Reasons for the Failure to Implement Brown v. Board of Education

The major reason why the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that ordered the desegregation of the school system took so long to implement, and could be said even to this day to never be fully carried through, was largely due to the specific wording of the Supreme Court decision. By stating that desegregation had to occur “with all deliberate speed,” rather than stating that changes had to occur immediately or putting forth a specific timetable for the implementation of the decision, the Supreme Court left a degree of uncertainty in their ruling that was seized upon by enemies of progress in race relations and unity in the United States. The vague character of the ruling in the case was the main reason why implementation was such a fraught, slow, and in many ways incomplete process. It is therefore important to examine exactly why the law was worded this way and how the phrasing of this decision negatively impacted the progress of desegregation within the educational system.

To understand the reasons for the failed implementation of the ruling in this case it is first important to note that in actuality there were two parts to the Supreme Court decision. Brown I ordered the desegregation of the school system and ruled the previous legal concepts that justified segregation as unconstitutional, while, according to the National Archives, “Brown II was intended to work out the mechanics of desegregation. Due to the vagueness of the term ‘all deliberate speed,’ many states were able to the Court’s order to desegregate their schools.” The failure of the government on both the national and state level to implement Brown v. Board of Education is actually therefore a direct result of the ambiguous legal nature of the wording in Brown II. However, it is important to note that despite the legal implications of the nebulous wording of the document there were other reasons why the equivocal phrasing of the decision proved to be such a great impediment to the implementation of desegregation.

Equally important to the legal ramifications of the wording in Brown II were the social consequences of such toothless phrasing. As Charles J. Ogletree Jr. states, “If Brown I made integration a legal imperative, Brown II, with its decision to proceed ‘with all deliberate speed,’ ensured the imperative was not implemented as a social imperative” (306). When the hesitation of the Supreme Court to immediately implement full integration of the school system was made apparent by the wording of Brown II it galvanized opposition to the policy and dulled the moral righteousness of the cause, creating a social environment much more inclined to resist the concept of integration. If the Supreme Court was not willing to demand immediate compliance with the law of the land, to many opponents of the policy it stood to reason that there was a degree of uncertainty regarding the decision, and that it could therefore be loudly and successfully criticized. The opposition to the decision that was given the ideological and practical means to organize as a result of Brown II was one of the most important reasons for the failure of implementation.

The vague aspects of the timeframe established for integration of the school system in the ruling on Brown v. Board of Education allowed resistance to the law to manifest itself in a number of ways. Legally, opponents of the decision were able to justify the extremely slow and often nonexistent implementation of integration due to the wording of the law, while the vague nature of the decision took much of the social momentum behind the decision away and allowed organized resistance to formulate much more easily. For these reasons the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was extremely slowly implemented and largely remains incomplete to this day, in what is certainly one of the greatest failures of the legal system and fight for social justice in American history.

Works Cited

"Brown v. Board of Education Timeline." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brown-v-board/timeline.html.

Ogletree, Charles J. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004.