and Kenneth and Mamie Clark, whose famous doll test suggested that black
children suffered low self-esteem due to learning in segregated environments.[4]

On May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown case that segregation in
the public schools was unequal, it caused an uproar. For southerners, this decision did
not just call for the end of segregated schools, it also threatened the foundation of white
supremacy, which was constructed upon destructive stereotypes of black intellectual
inferiority and fears of black male sexuality. This extensive negative reaction coalesced
into a strategy called “massive resistance.” In May 1956, 101 congressmen issued the
“Southern Manifesto” that declared, “We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to
bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to
prevent the use of force in its implementation.”[5] On every level from the school board
to the state house, southerners fought this decision. We are familiar with the case in
Little Rock, Arkansas, where nine high school students who enrolled in all-white Central
High School faced angry mobs and threats from the governor, eventually culminating in
President Eisenhower’s call for military action to protect the students. While this case
garnered national attention, most southern school officials quietly developed their own
plans to delay or deny the implementation of desegregation, including grade-per-year
plans, transfer plans, and school closings.[6]

In addition, school boards also funneled money and supplies to existing facilities and
constructed new black schools to dispute claims that they were underfunded and quell
the desire for integration. When this strategy failed and federal court orders forced
school districts to develop new desegregation plans, black teachers faced massive job
losses as white school boards closed black schools. African American principals, who
once held one of the most powerful and prestigious positions within African American
communities, also received demotions or lost their jobs as their schools were
eliminated.[7]

After the NAACP returned to the Supreme Court in Brown II, the Court ruled that
desegregation should proceed with “all deliberate speed.” [8] Despite the continuous
legal actions of civil rights lawyers, this term did not reflect the depths of southern
resistance as most children still attended segregated schools in 1964. This year also
marked the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This groundbreaking legislation made
desegregation a pre-requisite to school funding. A year later, congress passed the
Elementary and Secondary Schools Act, a component of President Lyndon B.
Johnson’s War on Poverty that appropriated money to public schools to fund
educational programs and resources for poor children. This funding could also be
removed if school systems did not desegregate. Under Johnson, the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare also helped monitor desegregation plans. While the
federal government intervened in the area of education regarding desegregation and
poverty, the government’s role in education had increased since the end of World War
II. Cold War fears of the Soviet Union surpassing the United States, especially after the
1957 Sputnik mission, sparked massive funding increases to support science and
engineering in the nation’s public colleges and influential initiatives such as the new
math in public schools.[9]

Despite the federal government’s growing influence, civil rights lawyers sometimes
encountered violence and loss of economic support as they attempted to force these
districts to comply with the Brown decision. After the Supreme Court’s decisions
in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) and Alexander v. Holmes
County Bd. of Ed. (1969) forced school districts to develop more viable and extensive
desegregation plans, the enforcement of these decisions now lay in the hands of federal
judges. Some of these officials, such as James McMillian, a federal judge for the
Western District of North Carolina, faced public derision when he ordered the Charlotte
Mecklenburg Board of Education to produce desegregation plans that met court
standards.[10]

After the housing shortages from WWII led to the emergence of the suburbs, city
planners and local government officials designed new settlements in former rural areas.
Scholar Ansley Erickson argues that city developers reinforced segregation by working
with school districts to construct new schools in predominately-white suburban
neighborhoods. With the support of the GI Bill and the availability of Federal Housing
Association (FHA) mortgages, thousands of families moved to the suburbs. While this
marked a watershed moment in city planning or urban development, the FHA, leery of
influencing neighborhood composition, seldom offered loans to blacks with the same
criteria and these neighborhoods remained all white. For working-class whites, moving
to the suburbs also reflected a symbol of rising class status and a new version of the
American dream that included sending their children to quality neighborhood schools.
[11]

One of the biggest problems affecting desegregation involved the neighborhoods where
children lived. Most children lived in racially segregated communities and the most
feasible way to achieve desegregation beyond voluntary transfers was to transport
children to schools outside their neighborhoods. Civil rights attorney Julius Chambers
and his colleagues successfully made this argument before the Supreme Court
in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg County Board of Education in 1971. Prior to Swann,
school systems in rural areas had transported white students out of their neighborhoods
to attend school for decades, while black students were sometimes denied access to
public school transportation. Although studies reflected that a majority of white parents
did not object to black students attending school with their children, they drew the line
when it came time for their children to attend schools in what they deemed as unsafe
black neighborhoods. Working-class whites also argued that affluent whites were
unfairly exempted from busing plans. As a result, antibusing protests emerged across
the nation and newly-created private schools also developed as an option for parents to
escape busing. As whites fled urban school districts and busing in what officials call
white flight, suburban areas experienced more economic development as urban areas
lost some of their tax base. Despite the objections to busing, southern cities such as
Charlotte prided itself on its success in busing. While scholars often view desegregation
through a southern lens, busing reflected the racial inequities in the nation’s public
schools as white parents protested against busing in cities as diverse as Boston and
Detroit. Busing also exhibited the gendered nature of racism as angry white mothers
across the nation shouted racial epithets at black children on the buses.[12]

