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134-581: Following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States , the court declared school segregation unconstitutional. As a response to Brown v. Board of Education, Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis created this group through the passage of state legislation. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was founded in 1956, and was the organizational template for

268-593: A class-action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard the case and ruled against the Browns, relying on the precedent of Plessy and its "separate but equal" doctrine. The Browns, represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall , appealed

402-719: A discriminatory private contract could not violate the Equal Protection Clause, the courts' enforcement of such a contract could; after all, the Supreme Court reasoned, courts were part of the state. The companion cases Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , both decided in 1950, paved the way for a series of school integration cases. In McLaurin , the University of Oklahoma had admitted McLaurin, an African-American, but had restricted his activities there: he had to sit apart from

536-543: A feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone ... We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Warren discouraged other justices, such as Robert H. Jackson , from publishing any concurring opinion; Jackson's draft, which emerged much later (in 1988), included this statement: "Constitutions are easier amended than social customs, and even

670-556: A key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems following Mendez v. Westminster . However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a White House dinner, where the president told him: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about

804-504: A member of one caste while another and a different measure is meted out to the member of another caste, both castes being alike citizens of the United States, both bound to obey the same laws, to sustain the burdens of the same Government, and both equally responsible to justice and to God for the deeds done in the body? The 39th United States Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment on June 13, 1866. A difference between

938-744: A peaceful coexistence of black and white people within the state, and features Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis speaking on states' rights. The group employed investigators and was prosecuted for the use of illegal wiretaps in order to victimize Wade Mackie, of the American Friends Service Committee ; Irvin Cheney, the former pastor of the Broadmoor Baptist Church in Baton Rouge; and Marvin Reznikoff

1072-657: A plurality of historians believe that this judicial decision set the United States on the path to the Civil War, which led to the ratifications of the Reconstruction Amendments.   Before and during the Civil War, the Southern states prohibited speech of pro-Union citizens, anti-slavery advocates, and northerners in general, since the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states during such times. During

1206-549: A progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation. In Moberly, Missouri , the schools were desegregated, as ordered. However, after 1955, the African-American teachers from the local "negro school" were not retained; this was ascribed to poor performance. They appealed their dismissal in Naomi Brooks et al., Appellants, v. School District of City of Moberly, Missouri, Etc., et al. ; but it

1340-473: A small degree. In fact, much of the integration in the 1960s happened in response not to Brown but to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . The Supreme Court intervened a handful of times in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but its next major desegregation decision was not until Green v. School Board of New Kent County (1968), in which Justice William J. Brennan , writing for a unanimous Court, rejected

1474-412: Is inherently unequal because of its psychological impact upon the segregated children. To separate [black children] 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. The Court supported this conclusion with citations—in a footnote, not

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1608-530: Is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes." Nevertheless, the Justice Department sided with the African-American plaintiffs. While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed

1742-537: Is what the Committee had intended. Legal historians in the 20th Century examined the history of the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment and found that Conkling had fabricated the notion that the Committee had intended the term "person" of the Fourteenth Amendment to encompass corporations. This San Mateo case was settled by the parties without the Supreme Court issuing an opinion however the Court's misunderstanding of

1876-480: The American Bar Association , proclaiming that "Our American system like all others is on trial both at home and abroad, ... the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of adulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile." In 1951, a class-action lawsuit was filed against

2010-467: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 . The Act provided that all persons born in the United States were citizens (contrary to the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford ), and required that "citizens of every race and color ... [have] full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens." President Andrew Johnson vetoed

2144-595: The Civil War . The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase " Equal Justice Under Law ". This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation . The clause has also been the basis for Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same-sex marriages, along with many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards, people belonging to various groups. While

2278-535: The Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the Brown ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D. E. Hudgins Jr., a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to

2412-483: The Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. For several decades after the Brown decision, African-American teachers, principals, and other school staff who worked in segregated Black schools were fired or laid off as Southerners sought to create a system of integrated schools with White leadership. According to historian Michael Fultz, "In many ways

2546-564: The slave states until the Emancipation Proclamation and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment . Even black Americans that were not enslaved lacked many crucial legal protections. In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court rejected abolitionism and determined black men, whether free or in bondage, had no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution at the time. Currently,

