There was so much that neeed to be overcome--a mountain of prejudice in the form of state-required segregation (a.k.a. Jim Crow), of segregated seats at the back of the public buses; of separate seating in restaurants, movie theaters, even separate drinking fountains and restrooms. Add to that separate-but-equal schools, as enforced by a Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), and so much more--a lack of jobs, unequal pay, no right to vote, or the right to a fair trial, and, if you didn't like it, and protested, a possible midnight lynching (where the local police would look the other way). To say the playing field was unequal for African Americans in the Old South was putting it mildly.
And before anything could begin to be change, two things would need to take place: (1) a new generation of bright African Americans equipped with law degrees and possessed by a burning desire to challenge in court the fiction of separate-but-equal; and (2) the rise of social sciences that would prove beyond a question of doubt that separate-but-equal schools had a devastating effect on African American children. And the time it would be 50 years.
That, in a nutshell, is the story recounted in "Simple Justice" by Richard Kruger. It's a book that should be required reading in public schools, as it presents a side of American history that is not well known.
The biggest hurdle to racial equality--both in the North and in the South--was the widespread belief that Arican Americans were somehow inferior. Writes the author: "In 1896, when the Supreme Court handed down Plessy v. Feguson, most of the nation shared the South's estimate of the black man. When the Court wrote in their opinion was that segregation "did not stamp the colored race with a badge of inferiority," America saw no cynicism in that judgement. The Supreme Court, to be sure, had been disingenuous in its suggestion that the inferiority was solely in the minds of the segregated blacks.
All literature, folklore, customs and norms of English-speaking people reinforced the notion that the African's "tawny hide" was a primal stain: Black was bad. Black was evil. . . . The devil was black; Satan was the Prince of Darkness. Witches practiced black magic. The plague was the black death. Melancholy was black humor. An unprincipled scoundrel was called a blackguard. When things were at their worst, they were said to look their blackest. And white was all the things that black was not: it was God, it was good, it was virtue, honor, health. The Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Melville--the masters of the King's English--all promoted the easy imagery of black as vile, and white as purity and thereby fed a deep and potent racism that well served all who would enslave the black men of Africa.
Offering another point of view, George Bernard Shaw, writing in "Man and Superman" seven years after the Plessy decision institutionalized segregation, said "the haughty American nation . . . makes the negro clean his boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact that he is a bootblack."
It was also believed that African Americans, being inferior, were not as intelligent as white Americans. In the first twenty years of the 20th century this idea was buttressed by a host of "experts" who based their claims on various studies of human anatomy and the results of various IQ tests, based on data--since proven suspect or outright false. Nonetheless, an impression was created that as a group African Americans were not as smart of Whites, yet another obstacle on the road to equality.
There followed the rise of the social sciences with new data that refuted much of this bogus information. Helping in this regard was an anthropologist named Franz Boas, who proclaimed that most students of race relied on casual, if not fanciful, observation of scientific evidence. "Boas brought a Prussian discipline and a physicist's precision to the gathering and weighing of data," writes the author. By 1899, Boas was professor of anthropology at Columbia University in New York. In 1911, he published "The Mind of Primitive Man," based on a study of race that disproved virtually all the claims regarding the intellectual inferiority of African Americans.
Further evidence came in the form of a new generation of African American scholars who were being admitted into the nation's most prestigious colleges. Among the most notable was Thurgood Marshall, who graduated with honors from Howard University School of Law in 1933. It should be noted that Howard University (a fully accredited law school) was created to meet a need, and catered mostly to black scholars like Marshall who had the grades but not the skin color to gain admittance into law schools in their state.
Marshall graduated with honors (cum laude) and established a private legal practice in his hometown of Baltimore before founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. In that capacity, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer, and notably Brown v. Board of Education, which is the subject of this book.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (to give its full name) was one tough nut to crack because to win Marshall had to disprove the validity of "separate-but-equal," a legal term that with time had gained the sanctity of law. "Separate-but-Equal" was the cornerstone of Plessy v. Ferguson. To be in compliance meant public schools had to provide separate facilities for African Americans, whether it was a grammar school, high school, or college. It was not only costly, but very nearly impossible to do. It meant that whatever the white kids enjoyed in their all-white schools--gymnasiums, tennis courts, cafeteria, fully-equipped chemistry labs, music departments, libraries with a variety of books, clean drinking water, modern restrooms, and clean safe buses to transport students to and from school, had to be provided for black students, too. States such as South Carolina claimed they met the criteria, but as Marshall and his team got around to the various school districts in the Palmetto State, they found it not to be so.
In fact, in most cases the white schools and the black schools weren't even remotely close to separate-but-equal. Worse, perhaps, was the stigma that branded black kids once they realized their school facilities were substandard. What it amounted to was a caste system, wherein one group enjoyed all the privileges and benefits that society could offer, while the other group was excluded from these very privileges and benefits.
Enter the new generation of social scientists with their black and white dolls. When asked to identify which doll was best, black kids (even as young as kindergartners) invariably would pick the white doll. In fact, they tended to identify with the white doll over the black doll. It was this way in Kansas, Virginia, Delaware, and South Carolina, the four states where the district courts ruled separate-but-equal was the law, period. These decisions were appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: "In each of these cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs, on the so-called 'separate but equal' doctrine announced by this court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537.
Under this doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case, the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiff be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools.
"The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools were not 'equal' and could not be made 'equal' and that hence they were deprived of equal protection under the laws (i.e. the Fourteenth Amendment)." Having been convinced of the social evidence supplied by Marshall's team, he also quoted from Marshall's brief that summed up the case against the schools in question: "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law. . . ."
Kruger's book takes time to read and absorb, and, at 778 pages, is a long but worthwhile read. What I have presented here is the crux of the story. Read the book and learn the full, shameful story.
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