Burning Brown to the Ground

42 TEACHING TOLERANCE This excerpt was adapted from Dr. Carol Anderson’s book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. In chapter three, “Burning Brown to the Ground,” Anderson details how white politicians in the North and the South systematically resisted legal demands to desegregate schools, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This excerpt focuses on how state-level resistance played out in the state of Virginia. JIM CROW DOMINATED the lives of black peo- poorly constructed with no indoor plumbing ple in America from 1890 well into the twen- and thus serviced only by outhouses. tieth century. … In the early 1930s, under the In the Deep South, the educational oppor- direction of brilliant legal tactician Charles tunities were at least as bleak. … [In 1941, the Hamilton Houston, the NAACP launched a federal government estimated that it would campaign in the courts to destroy Jim Crow require, in 2014 dollars, $1.2 trillion to equal- and overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson decision ize the schools in America.] The result of such that had made “separate but equal” the legal widespread disparities in funding was that the cornerstone of racial segregation in America. U.S. educational system, despite the demands Virginia, despite being the wealthiest of parents and students craving high-quality Southern state and the fifth richest in the schools, had deliberately produced a sprawl- entire nation, with a constitution and stating, uneducated population that would bedevil utes requiring the provision of public schools the nation well into the twenty-first century. and compulsory attendance, was … deter- In one court case after the next, from 1935 mined not to educate its black population. In to 1950, the NAACP had convincingly demon- Prince Edward County, for example, no high strated that Southern governments were sim- school existed for blacks until 1939, and by ply incapable of meeting Plessy’s Jim Crow 1947 Robert Moton High “was jammed with standard of “separate but equal.” And because more than twice the number of students it the legal bedrock of the South was predicated was designed to hold.” … The other black on that dictum, the proven inability to have schools in Prince Edward County, too, were both equal and separate simultaneously left BY CAROL ANDERSON ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER FALL 2016 43 Dixie in judicial danger, which was just voter registration had been before Brown, powers. Signed by 101 members of Con- as Charles Hamilton Houston intended. it became much more so after the ruling. gress, all from states of the old Confed- With the legal precedent duly laid, … [African American voter registration in eracy—Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) the time to take down Plessy as funda- predominately black counties in Alabama, was one of only a handful of holdouts— mentally unconstitutional was now. for example, ranged from 0 to 0.9 per- the Southern Manifesto signaled to their Houston’s protégé, Thurgood Marshall, cent. In Mississippi, by 1960, 98 percent constituencies that Massive Resistance led the next phase of this legal battle. … In of age-eligible African Americans were to Brown was not some base, primeval December 1952, Marshall argued before not registered to vote.] States relied as well white supremacy but rather a princi- the U.S. Supreme Court that racial seg- upon another mechanism of insidious dis- pled, patriotic stand to defend the Con- regation violated the equal protection crimination … : Legislative apportionment stitution. The Southern Manifesto gave clause of the Fourteenth as well as the due gave overwhelming and disproportionate sanction from the highest levels to use process clause of the Fifth Amendment. power to rural counties, especially those the levers of government to defy the U.S. And with that, a series of legal, political, that held the most ardent white segrega- Supreme Court until, with the federal and cultural explosions went off below tionists and the largest black populations judiciary and African Americans tiring the Mason-Dixon Line … . outside the urban areas. of the fight, Brown simply collapsed. Th[e] day of reckoning came. After On May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court The game plan of stall and defy was nearly sixty years of racial purga- handed down an implementation deci- now in place. Southern states used and tory, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled sion, Brown II, stating that desegrega- abused the legal process to pass one in Brown that Jim Crow schools vio- tion in public schools must happen unconstitutional law after the next, lated the equal protection clause of the “with all deliberate speed.” Recognizing knowing that the process to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment and, in the that disfranchisement and legislative statutes would be costly. [As one segrega- D.C. case [Bolling v. Sharpe, one of five apportionment would not be enough