Title: Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Strugle for Equality
Author: Richard Kluger
Year of Publication: 2004 [1975]
Thesis:
Kluger's narrative history of Brown v. Board reaches all the way from slavery to the twentieth century, developing Charles Hamilton Houston's architecture around challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy and culminating in the Brown decisions as a whole in 1954 and 1955. It ends with a look back in the newer edition. Kluger culminates in arguing that Brown was the Supreme Court's clear statement that segregation was inherently unequal. However, along the way, he dispells the myth that Thurgood Marshall was the architect of Brown, that the case stood on its own and that the Supreme Court was unanimous in its opinions, especially on the duration of implementation. He also showcases the effects of social psychology via Kenneth Clark's experiments. The Epilogue in 2004, Kluger posits Brown as the beginning of a "Second Reconstruction," (754) in which court-ordered desegregation moved rather quickly through courts on every issue except schooling, though ironically the South moved more quickly than the North or West (754-755, 763)). In fact, he shows that throught the Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush years how effectively Brown had been legally eviscerated, especially taxes, busing, housing disparities, and Affirmative Action.
Time: 18th-20th, but more focus on 19th-mid-20th
Geography: U.S.
Organization:
Foreword
- Equality as the ideal in the American Revolution
- Ironic that the Supreme Court stepped in as they are not a particulary democratic body (xi)
PART I / UNDER THE COLOR OF LAW
- Brown is five cases:
- Belton v. Gebhart
- Brown v. Board
- Bolling v. Sharp
- Briggs v. Elliot
- Davis. Prince Edward County School Board
1. Together Let us Sweetly Live
- Opens with case study of Joseph Albert DeLaine - principal who was run out of town b/c he wouldnt cowtow to the white power structure
- Little change since slavery in terms of conditions in South Carolina since slavery (describes them)
- White folks respond with paternalistic ideas
- Ex: Clarendon County spent $179 on white students and $43 on Black students (7)
- Paragraph explanation of African Americans' adoption of Christianity despite the obvious problems with it as embedded in a system of anti-Black oppression (11)
- Mentions irony of fighting abroad w/out freedom at home (12)
- Black people had to pay to build their own schools and come up with the funds to pay salaries (13)
- DeLaine politically active - writes everyone he can on disparities (15)
- Equal pay suits (16)
- NAACP leaders encounter retaliation - ex: no credit at the store (17)
2. Original Sin
- Through Civil War
- Jefferson on equality & as a hypocrite (28)
- No language on equality gets into Constitution (30)
- 3/5ths meant enslaved people (and everybody knew it, regardless of not mentioning it explicitly (31)
- 1850 Compromise / Kansas Nebraska (36)
- In terms of power - Norht is as bad as the South (37)
- "Integrated" churches still segregated (37)
- Dred Scott (38)
- Environmental degradation/disaster (39)
- Capital investment for plantations huge/comes from North (39)
- Southern planters over-extended (40)
- Lincoln's reluctant actions/thoughts on slavery/union (41)
- 13th Amendment debate (41)
- Freedmen's Bureau (43)
- Andrew Johnson - hates slavery because of how it degraded poor white folk, not because it hurt Black people (43)
- Criminalization of blackness and the various tricks of Reconstruction - ex: forcing folks into contract labor (44-45)
- Voting for Black folk under Reconstruction the most critical aspect of Radical Reconstruction - 48-49
3. The Special Favorite of the Laws
- $5 million spent on Reconstruction ($81 million in contemporary $) - 50
- North invests in land (51)
- Sharecropping & leasing (51-2)
- Supreme Court not at all politically independent or immune (Taney, Miller as examples) (53-56)
- 14 Amendment interpreted by Miller to mean that citizen of a country & of a state are different matters; therefore the Federal Gov't's job is not to meddle in state affairs on 14th Amendment
- SC defintes specifically the rights conferred by the 14th Amendment (already covered elsewhere) in the Slaughterhouse cases (53-37)
- United States v. Reese & also Cruikshank - Onus now on Black people to prove discrimination (59) - renders 15th Amendment useless
- Also - Fed. gov't not responsible for intervening when a mob (not state action) interferes with voting rights (60, 63)
- Other state cases to show rhetorical, but not meaningful gains in enfranchisement (62-3)
- Panic of 1873 motivates populist whites in the South to court Black voters (66)
- Atlanta Compromise (69)
- Plessy - SC cherry picks irrelevant cases (73)
- On "established uses" - "Jim Crow transportation practices varied widely in the South and were by no means the universal practice. IN many places, second-class coaches had long been shared by white and colored passengers." (79)