2680-477: The " Little Rock Nine " after the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School . President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by asserting federal control over the Arkansas National Guard and deploying troops from the U.S. Army 's 101st Airborne Division stationed at Fort Campbell to ensure the black students could safely register for and attend classes. Also in 1957, Florida's response

2814-417: The 1850s. Likewise, some states were more favorable to women's legal status than others; New York, for example, had been giving women full property, parental, and widow's rights since 1860, but not the right to vote. No state or territory allowed women's suffrage when the Equal Protection Clause took effect in 1868. In contrast, at that time African American men had full voting rights in five states. In

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2948-498: The 1866 Civil Rights Act and of the Equal Protection Clause. Almost a hundred years would pass before the U.S. Supreme Court followed that Alabama case ( Burns v. State ) in the case of Loving v. Virginia . In Burns , the Alabama Supreme Court said: Marriage is a civil contract, and in that character alone is dealt with by the municipal law. The same right to make a contract as is enjoyed by white citizens, means

3082-509: The 1889 case Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company v. Beckwith in support of the proposition that corporations are entitled to equal protection of the law within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Writing the opinion for the Court in Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company v. Beckwith , Justice Field reasoned that a corporation is an association of its human shareholders and thus has rights under

3216-775: The Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas , in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas . The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools due to a 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The plaintiffs had been recruited by

3350-499: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 amid concerns (among other things) that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact such a bill. Such doubts were one factor that led Congress to begin to draft and debate what would become the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Additionally, Congress wanted to protect white Unionists who were under personal and legal attack in the former Confederacy. The effort

3484-535: The Civil War, many of the Southern states stripped the state citizenship of many whites and banished them from their state, effectively seizing their property. Shortly after the Union victory in the American Civil War , the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1865, abolishing slavery . Subsequently, many ex- Confederate states then adopted Black Codes following

3618-403: The Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. Such "arbitrary separation" by race, Harlan concluded, was "a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by

3752-471: The Constitution, to "be the Judge of the ... Qualifications of its own Members", had excluded Southerners from Congress, declaring that their states, having rebelled against the Union, could therefore not elect members to Congress. It was this fact—the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a " rump " Congress—that permitted the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress and subsequently proposed to

3886-424: The Constitution." Harlan's philosophy of constitutional colorblindness would eventually become more widely accepted, especially after World War II . In the decades after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the vast majority of Supreme Court cases interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment dealt with the rights of corporations, not with the rights of African Americans. In the period 1868–1912 (from ratification of

4020-407: The Court explicated what has since become known as the " state action doctrine ", according to which the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause apply only to acts done or otherwise "sanctioned in some way" by the state. Prohibiting blacks from attending plays or staying in inns was "simply a private wrong". Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented alone, saying, "I cannot resist the conclusion that

4154-447: The Court's decision in Brown , but most white Southerners decried it. Many white Southerners viewed Brown as "a day of catastrophe—a Black Monday —a day something like Pearl Harbor ." In the face of entrenched Southern opposition, progress on integrating American schools was slow. The American political historian Robert G. McCloskey described: The reaction of the white South to this judicial onslaught on its institutions

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4288-464: The Court's opinion in Brown made no reference to these considerations of foreign policy, there is no doubt that they significantly influenced the decision." In spring 1953, the court heard the case, but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks. The court reargued

4422-740: The Court's second decision in Brown II (1955) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed". In the Southern United States , the reaction to Brown among most white people was "noisy and stubborn", especially in the Deep South where racial segregation was deeply entrenched in society. Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as " massive resistance ", created by Senator Harry F. Byrd , in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in

4556-694: The Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nonetheless requires equal protection under the laws of the federal government via reverse incorporation . The Equal Protection Clause is located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in

4690-589: The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to business corporations was introduced into Supreme Court jurisprudence through a series of sleights of hands. Roscoe Conkling , a skillful lawyer and former powerful politicians who had served as a member of the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction , which had drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, was the lawyer who argued an important case known as San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Railroad before

