“Why (Am I Treated So Bad)” -- The Staple Singers
On 17 May 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, unanimously finding that, with respect to public education, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." While the ruling applied only to public schools, the cracks in the pernicious Plessy v. Ferguson landmark holding were becoming apparent to all.
While racial segregation had always been a shameful blight on American society, its legal underpinnings are not so old as most people suppose. It was not until 25 years after chattel slavery was eradicated that the states of the Old Confederacy, still carrying a bitter grudge against that portion of the population that they went to war to preserve as property, began passing laws mandating racial segregation. With Plessy in 1896, a very conservative Supreme Court placed its imprimatur on de jure segregation, and Jim Crow laws spouted like poisonous weeds across the entire American South.
The battle against this injustice would eventually ignite a fire in the soul of Charles Hamilton Houston. The son of a lawyer born in 1895 as Jim Crow laws came increasingly oppressive across the Southern states, Houston strode through doors barred to other African-Americans of his era. He was selected as valedictorian upon graduating from Amherst College in 1915, and later taught English at Howard University. Houston’s academic career was interrupted by the American entry into World War I. Commissioned as a lieutenant in the segregated United States Army, he was shocked and dismayed by the raw and unceasing racism he encountered.
Resolving to challenge the oppressive racism permeating American culture, Houston entered Harvard Law School where he became the first African-American to serve as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After sharpening his legal skills working for his father, Houston would eventually became the first special counsel to the NAACP in 1935. For the remainder of his life he would work unceasing to win legal equality for African-Americans.
Although Houston won a number of victories in the courts, chipping away at racial inequality, he realized that until the legal edifice of Plessy was dismantled, the tide of freedom would never flow. Houston began searching for an issue he could to undeniably illustrate that Plessy was wrongly decided, that “separate” was demonstrably incompatible with “equal.” After much thought and considerable study, he decided the dismal condition of public education provided black children in southern schools to be that issue. He began planning a legal strategy to challenge the claim that the education accorded black children were equal to that of their white peers.
Sadly, Houston’s premature death in 1950 prevented him from seeing his plan through to fruition, but he left his works in the hands of his no-less-capable protege, Thurgood Marshall. Marshall and a devoted team of lawyers collected evidence, honed their arguments, and sought the best plaintiffs to present their case to the courts.
Plaintiffs and cases were readily available. In 1954, only 16 states expressly forbade segregation in the public schools. Every state in the Old Confederacy mandated racial segregation. The remaining states either formally allowed school districts to segregate students on the basis of race or remained silent on the issue.
Brown v. Board of Education actually consisted of several cases, all brought by the NAACP and consolidated the Supreme Court. Marshall and his team were fortunate in that the new Chief Justice, Earl Warren, and most of his fellow justices were not only receptive to his arguments, but actually eager to overturn Plessy. Marshall provided Warren and his colleagues to overturn the longstanding precedent of separate but equal.
To be sure, Brown, undoubtedly the linchpin of civil rights litigation had its flaws and would have to be revisited by the courts time again. Three defects stand out:
1) The ruling applied only to public schools.
2) Chief Justice Warren was determined to hand down a single unanimous decision. He wanted there to be no dissenting opinion, no unenthusiastic concurrences on which future resisters to desegregation could leverage into a counter argument. Thus, he was forced to temper his language to win the support of the Court’s more conservative members.
3) The Court sought to avoid provoking widespread resistance to integration across the very racist states of the Deep South.
The Court's efforts to make integration palatable to Southern states proved a failure as events at Little Rock Central High School were to show. The Little Rock School Board agreed unanimously if half-heartedly to comply with the Court’s ruling and begin a process of gradual integration. In the Fall of 1957, nine African-American students -- to be remembered by history as “The Little Rock Nine” -- registered to attend Little Rock Central High School. Racist citizens and state officials view this demand for social and legal equality as nothing less than a threat to their entire way of life and reacted accordingly.
When the Little Rock Nine arrived at Little Rock Central High School on this day in 1957, they were greeted by a racist mob. They and any who seem to support them were subjected to violence threats, spat upon, and physically assaulted. Governor Orval Faubus further escalated the tension by deploying the Arkansas National Guard to support this riotous mob in preventing these nine youngsters from entering the school.
Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann shared the President's anger at Faubus exploiting racial tensions and sent a telegram to Eisenhower asking for federal intervention. Seeing no other feasible alternative, Eisenhower deployed his beloved 101st Airborne Division -- sans its African-American troopers -- to Little Rock to safeguard the nine students. The President took the additional step of calling the entire Arkansas National Guard into federal service, thereby depriving Faubus of any authority over its actions.
Faubus and his racist supporters continued their assault on integration after this setback. Rebuffed by the federal courts after suing to indefinitely delay the admission of black students to formerly all-white schools, The following year, Faubus ordered the closing of all Little Rock public schools. The children of Little Rock, black and white alike, missed an entire year of school as a result of the governor’s spite. In 1959, the Little Rock School Board reopened the schools to Faubus’s dismay, and Little Rock students -- including the Little Rock Nine -- returned to the classrooms.
The Little Rock Nine were subjected to intense verbal and physical abuse for the remainder of their time at Little Rock Central High School. Nevertheless, all went on to achieve professional success and devote much of their lives to public service.
Roebuck "Pops" Staples wrote this moving song, he cited as motivation the treatment accorded these nine innocent children in Little Rock.
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