The Historical Role of Brown v. Board of Education: A Study of The Ruling’s Lasting Effects and Impact on Racism in America

The establishment of formal equality between whites and blacks in America has taken a long and arduous road. Though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, African-Americans were faced with many continuing obstacles to real liberty. One such obstacle was segregation. The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was critical in the desegregation of the American public sector. This paper will attempt to assess just how significant the ruling would be in the development of civil liberties in the United States. Brown overturned the Supreme Court’s prior ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which in itself was largely influential. Supporting evidence on schools’ role in shaping race relations will show that the effect of Brown extends beyond mere abrogation.

Brown was a monumental historical moment in America, but its roots stem in the court rulings that preceded it. Going back over half a century, the Louisiana Legislature passed such a ruling with the Separate Car Act of 1890. This was the original decree that called for “‘equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races’ on Louisiana railway cars” (Medley 2012). With the passage of the bill, a group of progressive individuals took it upon themselves to form the “Citizens Committee,” united around The Crusader. The Crusader was a weekly newspaper through which Rodolphe Desdunes expressed his unique and inspiring voice. Founded in 1889 “to combat the increasingly virulent racism of other New Orleans papers,” The Crusader “stood for ‘A Free Vote and Fair Count, Free Schools, Fair Wages, Justice, and Equal rights” (Medley 2012). Desdunes proposed a railway boycott similar to the Montgomery boycott that would take place 70 years later. Unfortunately, the volatility and racism of the era precluded the boycott, and the Citizens Committee turned to other venues to inspire change.

To fight what became known as the “Jim Crow car law,” the Committee began to solicit funds in order to launch two test cases. Three-thousand dollars were quickly raised, with the help of benevolent, social, and religious societies, as well as former abolitionists. The two cases were to challenge legal segregation on interstate routes, and also to challenge informal segregation on conveyances within the state (Medley 2012). Enter Homer Plessy. The committee chose Plessy to be a test subject, as he was fair-skinned (in fact, Plessy was only 1/8 black), and very well may have ridden the train in the “whites only” section without attracting attention. Plessy was considered black, however, under Louisiana State law, and there was a prearrangement between the railroad and the committee—thus the conductor asked Plessy to retire to the colored color. Plessy refused both the conductor and the private detective who would come in and urge him to move again as soon as the engineer stopped the train (Medley 2012). This incident occurred in 1892. Plessy appeared before a court only one month later, and in 1896 his case was reviewed by the Supreme Court in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

The Plessy decision set the stage for the institution of segregation. For several years, the ramifications of this ruling would ensure the preservation of implicit systems of mixed equality across the nation. Judge John Ferguson had ruled against separate cars for interstate railroad travel prior to the case of Homer Plessy. Ferguson justified his previous decision with his belief that different states were entitled to their various outlooks on segregation—he did not, however, decide to rule in the same way when presented with Plessy’s case. Ferguson went on to rule “against Plessy in this case because he believed that the state had a right to set segregation policies within its own boundaries” (Robinson 2005). The Supreme Court upheld Ferguson’s decision with an eight-person majority, indicating that neither the Thirteenth nor Fourteenth Amendments conflicted with Louisiana’s decision. The rationale behind this ruling, in Justice Henry Brown’s words, was that “A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races... has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races” (quoted in Robinson 2005). Even this decision, albeit its counter-productivity in the immediate interest of equality, carried the forbearing of what would, in the future, prove to be inevitable: desegregation.

The dissenting Justice was John Harlan, who feared the expansion of “separate but equal” throughout the public sector. Rather than agree with his fellow justices, Harlan offered his unique perspective in words both inspiring and visionary:

Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution. (quoted in Robinson 2005).

The Kentuckian concluded that the Louisiana statute was inconsistent with its citizens' personal liberties. He feared that many Americans would be placed in a condition of legal inferiority upon the grossly inadequate basis of race. That this was happening would become evident to another Supreme Court, decades later.

After the Plessy decision, a group of black attorneys working individually and through the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund devoted themselves to the fight against segregation. The legal strategy was to attempt to make sure that segregated systems were, in fact, equal while striking at those underpinnings which upheld the structure of segregation (American Bar Association (hereafter referred to as ABA), p. 1). In effect, segregation could never encourage a culture of equality because of the exorbitant costs it must incur. For instance, if there is a half-empty “whites only” railway car, a new car would have to be prepared if a single colored person wanted to ride as well. This is a small-scale example of what segregation demands. Specialized schools and institutions would need to be replicated, an expensive process which, in practice, seems all but infeasible. Through the legal action of those working through the NAACP, “[a]ll-white jury pools, covenants that restricted ownership of property in certain neighborhoods by race, laws disenfranchising black voters, and segregated graduate and professional schools were all challenged, often successfully” (ABA 2003, p.1). This was indispensable if the national progression toward desegregation was to continue. After vying for equality in public schools, district by district, for several years, the resolution that the NAACP came to in 1950 was “that nothing other than education of all children on a nonsegregated basis would be an acceptable outcome” (ABA 2003, p. 1). The decisions in four separate state Supreme Courts regarding four segregated public school systems ran parallel to the endeavors of the NAACP. In 1952, the cases of South Carolina, Kansas, Virginia, and Delaware were argued on appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The case was to be reargued in 1953 but was delayed by the death of Chief Justice Vinson who was replaced by his successor, Earl Warren.