4824-467: The Equal Protection Clause. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Court showed increased willingness to find racial discrimination illegal. The Shelley case concerned a privately made contract that prohibited "people of the Negro or Mongolian race" from living on a particular piece of land. Seeming to go against the spirit, if not the exact letter, of The Civil Rights Cases , the Court found that, although

4958-495: The Fourteenth Amendment as the basis for his arguments to expand the protections afforded to black Americans. Although the equal protection clause is one of the most cited ideas in legal theory, it received little attention during the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead the key tenet of the Fourteenth Amendment at the time of its ratification was the Privileges or Immunities Clause . This clause sought to protect

5092-459: The Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment , held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment. Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that

5226-558: The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection of the law and due process rights for corporations, even though in the Santa Clara case the Supreme Court held or stated no such thing. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the clause was used to strike down numerous statutes applying to corporations. Since the New Deal , however, such invalidations have been rare. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), Lloyd Gaines

5360-407: The Fourteenth Amendment just as the members of the association. In this Supreme Court case Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company v. Beckwith , Justice Field, writing for the Court, thus took this point as established Constitutional law. In the decades that followed, the Supreme Court often continued to cite and to rely on Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad as established precedent that

5494-454: The Fourteenth Amendment to the first known published count by a scholar), the Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment in 312 cases dealing with the rights of corporations but in only 28 cases dealing with the rights of African Americans. Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment was used primarily by corporations to attack laws that regulated corporations, not to protect the formerly enslaved people from racial discrimination. Granting rights under

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5628-712: The Lee-Jackson state holiday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the closures violated the state constitution, and a panel of federal judges ruled they violated the U.S. Constitution. In early February 1959, both the Arlington County (also subject to an NAACP lawsuit, and which had lost its elected school board pursuant to other parts of the Stanley Plan) and Norfolk schools desegregated peacefully. Soon, all counties reopened and integrated with

5762-896: The Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission can be found at the Civil Rights Digital Library at the Digital Library of Georgia , the American Archive of Public Broadcasting , and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History . Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if

5896-629: The Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, and the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission . A former candidate for governor, Frank Voelker, Jr. had led the Louisiana group in 1962 to 1963. Sam B. Short served as the group's executive director. The pro-segregation propaganda film A Way of Life (1961), was released for the group as part of the Louisiana: A History series, produced by Avalon Daggett . The film showed

6030-464: The Nation." During the segregation era, it was common for black schools to have fewer resources and poorer facilities than white schools despite the equality required by the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Brown Court did not address this issue, however, probably because some of the school districts involved in the case had improved their black schools in order to "equalize" them with the quality of

6164-488: The North never fully conformed its racial practices to its professions". The Court set the case for re-argument on the question of how to implement the decision. In Brown II , decided in 1954, it was concluded that since the problems identified in the previous opinion were local, the solutions needed to be so as well. Thus the court devolved authority to local school boards and to the trial courts that had originally heard

6298-521: The Rabbi of the Liberal Synagogue. Yasuhiro Katagiri wrote in his 2009 book the records for Louisiana's group were "apparently burned" after they ceased operations. In declassified FBI documents (through FOIA ) reported in 2016, former state governor John McKeithen , with the help of the organization had privately raised money for Ku Klux Klan leaders within the state. Archival records for

6432-499: The South moved faster, with more 'deliberate speed' in displacing Black educators than it did in desegregating schools." Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd organized a campaign to generate legal obstacles to the implementation of desegregation. In September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas Army National Guard to block the entry of nine black students, later known as

6566-664: The Supreme Court cited was Gunnar Myrdal 's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Myrdal had been a signatory of the UNESCO declaration. The United States and the Soviet Union were both at the height of the Cold War during this time, and U.S. officials, including Supreme Court justices, were highly aware of the harm that segregation and racism were doing to America's international image. When Justice William O. Douglas traveled to India in 1950,

6700-471: The Supreme Court in 1882. In this case, the issue was whether corporations are "persons" within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Conkling argued that corporations were included in the meaning of the term person and thus entitled to such rights. He told the Court that he, as a member of the Committee that drafted this amendment to the Constitutional, knew that this

6834-410: The Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana Jim Crow law that required the segregation of blacks and whites on railroads and mandated separate railway cars for members of the two races. The Court, speaking through Justice Henry B. Brown , ruled that the Equal Protection Clause had been intended to defend equality in civil rights , not equality in social arrangements . All that was therefore required of