tionist attorney general noted, “As long cases the made up the Brown case], the to stop the progress stemming from as we can legislate, we can segregate.”] ... due process requirement of the Fifth Brown, the Deep South and Virginia Those extended legal battles allowed year Amendment. Even the [NAACP’s] tac- soon added to their arsenals the dis- after year to drizzle by while the contin- iturn Roy Wilkins could barely contain credited legal hocus-pocus of interposi- ued existence of separate and decidedly himself. “May 17, 1954, was one of life’s tion, which argued that the state could unequal schools consigned black chil- sweetest days,” he later recalled. Nor put itself between federal law and U.S. dren to some of the worst education that was the significance of this judgment citizens to stop enforcement of any rul- America had to offer. confined to the education of black chil- ing with which the state disagreed. In Virginia, the birthplace of Massive dren. “If segregation is unconstitutional The so-called Southern Manifesto, Resistance, a full decade after Brown, in educational institutions,” observed however, was the shot heard around only 1.63 percent of blacks were attend- Charles Johnson, president of Fisk America. On March 12, 1956, Represen- ing desegregated schools. ... [W]hen local University, “it is no less so unconstitu- tative Howard Smith (D-VA) and Senator school boards in Charlottesville, Norfolk, tional in other aspects of our national Walter George (D-GA) introduced “the and Front Royal were under federal life.” At that moment, it appeared that Declaration of Constitutional Principles” court orders to admit black students, citizenship—true citizenship—might before their respective chambers in Con- Governor James Lindsay Almond closed, finally be at hand for African Americans. gress, asserting that the Supreme Court in his words, every “school threatened To Southern leaders who had had violated states’ rights, abused judicial with desegregation.” Ironically, because already been readying their politi- authority, and undercut the separation of the white, well-funded schools in those cal arsenal, the decision in Brown was cities matched that description but a declaration of war. Wilkins later (no one was clamoring to inte- admitted, “My sense of euphoria was a grate overcrowded Moton High bit naïve. Swept away, elevated, exalted, in Prince Edward County), he I failed to anticipate the ferocity of the had shut out nearly thirteen resistance that quickly grew up in the thousand white children from Deep South.” There was a “cold, clini- getting an education. cal cruelty of the response.” [T]he Southern states made clear that they were ready for war. The first step was While Brown v. Board initially felt like a to ensure that only those who felt threat- victory for African Americans, it quickly galvanized resistance to racial integration. ened by Brown could vote. … As difficult as ARCHIVE BETTMANN 44 TEACHING TOLERANCE twelfth grade and graduated the lion’s share of them as college-ready. By contrast, an entire generation of black children who had fought long and hard to receive a quality education was School closures spread now to most African American students spent now forced to face this cold, hard new besieged Prince Edward County. This their formative education time in activity economy with neither the necessary time, black children were in the cross- centers that the black community cobbled education nor work skills. It was not just hairs, where they would remain for together. … The resources were simply not black America, however, that suffered nearly a generation. With Brown loom- available to be open more than three days the cost of this waste of human lives and ing over their heads, Virginia’s political a week. … These years had taken a great talent. The brutally relentless tactics officials passed a series of laws to close toll on the children. of stall and defy, then stall and under- the public schools, siphon tax dollars Once again, black parents, with the mine—tactics that went on for at least into private academies, and pay tuition determined Reverend L. Francis Griffin four decades—left the United States with for white students, while ensuring that as the plaintiff, had to haul Virginia back millions of citizens who lacked the educa- there was nothing in place for African to court. But as the Washington Post tion needed to be competitive in a global, American children to continue their reported, when the lawsuits hit, Prince technology-driven economy. This, in turn, education. On November 11, 1955, the Edward County supervisors simply left the United States lagging far behind Gray Commission (named after State “denied that the Virginia constitution other developed countries and placed the Senator Garland Gray) rolled out a requires the operation of public schools nation at enormous economic risk. phalanx of recommendations to keep in any county.” Finally, cutting through African Americans weren’t the only Virginia’s schools separate and unequal.

Load more