The decisions in Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia went against the NAACP, but its position was strengthened nonetheless. In South Carolina, Judge Julius Waring dissented from his two colleagues, declaring that “segregation is per se inequality” (quoted in Faigman 2004, p. 181). In Kansas, the three-judge panel found segregation had a detrimental effect on colored children. This was due to the fact that psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark demonstrated that segregation harmed black children’s self-images. Their study was conducted using drawings and dolls of black and white children...these researchers asked black preschool and elementary school children to indicate which drawing or doll they preferred and which drawing or doll looked most like them. They also asked children to color line drawings of children with the color that most closely matched their own skin color. The Clarks found that black children often preferred the white doll and drawing, and frequently colored the line drawing of the child a shade lighter than their own skin. Samples of the children’s responses illustrated that they viewed white as good and pretty, but black as bad and ugly. (American Psychological Association (henceforth, APA) 2003).

With this finding, the issue of “separate but equal” was seriously put into question. In 1954, this was finally reflected in the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote out the Court’s decision, indicating “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater under the sanction of law...separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro race” (quoted in APA 2003). The process of desegregation in America began with this decision, though the rate of change was very gradual. So gradual that many historians question whether the Brown decision was at all significant. Though many point to the fact that it took many years before schools began to integrate effectively as proof that Brown vs. Board of Education was a failure, others are confident in the historical role it played.

The question of whether Brown was a success or failure depends on one’s expectations. Certainly, if one holds complete integration as the standard which the Brown decision ought to be put to, the years after the ruling demonstrate that it was insufficient. If, however, one chooses to view history through a larger scope, Brown might be considered ahead of its time. Mark Tushnet, in the Virginia Law Review, compares contrasting views regarding the significance of the Brown decision. Tushnet argues that we “might understand Brown as designed not to accomplish actual integration, but to establish a fundamental principle of constitutional law. The precise content of that principle has become controversial” (Tushnet 1994, p. 176). Tushnet goes into more detail regarding this controversy. He explains that the constitutional principle laid down might be that race is an impermissible basis for government decisions, as it might be that race is impermissible as a basis for government decisions that subordinate minorities (Tushnet 1994, p. 176). In either case, Brown was a landmark ruling. Government decisions relying on race were rendered less and less acceptable and were eventually discredited altogether. Brown endorsed this principle, which introduced the ethos surrounding the principle to the fabric of white political culture.

Ideologically, the notion that individual prejudice is destructive and that the importance of interracial contact must be emphasized is known as racial liberalism. Racial liberals were the primary group responsible for leaning on the findings of Clark and Clark in an attempt to secure legal victory and white sympathy. Lani Guinier, in the Journal of American History, explains her position and belief that racial liberalism and the decision of Brown v. Board of Education was, in fact, obtrusive to the development of racial equality in the States. According to Guinier, the legal engineers behind the strategies that emerged after Brown “failed to anticipate the downsides of a singular preoccupation with desegregation because their analysis essentialized all white children, without identifying the regulatory role race and class played within the white community...while dismantling Jim Crow was a noble imperative...Racism was not ended by [its] defeat” (Guinier 2004, p. 99). Indeed, the aftermath of Brown saw the biracial elite addressing the surface of the problem rather than the root, it became clear that “the fundamental vice was not legally enforced racial segregation itself; that this was a mere by-product, a symptom of the greater and more pernicious disease—white supremacy” (Guinier 2004, p. 99). The problem Guinier identifies in the Brown ruling is that it seeks to create interest-convergence among whites and blacks rather than addressing the problem of interest-divergence. Interest-divergence is far more pervasive and inherent in the racist structuring of society. It is because of the “interest-divergence dilemma” that Guinier does not feel strongly about the significance of Brown.

Guinier arrives at her idea of “interest-divergence” by expanding on the work done many years before her by Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. According to Bell, some controversy surrounded the Brown decision. Dr. Bell suggests that legally, the Brown ruling ought to be complicated by the fact that it trades the rights of one group for those of another. He raises the question of whether individual liberties are impinged upon by forcing one race to interact with another; a paradox when putting into conflict with the reality that the equality of one group is sure to be threatened by enforcing segregation. A colleague of Bell’s, Professor Charles Black, indicates that the issue is not so complicated. Bell explains Black’s two premises that “the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment should be read as saying that the Negro race, as such, is not to be significantly disadvantaged by the laws of the states,” and that “segregation is a massive intentional disadvantaging of the Negro race, as such, by state law” (Bell 1980, p. 522). Under Black’s interpretation, the Constitution prohibits depriving one race of the opportunities that are available to the other. Segregation functions as systemic oppression that retards the legally and philosophically ordained right of the African-American people to flourish within the confines of a culturally diverse society.