While President Johnson supported desegregation efforts, the Nixon administration

reflected a conservative turn in educational policy as President Richard M. Nixon spoke
openly against busing. He ordered limited federal funding to districts to purchase buses
despite their requests. Although a national issue, the resentment over busing was one
of several important factors that led to the resurgence of the Republican party in the
south as it became a safe haven for those angry with busing and what they saw as
increased intervention by the federal government.[13]

While the majority of African American parents supported busing to expedite

desegregation, their children often bore the burden as they left their homes very early in
the morning to attend schools sometimes twenty or more miles from their homes. While
integration meant that black children could now attend schools with greater resources,
they sometimes encountered racism from their white peers and teachers. Black children
who lived in suburban neighborhoods also had to overcome stereotypes of racial
inferiority promoted by white students and teachers. They also had to navigate class
differences among black children bused in from poor neighborhoods. Attending schools
far from their communities caused additional problems for black parents and students.
For example, students could not do extra-curricular activities and parents could not
attend teacher conferences or participate in the PTA if they did not have a ride home.
[14] Additionally, teachers also had to contend with court decisions mandating faculty
desegregation that called for every school to be 80 percent white and 20 percent black.
These rulings ordered the transfers of hundreds of black teachers to white schools. With
their move, these teachers suddenly lost their status as they assumed their roles of new
faculty in white schools.[15]

The loss of black teachers also decimated black institutions as the character of these
schools suddenly disappeared. By the late 1970s, African Americans, once proponents
of busing, now became wary as they saw their beloved neighborhood schools
deteriorate or close. They wanted desegregation to be a two-way street, not a process
for dismantling their schools. In the North, black parents also wrestled with school
boards to gain community control. The supportive relationship between black parents
and teachers regarding discipline also disintegrated as protective black parents viewed
discipline through a racialized lens as black children were often punished for minor
offenses in greater degrees than white ones. By the 1990s, antipathy towards busing
transformed into a community schools movement that advocated for neighborhood
schools and pushed school districts to abandon their desegregation plans.[16]
While Browncontinues to be celebrated as a civil rights milestone, as we look at the
problems of poverty and racial segregation in today’s public schools, some people
argue that the decision resulted in dismal failure as some 80 percent of black children
now attend segregated schools nationally. Despite this view, today’s schools are not as
resegregated as they once were in the South. From 1954 to the late 1980s, the rate of
black children attending white schools rose tremendously in the South, from 0 percent in
1954, to 43.5 percent by 1988, only declining after the dismantling of court ordered
desegregation plans to 23.2 in 2011. The South remains the least segregated area of
the nation. The current resegregation of the public school are due more to the declining
support for desegregation by local districts, the federal government, and the Supreme
Court. In 2007 Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stated the following in his majority
opinion in two court cases that used race in determining transfer policies and school
plans to foster desegregation: “The way to stop race discrimination on the basis of race
is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” [17] This decision turned a blind eye to
decades of racial discrimination in public schools and struck a deathblow to Brown. The
federal government’s focus on assessment testing in the 1980s also placed less
emphasis on enforcing desegregation. We must also analyze the impact of economic
class status on the push for racial desegregation. As a result of Brown, black children,
while no longer legally barred from attending white schools, are now limited by class
status and neighborhood location. Although busing attempted to overcome residential
segregation, it could not withstand the national backlash. While Brown addressed
discrimination against blacks, today Latino children comprise the majority of several
large urban school districts in the U.S. Although they were not legally segregated by
race in most areas, Latino children continue to face discrimination despite the advent of
policies such as bilingual education that helps all immigrant children. Most black and
Latino children in these areas attend schools with the double segregation of race and
poverty.[18]

