Brown vs. Board of Education: Underanalyzed Angles

I wrote the following paper for my US History class: it covers the basics as well as examining African American criticism of the ruling and the international context of the courts famous decision to desegregate schools.  My students - who are all people of color - were fascinated by the black arguments against desegregation and asked the obvious question: what was it like for African American students to go to desegregated schools, to in many cases be surrounded by teachers and students who, even if they didn't actively hate them, did not connect with them and support them?  What effect did that have on that generation of African Americans?  I couldn't offer a decent answer, and I feel I couldn't because that all-important and obvious question doesn't ever see the light of day in standard discussions of desegregation.

Looking at Brown as part of international diplomacy is important to do because it contextualizes the entire Civil Rights movement: it was able to happen in a certain political climate, that of the Cold War.  It's important for students to understand that struggle is always struggle within a CONTEXT and that as context changes the strategies of liberation also have to change.  We revisited this theme when we analyzed the fall of the Black Panthers - in the shifting context of the early 70's, their revolutionary vision was no longer relevant as it had been in the late 60's.   

One year before the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) initiated the mass civil rights movement, the Supreme Court struck a major blow to segregation in the United States.  In a case called Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in America’s public schools was unconstitutional.  Two men played a particularly important role in that decision: Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren.

Thurgood Marshall                               Earl Warren

Thurgood Marshall was destined to become the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, in 1967.  But long before then, he was known and respected as the nations most important civil rights lawyer.  He was utterly fearless and unwilling to be intimidated by violent racism, travelling to help clients in the most dangerous parts of the South.  He won a Supreme Court case in 1940, at the extraordinarily young age of 32, while working as a lawyer with the NAACP.  In the following years, Marshall won case after case for civil rights issues.  He set his sights on desegregating higher education, university by university.  After a few successes, he decided it the time was right to attempt to desegregate the entire system, beginning with public schools.

The NAACP provided support for anyone willing to bring a case about the harmful effects of segregation in public education to court.  But it still took a great deal of courage for African Americans to step forward: when the Reverend Joseph DeLaine went to Thurgood Marshall with a case, his house was burned down.  Despite the threat of such violence, Marshall built five cases – including DeLaines – and combined them into one large case.  The name of the case, Brown vs. Board of Education, comes from Reverend Oliver Brown, whose daughter had to walk 21 blocks to a “Negro school” when there was a good school only seven blocks away. 

At the time that Brown vs. Board of Education made it to the Supreme Court, there seemed little hope for the case.  The Chief Justice, a man named Fred Vinson, was unable to unify the Court around important issues, and he cared little about racial equality.  However, as Brown vs. Board was being debated, Vinson died, opening the door for change.    

The new Chief Justice was a man named Earl Warren.  Warren was warm-hearted, straight forward, and invited trust and loyalty.  Unlike Vinson, he commanded respect from the other members of the Court.  He also cared a great deal about racial equality.  Ten years before he joined the Supreme Court, Warren had supported the internment of Japanese during World War II.  He deeply regretted this decision, and was determined to right his wrongs by fighting for racial equality.  Despite differences in opinion, he was able to convince the members of the Court to unanimously support Thurgood Marshall’s case.  In 1954, it became illegal for public schools to enforce segregation.     

The Reaction of Southern Whites  

The success of Brown vs. Board was a massive shock to America, and especially to the South.  It overturned the policy of “separate but equal,” which had been established by the 1890 Supreme Court case Plessey vs. Ferguson.  Over the decades, the idea of “separate but equal” had become common sense for many whites in the South.  As civil rights scholar Thomas Borstelmann writes, “What had previously been considered by whites subversive – racial integration – acquired the moral authority of the Constitution.” 

The success of Brown vs. Board unleashed enormous amounts of fear and anger amongst the most racist whites.  The fear of integration deepened the racial hatred of many Southern whites and led to an increase in racially motivated violence.  In this environment of increasing fear, white leaders who advocated racial harmony had no chance of being listened to.  When the Brown vs. Board decision was announced, the governors of Alabama and Arkansas initially emphasized that the law was the law, and that their states would obey.  However, they quickly changed their tune when almost all other Southern politicians united against the new law. 

Brown vs. Board of Education did have immediate and strong effects… but only in the border-states, those states that are between the South and the North.  It would take many years for change to come to the South.  As historian James Patterson writes, Southern resistance proved that “Supreme Court decisions, no matter how bold, by themselves could fail to make major changes in the behavior of people in their communities." 

Black Criticism of Brown vs. Board

Zora Neale Hurston – Harlem Renaissance participant and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God – was one of many black critics of Brown vs. Board.  She argued that it portrayed all-black schools and their teachers in a negative light.  Whereas Brown claimed that going to all-black schools made black children feel inferior, Hurston felt that it often empowered them.  “How much satisfaction can I get,” she explained, “from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me to be near them?”  She called instead for stricter enforcement of laws providing equal funding for both black and white schools, and for an increase in funding for social workers. 

Zora Neale Hurston

In addition, the African American community worried that if black children started going to white schools, that black teachers, principles, and coaches would be put out of work.  Many did, in fact, lose their jobs or had to take lower positions. Considering these downsides to Brown, James Patterson notes that “Jim Crow, ironically enough, had helped to sustain all-black institutions and communities that provided solidarity vital to protest.” 

Brown vs. Board of Education: an International Event

It is only recently that historians have begun to consider how international events affected Brown vs. Board.  This may seem surprising, given that the Supreme Court Justices wrote that “it is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed,” but the old habit of thinking of the US as relatively unaffected by the rest of the world died hard. What was the “context of the present world struggle” mentioned by the Justices? 

There were profound world events that shaped the Court’s decision and the way the Court’s decision was used.  One was that after World War II, Europe was too weak to hold onto its colonies, which one by one gained independence.  This meant that the United States no longer made deals with the white colonial rulers of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East but with the leaders of new countries… leaders who were people of color and represented people of color.  The independence of former colonies meant a rapid decline of global white supremacy.  In this new global climate, America had to change its racist tune in order to work with the rest of the world. 

The State Department is the branch of government in charge of communicating with other nations.  During the period in which Brown vs. Board of Education was taking place, many new nations of the world told the State Department that they had trouble trusting the United States because of its racism.  Perhaps, they said, it would be better for them to form alliances with China and Russia, the communist leaders of the word. 

The State Department wanted to stop that possibility at all costs.  To do this, they spread the message that although racism was still a problem in the US, that it was only a problem in certain isolated areas.  The State Department told the rest of the world that the United States was working hard to end racism.  As historian Thomas Borstelmann writes, if the Supreme Court supported segregation, “finding that segregation was fully compatible with democracy and individual rights, the American position in a mostly nonwhite world would be devastated.”

The Supreme Court was aware of the position the State Department was in.  Although Earl Warren would have fought for desegregation anyway, considering the international affects of ending segregation in schools made his argument stronger and may have been a factor in the Supreme Courts unanimous decision. 

The State Department was delighted with the Court’s decision, and worked to translate the news into dozens of languages in order to spread the story around the world.  The black owned Pittsburgh Courier wrote that reporting that America had desegregated its schools would “stun and silence America’s Communist traducers behind the Iron Curtain.”  However, as scholar Thomas Borstelmann notes, “Some African Americans resented the administrations emphasis on Cold War logic over genuine belief in the fundamental validity of racial equality.  Sociologist Franklin Frazier, for example, argued that ‘the white man is scared down to his bowels, so its be-kind-to-Negroes decade at last.’”