William Fisher

Fifty-one years ago this week, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that would forever change life in America. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” schools for white and black children were inherently unequal. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous decision: “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?” he asked. “We believe that it does,” he answered. “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of

‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” That landmark decision triggered years of protest, and opened the gates to an avalanche of additional civil rights legislation in US.

In 1890, Louisiana passed a statute providing “that all railway companies…provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and coloured races.” Homer Plessy, a shoemaker, was jailed for sitting in the “White’s” car. Plessy went to court but was found guilty including by the Louisiana Supreme Court, and even the US Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision. The lone dissenter was Justice John Harlan. “Our Constitution is colour-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” he wrote. Harlan proved prophetic, but it would take another 64 years before “separate but equal” would be struck down as the law of the land, in the Brown case. In the city of Topeka, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her elementary school for blacks even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda’s father, Oliver Brown, tried to enrol her in the white elementary school but the principal of the school refused. Brown approached the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction to stop segregation in Topeka’s public schools. The head of Brown’s team of attorneys was Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s chief lawyer, who was later appointed to the US Supreme Court. At the Circuit Court trial, Marshall argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal.

The court ruled that segregation of white and coloured children in public schools indeed had a “detrimental effect on the coloured children.” But the Plessy case couldn’t be overruled. The lower court felt “compelled” to rule in favour of the Board of Education. Brown and the others appealed to the US Supreme Court, challenging school segregation. The Supreme Court’s decision was the end of a long road for opponents of ‘separate but equal’ schools but it would not be until the following year, 1955, that it would complete its ruling by ordering the states to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” — IPS