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6968-480: The U.S. Supreme Court justices. The 13 plaintiffs were: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson , Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, Vivian Scales, and Lucinda Todd. The last surviving plaintiff, Zelma Henderson, died in Topeka, on May 20, 2008, at age 88. The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing

7102-645: The U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson . Judge Walter Huxman wrote the opinion for the three-judge District Court panel, including nine "findings of fact," based on the evidence presented at trial. Although finding number eight stated that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on negro children, the court denied relief on the ground that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers. This finding would be specifically cited in

7236-463: The United States , drafted the "syllabus" (summary) of Supreme Court decisions and the "headnotes" that summarized key points of law held by the Court. These were published before each case as part of the official court publication communicating the law of the land as held by the Supreme Court. A headnote that Davis as court reporter published immediately preceding the court opinion in Santa Clara case stated: "The defendant Corporations are persons within

7370-657: The United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills." The brief also quoted a letter by Secretary of State Dean Acheson lamenting that "the United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country." British barrister and parliamentarian Anthony Lester has written that "Although

7504-538: The United States or of such State." At that time, the meaning of equality varied from one state to another. Four of the original thirteen states never passed any laws barring interracial marriage , and the other states were divided on the issue in the Reconstruction era. In 1872, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the state's ban on mixed-race marriage violated the "cardinal principle" of

7638-512: The United States, 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and the start of the Gilded Age . The first truly landmark equal protection decision by the Supreme Court was Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). A black man convicted of murder by an all-white jury challenged a West Virginia statute excluding blacks from serving on juries. Exclusion of blacks from juries, the Court concluded, was a denial of equal protection to black defendants, since

7772-451: The United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction

7906-409: The actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such

8040-452: The amendment. There were also two states, Ohio and New Jersey, that accepted the amendment and then later passed resolutions rescinding that acceptance. The nullification of the two states' acceptance was considered illegitimate and both Ohio and New Jersey were included in those counted as ratifying the amendment. Many historians have argued that Fourteenth Amendment was not originally intended to grant sweeping political and social rights to

8174-490: The arguments it could enhance.   During the debate in Congress, more than one version of the clause was considered. Here is the first version: "The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure ... to all persons in the several states equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property." Bingham said about this version: "It confers upon Congress power to see to it that

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8308-673: The case at a conference of all nine justices. At that time, the Court had split, with a majority of the justices voting that school segregation did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Warren, however, through persuasion and good-natured cajoling—he had been an extremely successful Republican politician before joining the Court—was able to convince all eight associate justices to join his opinion declaring school segregation unconstitutional. In that opinion, Warren wrote: To separate [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates

8442-432: The case at the behest of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter , who used reargument as a stalling tactic, to allow the court to gather a consensus around a Brown opinion that would outlaw segregation. The justices in support of desegregation spent much effort convincing those who initially intended to dissent to join a unanimous opinion. Although the legal effect would be same for a majority rather than unanimous decision, it

8576-582: The case of Cooper v. Aaron , the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown , and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling. For much of the 60 years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation . Such state policies had been endorsed by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which held that as long as

8710-613: The case of Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County . Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution . The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State   ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by

8844-653: The case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that "the existence of discrimination against minority groups in

8978-421: The cases. ( Brown was actually a consolidation of four different cases from four different states.) The trial courts and localities were told to desegregate with "all deliberate speed". Partly because of that enigmatic phrase, but mostly because of self-declared " massive resistance " in the South to the desegregation decision, integration did not begin in any significant way until the mid-1960s and then only to

9112-467: The circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve

9246-427: The citizens but instead to solidify the constitutionality of the 1866 Civil rights Act. While it is widely agreed that this was a key reason for the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, many historians adopt a much wider view. It is a popular interpretation that the Fourteenth Amendment was always meant to ensure equal rights for all those in the United States. This argument was used by Charles Sumner when he used

9380-552: The closest neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and redirected to the segregated schools. The case "Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. The lawyers, and the National Chapter of the NAACP, also felt that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by

