(At dinner).
JUNIOR/MOM: (Together) Emmm—where were we?
DAD: Hahahaha! Oh well, we cannot talk about the fifties without talking about the history of Civil Rights. Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka changed that decade and helped to shape the future of America.
To back up, the struggle for equality in education had taken a beating in 1896, when the Supreme Court ruled in Plessey v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and White people were equal.
The new Case began in 1952. It was argued before the Supreme Court by a Black man who had dedicated his life and law practice to ending inequality. His name was Thurgood Marshall. His argument was simple but brilliant. He argued that school segregation was a violation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, and the only justification for continuing to have separate schools was to keep people who were slaves “as near that stage as possible.”
President Eisenhower had appointed Earl Warren to replace Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who was against striking down segregation by a stroke of providence. His sudden death led another Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter, to say privately that Chief Justice Vinson’s death was “the first solid piece of evidence I’ve ever had that there is a God.”
MOM: Interestingly, the President of the United States attempted to place his thumb on the scales of Lady Justice. Thankfully, Lady Justice is blind. She refused the nudge from Eisenhower to rule otherwise, as Eisenhower said to Chief Justice Earl Warren at a White House dinner: “These (Southern Whites) are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”
On May 17, 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court handed down its decision providentially and delightedly.
It ruled that segregated schools are “inherently unequal and unconstitutional.” The Court stressed that the badge of inferiority stamped on minority children by segregation hindered their full development, no matter how equal the facilities. “We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place.” Gavel!!
CURTAIN
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