Desegregation, of Schools

It has been 50 years since the U.S. Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, rendered its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) (Brown I). In this decision, the Court reversed their earlier decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which legally sanctioned segregation of public facilities and services. Plessy enabled the custom of segregation to be affirmed by providing a legal basis for dual school systems, Black students in a community attended segregated schools, which were staffed solely by Black teachers, and White students attended school exclusively for Whites. In Brown I, the Court unanimously mandated that the separate-but-equal doctrine was inherently unequal because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause that prohibits state governments from enacting policies or laws that separate people because of their race.

It was the Court's immediate goal to put an end to de jure segregation in states where legislatures and policymakers had established a two-tiered educational system, one for Whites and another for Blacks. Brown I was vague and did not provide any direction or [Page 282]remedies to lower courts and school districts for desegregating schools. The Supreme Court, understanding the complexities of Brown I, did not immediately provide remedies or relief because they wanted input from the U.S. attorney general and the attorneys general of the many states before issuing their final order, which came in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1955) (Brown II). Brown II ordered school districts to desegregate with all deliberate speed and instructed federal district courts to oversee the implementation. The court's direction of “all deliberate speed” was intentionally left vague because some justices wanted immediate compliance, others wanted gradual implementation, and still others wanted the timetable and process left to the individual states. Chief Justice Warren, however, wanted a unanimous decision, and when he could not accomplish that, he settled for the “all deliberate speed” language.

The resistance to desegregation was so vehemently strong that states did little or nothing to integrate their schools during the first decade after Brown I. It was not until after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the active enforcement of decisions rendered by federal district courts by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department that the great majority of school districts were desegregated. With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress decided to accelerate desegregation efforts and provide legitimate enforcement authority to the executive branch. The act mandated that schools proceed toward desegregation or lose federal funds, and it gave authority to the attorney general to sue school systems whether or not they were receiving federal dollars.

States, in response to the lack of the precise direction from the Supreme Court, attempted to circumvent the mandate to desegregate their schools. For instance, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964), the state of Virginia repealed its compulsory education laws and established that school attendance was a matter of local option. In doing so, the Prince Edward County School District closed its schools, and private schools for Whites were established with funding from the state and the local county. The Supreme Court, in response, mandated that the state reopen and operate a desegregated school system.

...