9514-478: The context in which the Amendment was passed, stating that knowing the evils and injustice the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to combat is key in our legal understanding of its implications and purpose. With the abridgment of the Privileges or Immunities clause, legal arguments aimed at protecting black American's rights became more complex and that is when the equal protection clause started to gain attention for

9648-404: The county either had to leave the county to receive any education between 1959 and 1963, or received no education. All private schools in the region remained racially segregated. This lasted until 1964, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Prince Edward County's decision to provide tuition grants for private schools that only admitted whites violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, in

9782-448: The court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion. Although most justices were immediately convinced, Warren spent some time after this famous speech convincing everyone to sign onto the opinion. Justice Jackson dropped his concurrence and Reed finally decided to drop his dissent. The final decision

9916-529: The district court judge in Gebhart ordered that the black students be admitted to the white high school due to the substantial harm of segregation and the differences that made the separate schools unequal. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther , the United Auto Workers donated $ 75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court. The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall —who

10050-541: The education of Southern black children was "almost nonexistent", to the point that in some Southern states the education of black people was forbidden by law. The Court contrasted this with the situation in 1954: "Today, education is perhaps the most important function of our local and state governments." The Court concluded that, in making its ruling, it would have to "consider public education in light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout

10184-874: The enrollment of two black students in what became known as the " Stand in the Schoolhouse Door " incident. Wallace sought to uphold his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" promise he had given in his 1963 inaugural address. Wallace moved aside only when confronted by General Henry V. Graham of the Alabama National Guard , whom President John F. Kennedy had ordered to intervene. Native American communities were also heavily impacted by segregation laws with native children also being prohibited from attending white institutions. Native American children considered light-complexioned were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from

10318-459: The equal protection clause would change forever. The Supreme Court itself recognized the gravity of the Brown v Board decision acknowledging that a split decision would be a threat to the role of the Supreme Court and even to the country. When Earl Warren became Chief Justice in 1953, Brown had already come before the Court. While Vinson was still Chief Justice, there had been a preliminary vote on

10452-532: The equal protection of the laws . [emphasis added] Though equality under the law is an American legal tradition arguably dating to the Declaration of Independence, formal equality for many groups remained elusive. Before passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, which included the Equal Protection Clause, American law did not extend constitutional rights to black Americans. Black people were considered inferior to white Americans, and subject to chattel slavery in

10586-492: The equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.'" In fact, the Supreme Court decided the case on narrower grounds and had specifically avoided this Constitutional issue. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field seized on this deceptive and incorrect published summary by the court reporter Davis in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad and cited that case as precedent in

10720-414: The equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court did not close with an order to implement the integration of the schools of the various jurisdictions. Instead, it requested the parties re-appear before the Court the following Term to hold arguments on what the appropriate remedy should be. This became the case known as Brown II , described below. Americans mostly cheered

10854-420: The equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. Thus, the clause would not be limited to discrimination against African Americans, but would extend to other races, colors, and nationalities such as (in this case) legal aliens in the United States who are Chinese citizens. In its most contentious Gilded Age interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),

10988-399: The exception of Prince Edward County that took the extreme step of choosing not to appropriate any funding for its school system, thus forcing all its public schools to close, although Prince Edward County provided tuition grants for all students, regardless of their race, to use for private, nonsectarian education. Since no private schools existed for blacks within the county, black children in

11122-405: The federal courts. Thurgood Marshall , a former student of Houston's and the future Solicitor General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court , joined him. Both men were extraordinarily skilled appellate advocates, but part of their shrewdness lay in their careful choice of which cases to litigate, selecting the best legal proving grounds for their cause. In 1954 the contextualization of

11256-403: The final version, however. When Senator Jacob Howard introduced that final version, he said: It prohibits the hanging of a black man for a crime for which the white man is not to be hanged. It protects the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man. Ought not the time to be now passed when one measure of justice is to be meted out to

11390-410: The first question he was asked was, "Why does America tolerate the lynching of Negroes?" Douglas later wrote that he had learned from his travels that "the attitude of the United States toward its colored minorities is a powerful factor in our relations with India." Chief Justice Earl Warren , nominated to the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower , echoed Douglas's concerns in a 1954 speech to