Historically, public schools accepted children regardless of class status, but now they
face competition from more selective charter schools and other school choice initiatives
that affect racial diversity goals as well as class. Also, children who grew up in the
suburban middle class are moving to gentrified urban neighborhoods and sending their
children to private schools. In major urban cities across the nation, middle-class
parents, regardless of race, have abandoned the public schools due to fears of limited
quality and violence, negatively affecting desegregation goals. Charter schools and
voucher programs have emerged as options for parents who wish to avoid sending their
children to poorly functioning public schools, but their results remain mixed. While as a
democratic nation we appreciate Brown’s demand to end racial segregation in schools
and cite the benefits of diversity, the initial ambitions of Brown remains unfinished and
its legacy complicated. As education officials debate the merits and impact of school
choice initiatives, we must not abandon the need for diversity in the public schools.[19]
Linda Brown was a seven-year-old girl who became the face of one of the most
impactful Supreme Court cases in United States history. Linda Brown attended an
all-black Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. In order to attend school each day,
Linda had to cross railroad tracks and take a bus. However, the white elementary
school was much closer to her house, only four blocks away. In addition, the white
elementary school had better facilities than the all-black school. Brown was forced
to travel this distance because of the racial segregation policies in schooling in
Topeka. 

At the time, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) wanted the Supreme Court to rule that segregation in schooling was
unconstitutional. The NAACP asked Linda’s father Oliver to enroll his daughter in
the all-white school which was closer to them. Both Brown and the NAACP expected
the Court to turn Linda away. The NAACP had similar asks of African-American
parents in South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and DC. When Linda was denied
enrollment, her father and thirteen other plaintiffs sued their Boards of Education.
Since Brown was alphabetically first, the case was titled Brown v Board of Education
of Topeka  (1954). Representing the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who went on
to be the United States’  first African American Supreme Court Justice. Brown and
the NAACP argued that school segregation violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal
Protection Clause. A doctrine of “Separate but Equal” was previously upheld by the
Court and found not in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Plessy v
Ferguson  (1896). It was the plaintiff’s goal to overturn this precedent. 

Civil RIghts issues were mounting during the 1950s and 60s. America was involved
in the Cold War, and the US’ claims of democracy and freedom were undermined
by policies which did not afford Black Americans the same freedom or democracy.
President Truman was disturbed about the amount of black Americans who fought
in World War II for democracy but came home to not be able to enjoy the fruits
themselves. The Truman Administration submitted an Amicus Curiae brief
for Brown.  By the time the case got to the Supreme Court, President Eisenhower
was then in power but still supported the brief for the United States, which urged
judicial action against school segregation. 

The Amicus Curiae argued that racial discrimination undermined the language of
our founders in the Declaration of Independence which declared all men are equal.
It went on to argue that we must set an example as a democracy and not lend
ourselves to “Communist propaganda mills.” They noted that segregation harms
children of color in numerous ways. The Court had to decide if segregation based
on race, even though other factors may be equal, deprives children of equal
education.

Decision

The Court ruled that segregation in education does immense harm. In a unanimous
decision, the Court ruled that separate was inherently unequal, siding with the
plaintiffs and overturning Plessy v Ferguson.  Justice Warren wrote that the
Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits states denying the
equal protection of the laws, and segregation is just that. Warren wrote about the
fundamental nature of education, calling it “perhaps the most important function of
state and local governments.” Warren went on to discuss the negative psychological
impacts of segregation. With new psychological research, which was not existent at
the time of Plessy,  the Court was able to overturn precedent. The Court writes that
“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” and separate facilities have
a negative impact on African American children denying them a fair educational
experience. The importance of the Court ruling unanimously cannot be overstated.
This was done to send a direct message that segregational policies in education
were unconstitutional, and the Court would be unlikely to ever overturn this
decision. 

Impact

Brown  was a major step in the Civil Rights Movement and signaled that the
government was unwilling to support segregationist policies. However, the
blowback to the Brown  decision was massive. In 1956, the South responded by
creating The Southern Manifesto which argued that the Court’s decision should not
stand. In part, the Manifesto argued that social science findings should not be used
in the reasoning of Supreme Court decisions. The more radical Southern politicians
tried to create a united Southern front against desegregation with the support of
governors to school administrators. 

A year later, the Court decided Brown v Board of Education II  (1955), which focused
on the implementation of the Brown ruling. This decision was more of a defeat for
the NAACP, as the Court ordered for communities to desegregate with “all
deliberate speed.” The language used was not very clear, and led many schools to
delay desegregationist and integrationist policies from taking effect. School
segregation continued and many city planners and school administrators continued
to favor predominantly white schools. Segregation was not just de facto after
Brown but policy choices continued to perpetuate inequality. 
Nonetheless, Brown v Board of Education  is a win for the Civil Rights Movement and
those in favor of desegregated policies. Linda Brown remained a figure for
desegregationist efforts and criticized areas which continued to fail to do their part
in equalizing education for all students. Brown remains a remembered icon, sadly
passing away in 2018.