4. Not like Bales of Hay
5. Coming of Age in N* Heaven
6. The Raw Deal
8. Uncle Fearless's Nephew
9. slaking the Law of the Jungle
10. One of the Gang
11. A Foot in the Door
12. The Spurs of Texas Are upon You
PART II / THE COURTS BELOW
13. On the Natural Inferiority of Bootblacks
14. The Doll Man and Otehr Experts
15. Charleston Detour
16. Prairie Fire
17. The Menninger Connection
18. Jim Crow, Inc.
19. "Stick with Us"
20. The Pride of Virginia
21. The Best Place to Attack
PART III / ON APPEAL
22. Going for the Jugular
23. At Loggerheads
24. Arrival of the Superchief
26. Simple Justice
- Merges transportation and education
- Does this decision overturn the Slaughterhouse cases? (esp. dual citizenship state / national)
- Separation is inherently unequal
- Warren points out that a look at the present state of things vs. only at Plessy is necessary (seems like this appears as part of Kluger's argument that he was trying to avoid keeping his focus solely on the South)
- "Unanimous" was voiced, but not written, by Warren, as he read the majority decision (again this chapter shows how political a body the Supreme Court was)
- "To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone." Quote from Warren (708)
- Cites sociology (i.e. Kenneth Clark's research) as supportive, but not the most substantive aspect of the decision (709)
- Ultimately the decision appears weak, even to supporters, as the 14th Amendment & resulting cases are sidelined (714)
- The nebulous timeline allows the South to continue on segregating
- Reston's critiques (714-716):
- - Poor use of 14th
- - Poor use of case law challenging/eliminating state-backed segregation (715)
- - Blatant results negative on African American community
- - Should have more firmly contested Plessy (716)
- - "The Court might have inquired rhetorically, for example, why segregation laws were in fact imposed in the first place if the white majority did not believe the black minority to be inferior." (716)
- Quality of schools a hot-button issue for all (720)
- On the gradualist approach (see, Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools) "...some school officials who have experineced it believe the reverse is true. A markedly gradual program, they contend, invites opposition and allows time for it to be organized." (721)
*Clark studies desegregation and determines people will go along with it if imposed vs. waiting for them to change their minds, which provides time to object (722)
- Clark's recommendations:
A. A clear and unequivocal statement of policy by leaders with prestige and other authorities
B. Firm enforcement of the changed policy by authorities and persistence in the execution of this policy in the face of initial resistance.
C. A willingness to deal with violations, attempted violations, and and incitement to violations by a resort to the law and strong enforcemnt action.
D. A refusal of the authorities to resort to, engage in or tolerage subterfuges, gerrymandering or other devices for evading the principles and the facts of desegregation.
E. An appeal to the individuals concerned in terms of their religious principles of brotherhood and their acceptance of the American traditions of fair play and justice. (723)
- Violence occurs because of poor law enforcement (723)
- Discussion of Clark emphasizes the question of speed of implementation
- State-directed implementation plans very slow- Florida as example (728)
- Gov't lawyers argue for immediate, but open-ended implementation (730)
- Rogers' remarks on disobeying the decree (736)
- Develops discussions between clerks on speed of implementation (obviously not all in agreement) (742)
- "Now the law says that, like them or not, white America may no humiliate African Americans by setting them apart. Now the law says that black Americans must not be degraded by the state and their degradation used as an excuse to drive them further down. That is what Brown. v. Board of Education accomplished. It took the better part of four centuries." (750)
27. Visible Man: Fifty years after Brown
Appendix: Text of the Decisions
- My own observation - this seems like a remarkably brief decision.
- Warren argues - discourse around 14th difficult to determine in this case (791)
- Then: that public education was different then (791)
- Then: "As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education." (791) - argument that this skirts around the history of attempts to use the 14th Amendment in this context.
- Additionally, "tangible" factors (conditions, etc.) can't alone determine the viablity of the Separate but Equal doctrine, but refers to sociology (Clark, Frazier, Myrdal, etc.)
(792)
- "unanimously" indeed left out on p.793
Sources and Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Interviews and Correspondence
Notes
Indexes
Principle Cases Cited
Subjects and Names
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Oral histories, Supreme Court records,
Historiography:
Keywords:
Sweatt v. Painter ruling - not just that there are unequal physical circumstances, but that the sociality of learning is denied Black students (792)
McLaurin v. Oklahoma ruling - also on the sociality of learning
See Swann v. Mecklenberg for ruling on busing in 1971 & see Potter Stewart on "purposeful" segregation (think this is Milliken v. Bradley. (764, 766)
See: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez - this is a key case as it challenges public funding & distribution of benefits (naturally it loses) (764-765)
See: Bakke at UC Berkeley (774) - white man challenges quotas. Affirmative Action ruled constitutional, but quotas not. "The case for Bakke boiled down to a single compelling point: no applicant's race should ever be allowed to be the basis for preferential consideration, any more than it shoudl be the basis for denial of admission; individual merit alone should matter, not arbitrary quotas intended as group compensation." (775)
Themes:
Critiques:
- There is some voice creep using derogatory language (9)
Returning to this quote to analyze
- "Sadly the rewards of interracial and transcultural blending have been spurned by many younger African Americans in the nation's high schools and colleges, precisely where the future is taking shape. Mingling with white classmates is often taken--whether out of long-smoldering resentment, fear of being rejected or patronized, or for some other phobic cause--as a denial of one's African American roots, while white students, detecting only a large threatening chip on their black schoolmates' shoulders and failing to perceive it as an expression of natural cultural affinities or a confession of insecurity, have often responded inhospitably, adding to the rancorous standoff. Nor have adult overseers helped matters. Administrators at many white-majority universities, in the misguided belief they were insulating their campuses against racial tension, have accomplished the opposite by setting aside blacks-only dormitories, or parts thereof, to accommodate African American students who wish to segregate themselves. But what sort of lesson has been taught by such invitations to group avoidance in settings where young people migrate to be stimulated by new ideas and to gain understanding through exposure through fresh cultural influences?" (788)
Questions:
Quotes:
Notes:
Excerpt from Alexander Bickel on problems with Clark's data and the fallacy of not confronting Plessy head on (as well as generally language meant to avoid offending southerners) - "...No matter how it had been done, no doubt, the enemies of the opinion were certain to seize upon it and proclaim the ruling unjudicial and illegal. The opinion therefore should have said straightforwardly that Plessy was based on a self-invented philosophy, no less psychologically oriented than the Court was being now in citing these sources to justify the holding that segregation inflicted damage. It was clear, though, that Warren wanted to present as small a target as possible, and that was wi
The meat of the decision:
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? We believe that it does." (792)