11524-460: The initial and final versions of the clause was that the final version spoke not just of "equal protection" but of "the equal protection of the laws". John Bingham said in January 1867: "no State may deny to any person the equal protection of the laws, including all the limitations for personal protection of every article and section of the Constitution   ..." By July 9, 1868, three-fourths of

11658-573: The intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment…, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Davis added before the opinion of the Court: "MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE said: 'The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction

11792-467: The intention of the Amendment's drafters that had been created by Conkling's likely deliberate deception was never corrected at the time. A second fraud occurred a few years later in the case of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad , which left a written legacy of corporate rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. J. C. Bancroft Davis , an attorney and the Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of

11926-747: The issue and make recommendations. The commission recommended giving localities "broad discretion" in meeting the new judicial requirements. However, in 1956, a special session of the Virginia legislature adopted a legislative package which allowed the governor to simply close all schools under desegregation orders from federal courts. In early 1958, newly elected Governor J. Lindsay Almond closed public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County rather than comply with desegregation orders, leaving 10,000 children without schools despite efforts of various parent groups. However, he reconsidered when on

12060-420: The jury had been "drawn from a panel from which the State has expressly excluded every man of [the defendant's] race." At the same time, the Court explicitly allowed sexism and other types of discrimination, saying that states "may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications. We do not believe the Fourteenth Amendment

12194-401: The justices joined. The Court's opinion began by discussing whether the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to abolish segregation in public education. The Court said that it had been unable to reach a conclusion on the question, even after hearing a second round of oral arguments from the parties' lawyers specifically on the historical sources. Reargument was largely devoted to

12328-467: The law was reasonableness, and Louisiana's railway law amply met that requirement, being based on "the established usages, customs and traditions of the people." Justice Harlan again dissented. "Every one knows," he wrote, that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons  ... [I]n view of

12462-421: The law. A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 , which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before

12596-410: The lawsuit by a childhood friend, Charles Scott. Brown's daughter Linda Carol Brown , a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary , her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary , a white school, was seven blocks from her house. As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in

12730-591: The leadership of the Topeka NAACP . Notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett ; Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd . The named African-American plaintiff, Oliver Brown , was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad , as well as an assistant pastor at his local church. He was convinced to join

12864-471: The main text of the opinion—to several psychological studies concluding that segregating black children made them feel inferior and interfered with their learning. These studies included those of Kenneth and Mamie Clark , whose experiments in the 1940s had suggested that black American children from segregated environments preferred white dolls over black dolls . The Court then concluded its relatively short opinion by declaring that segregated public education

12998-473: The next nine years. When Medgar Evers sued in 1963 to desegregate schools in Jackson, Mississippi , White Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith murdered him. Two subsequent trials resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not convicted of the murder until 1994. In June 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace personally blocked the door to the University of Alabama 's Foster Auditorium to prevent

13132-510: The only case of the five originating from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a 450-student walkout of Moton High School . The Gebhart case was the only one where a trial court, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court , found that discrimination was unlawful; in all the other cases the plaintiffs had lost as the original courts had found discrimination to be lawful. The Kansas case

13266-536: The privileges and immunities of all citizens which now included black men. The scope of this clause was substantially narrowed following the Slaughterhouse Cases in which it was determined that a citizen's privileges and immunities were only ensured at the Federal level and that it was government overreach to impose this standard on the states. Even in this halting decision the Court still acknowledged

13400-493: The problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The Court said the question was complicated by the major social and governmental changes that had taken place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It observed that public schools had been uncommon in the American South in the late 1860s. At that time, Southern white children whose families could afford schooling usually attended private schools, while

13534-468: The protection given by the laws of the States shall be equal in respect to life and liberty and property to all persons." The main opponent of the first version was Congressman Robert S. Hale of New York, despite Bingham's public assurances that "under no possible interpretation can it ever be made to operate in the State of New York while she occupies her present proud position." Hale ended up voting for

13668-406: 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 educational opportunities? In answer, the Court held that it did. The Court ruled that state-mandated segregation, even if implemented in schools of otherwise equal quality,