Schools became uniquely capable of boosting the status of African-Americans within society after the 1954 Brown decision. Schools were more than just a means of educating whites and blacks; they diversified students’ social networks and thereby facilitated positive interracial experiences. A study of both interracial friendships and conflicts is provided in Pat Goldsmith’s article on the subject. Goldsmith utilizes macrostructural theory, among other strategies, in order to identify how different races interact within the school system (Goldsmith 2004, p. 589). In her concluding section, Goldsmith asserts that the “results indicate that macrostructural theory, contact theory, and group threat theory each contribute to a partial explanation of levels of friendliness and conflict across schools, and that schools play a substantial role in shaping both outcomes” (Goldsmith 2004, p. 606). Though integration was not quick to follow the Brown decision, the seeds of it were sown very early. Whereas Plessy was decided through public transportation before spreading to other public sectors, the Brown decision began the process of desegregation in public schools—an important place to start.

Guinier makes a compelling point when she argues that attacking segregation would not directly address the causes of racist tendencies in America. Nonetheless, the combined evidence presented by Bell and Goldsmith suggests that the desegregation of the public school system was a particularly good place to start rectifying those tendencies. To be sure, many of the problems Guinier claims Brown failed to address persist today. At the very least, the Supreme Court’s decision will be remembered for at the very least having accomplished two important tasks: (1) establishing the general principle that Supreme Court decisions relying on the subordination of certain groups are impermissible, and (2) revealing that segregation results in the creation of an inferior and superior class. Despite addressing only the symptoms of racism, Brown launched a chain of events that rendered the continued existence of racism in America impossible. Though we have yet to defeat it, Brown set a precedent—we put our fate in the hands of our children.

References/Annotated Bibliography

Bell, Jr., D. A. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(518), 518-533. Retrieved March 22, 2014, from http://pscfiles.tamu.edu/links/div-com/bell-interest%20convergence.pdf

This article suggests that Brown pit the rights and interests of whites against the interests of blacks. It searches for a “neutrality principle” in which the aims of both races might be reconciled. Bell argued that rulings would benefit both parties in the instance where their interests converged.

Dialogue on Brown v. Board of Education. (n.d.). American Bar Association. Retrieved March 22, 2014, from http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/brown/brownvboard.authcheckdam.pdf

A summary of the historical events surrounding the Brown decision. A cursory retelling of Plessy v. Ferguson and an analysis of the factors that led to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown.

Faigman, D. L. (2004). Laboratory of justice: the Supreme Court's 200-year struggle to integrate science and the law. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt.

An explanation in greater detail of the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision that led to the Brown v. Board of Education trial.

Goldsmith, P. A. (2004). Schools' Role in Shaping Race Relations: Evidence on Friendliness and Conflict. Social Problems, 51(4), 587-612.

Goldsmith conducts a study on the effect of schools in shaping the relations between the races. Goldsmith’s methodology is comprehensive and intriguing. The way she examines the relationship between blacks and whites leads her to conclude that schools are crucial in the development of a harmonious understanding.

Guinier, L. (2004). From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma. Journal of American History, 91(1), 92.

Guinier describes the opposing ideologies of racial liberalism and racial literacy. Although she does not quite put them in opposition, rather, she suggests that the latter is an evolution of the former. She stresses the importance of racial literacy in addressing the systemic conditions that give rise to racism.

Klarman, M. J. (2007). From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 655. $35.00 cloth (ISBN 0-19-512903-2); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-19-531018-7).. Law and History Review, 25(03), 637-640. Retrieved March 22, 2014, from the JSTOR database.

A review of the historical rendering of the events leading from the Jim Crow era to the civil rights movements.

Medley, K. W. (2012). We as freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Gretna, La.: Pelican Pub. Co.

An in-depth description of Homer Plessy’s involvement in Plessy v. Ferguson, and the events that led up to the Supreme Court decision.

Robinson, S. (2005). Plessy Vs Ferguson. Plessy Vs Ferguson. Retrieved March 23, 2014, from http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/Plessy.htm

A historical description of Plessy v. Ferguson as it relates to the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Includes the written opinion of Justice John Harlan who dissented from his peers in the ruling.

Segregation Ruled Unequal, and Therefore Unconstitutional. (2003, May 28). http://www.apa.org. Retrieved March 23, 2014, from https://www.apa.org/research/action/segregation.aspx

The findings of Clark and Clark, important evidence in the Supreme Court’s Brown decision.

Tushnet, M. (1994). The Significance of Brown v. Board of Education. Virginia Law Review, 80(1), 173-184. Retrieved March 22, 2014, from the JSTOR database.

Tushnet explores whether Brown was truly a landmark event, or simply another by-product in the larger movement that included fighting for civil rights and desegregation.