13802-448: The refusal of individuals to commingle where the state presents no such bar. The present situation, Vinson said, was the former. In Sweatt , the Court considered the constitutionality of Texas's state system of law schools , which educated blacks and whites at separate institutions. The Court (again through Chief Justice Vinson, and again with no dissenters) invalidated the school system—not because it separated students, but rather because

13936-413: The rest of the students in the classrooms and library, and could eat in the cafeteria only at a designated table. A unanimous Court, through Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson , said that Oklahoma had deprived McLaurin of the equal protection of the laws: There is a vast difference—a Constitutional difference—between restrictions imposed by the state which prohibit the intellectual commingling of students, and

14070-496: The right to make any contract which a white citizen may make. The law intended to destroy the distinctions of race and color in respect to the rights secured by it. As for public schooling, no states during this era of Reconstruction actually required separate schools for blacks. However, some states (e.g. New York) gave local districts discretion to set up schools that were deemed separate but equal . In contrast, Iowa and Massachusetts flatly prohibited segregated schools ever since

14204-530: The ruling directly to the Supreme Court. In May 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Browns. The Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore laws that impose them violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and

14338-557: The same band were still barred from riding the same buses. Tribal leaders, having learned about Martin Luther King Jr. 's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted him for assistance. King promptly responded to the tribal leaders and through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved. In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting Brown , but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954,

14472-421: The segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson , which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as " separate but equal ". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown , and its related cases, paved

14606-401: The separate facilities for separate races were equal, state segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment 's Equal Protection Clause ("no State shall ... deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws"). Racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Beginning in the 1930s, a legal strategy

14740-587: The separate facilities were not equal . They lacked "substantial equality in the educational opportunities" offered to their students. All of these cases, as well as the upcoming Brown case, were litigated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . It was Charles Hamilton Houston , a Harvard Law School graduate and law professor at Howard University , who in the 1930s first began to challenge racial discrimination in

14874-400: The states (28 of 37) ratified the amendment, and that is when the Equal Protection Clause became law. Bingham said in a speech on March 31, 1871 that the clause meant no State could deny anyone "the equal protection of the Constitution of the United States ... [or] any of the rights which it guarantees to all men", nor deny to anyone "any right secured to him either by the laws and treaties of

15008-418: The states. The ratification of the amendment by the former Confederate states was imposed as a condition of their acceptance back into the Union. With the return to originalist interpretations of the Constitution, many wonder what was intended by the framers of the reconstruction amendments at the time of their ratification. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery but to what extent it protected other rights

15142-682: The subsequent Supreme Court opinion of this case. The case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina ), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia ), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware ), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington, D.C. ). All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case,

15276-429: The substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the Constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism." Harlan went on to argue that because (1) "public conveyances on land and water" use the public highways, and (2) innkeepers engage in what is "a quasi-public employment", and (3) "places of public amusement" are licensed under the laws of the states, excluding blacks from using these services

15410-471: The two sets of schools [were] comparable." The lower court observed that "colored children in many instances are required to travel much greater distances than they would be required to travel could they attend a white school" but also noted that the school district "transports colored children to and from school free of charge" and that "no such service [was] provided to white children." In the Delaware case

15544-403: The war, with these laws severely restricting the rights of blacks to hold property , including real property (such as real estate ), and many forms of personal property , and to form legally enforceable contracts . Such codes also established harsher criminal consequences for blacks than for whites. Because of the inequality imposed by Black Codes, a Republican-controlled Congress enacted

15678-588: The way for Brown . The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that the system of racial separation in all schools, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans. Brown was influenced by UNESCO 's 1950 Statement, signed by a wide variety of internationally renowned scholars, titled The Race Question . This declaration denounced previous attempts at scientifically justifying racism as well as morally condemning racism. Another work that

15812-532: The way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement , and a model for many future impact litigation cases. The case began in 1951 when the public school system in Topeka, Kansas , refused to enroll the daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black school farther away. The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations filed

15946-449: The white schools. This prevented the Court from finding a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in "measurable inequalities" between all white and black schools and forced the Court to look to the effects of segregation itself. The Court therefore framed the case around the more general question of whether the principle of "separate but equal" was constitutional when applied to public education. We come then to

16080-515: Was an act sanctioned by the state. A few years later, Justice Stanley Matthews wrote the Court's opinion in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886). In it the word "person" from the Fourteenth Amendment's section has been given the broadest possible meaning by the U.S. Supreme Court: These provisions are universal in their application to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality, and

16214-499: Was a black student at Lincoln University of Missouri , one of the historically black colleges in Missouri . He applied for admission to the law school at the all-white University of Missouri , since Lincoln did not have a law school, but was denied admission due solely to his race. The Supreme Court, applying the separate-but-equal principle of Plessy , held that a State offering a legal education to whites but not to blacks violated

16348-510: Was ever intended to prohibit this. ... Its aim was against discrimination because of race or color." The next important postwar case was the Civil Rights Cases (1883), in which the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was at issue. The Act provided that all persons should have "full and equal enjoyment of ... inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement." In its opinion,

16482-503: Was felt that dissent could be used by segregation supporters as a legitimizing counter-argument. Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued. Justices William O. Douglas , Hugo Black , Harold Hitz Burton , and Sherman Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy . Fred M. Vinson noted that Congress had not adopted desegregation legislation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and states' rights , and

16616-432: Was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out." Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to judicial activism and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability. Chief Justice Vinson had been

16750-425: Was inherently unequal, violated the Equal Protection Clause, and therefore was unconstitutional: We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of

16884-476: Was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967—argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Assistant attorney general Paul Wilson—later distinguished emeritus professor of law at the University of Kansas —conducted the state's ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument. In December 1952, the Justice Department filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief in

17018-476: Was led by the Radical Republicans of both houses of Congress, including John Bingham , Charles Sumner , and Thaddeus Stevens . It was the most influential of these men, John Bingham, who was the principal author and drafter of the Equal Protection Clause. The Southern states were opposed to the Civil Rights Act, but in 1865 Congress, exercising its power under Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of

17152-423: Was mixed. Its legislature passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. But Florida Governor LeRoy Collins , though joining in the protest against the court decision, refused to sign it, arguing that the attempt to overturn the ruling must be done by legal methods. In Mississippi , fear of violence prevented any plaintiff from bringing a school desegregation suit for

17286-594: Was noisy and stubborn. Certain "border states," which had formerly maintained segregated school systems, did integrate, and others permitted the token admission of a few Negro students to schools that had once been racially unmixed. However, the Deep South made no moves to obey the judicial command, and in some districts there can be no doubt that the Desegregation decision hardened resistance to integration proposals. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd organized

17420-490: Was pursued, led by scholars at Howard University and activists at the NAACP , that sought to undermine states' public education segregation by first focusing on the graduate school setting. This led to success in the cases of Sweatt v. Painter , 339 U.S. 629 (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 U.S. 637 (1950), suggesting that racial segregation was inherently unequal (at least in some settings), which paved

17554-452: Was unanimous. Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the court. Reed was the last holdout and reportedly cried during the reading of the opinion. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Brown family and the other plaintiffs. The decision consists of a single opinion written by chief justice Earl Warren , which all

17688-567: Was unclear. After the Thirteenth Amendment the South began to institute Black Codes which were restrictive laws seeking to keep black Americans in a position of inferiority. The Fourteenth amendment was ratified by nervous Republicans in response to the rise of Black Codes. This ratification was irregular in many ways. First, there were multiple states that rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, but when their new governments were created due to reconstruction, these new governments accepted

17822-411: Was unique among the group in that there was no contention of gross inferiority of the segregated schools' physical plant, curriculum, or staff. The district court found substantial equality as to all such factors. The lower court, in its opinion, noted that, in Topeka, "the physical facilities, the curricula, courses of study, qualification and quality of teachers, as well as other educational facilities in

17956-679: Was upheld, and SCOTUS declined to hear a further appeal. Virginia had one of the companion cases in Brown , involving the Prince Edward County schools. Significant opposition to the Brown verdict included U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd , who led the Byrd Organization and promised a strategy of Massive Resistance . Governor Thomas Stanley , a member of the Byrd Organization, appointed the Gray Commission , 32 Democrats led by state senator Garland Gray , to study

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