“War against the Constitution”

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-194
Author(s):  
Peter Irons
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
General Counsel ◽  
Political Skills ◽  
Solicitor General ◽  
National Debate ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Closed Door

This chapter recounts the battles outside and within the Supreme Court over the five cases, first argued in 1952, argued again the following year, and decided in May 1954 under the caption Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The chapter draws on transcripts of the lawyers’ oral arguments, notes of justices from the Court’s closed-door conferences to debate and decide cases, and the Court’s unanimous opinion striking down public school segregation. Among the dozen-plus lawyers who argued the five cases, Thurgood Marshall as NAACP general counsel and John W. Davis, former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. solicitor general, who both argued in the South Carolina case, presented a sharp contrast over the rights of states to impose segregation in public schools. The Court’s closed-door conference after these arguments exposed a rift, with at least one and possibly four justices unwilling to jettison the Plessy “separate but equal” doctrine. Concerned that a split decision would inflame the heated national debate, Justice Felix Frankfurter proposed a second round of arguments a year later; the sudden death in September 1953 of Chief Justice Fred Vinson led President Dwight Eisenhower to name California governor Earl Warren to replace him. Warren used his personal charm and political skills to cajole the Court’s holdouts to join a unanimous decision. However, a third round of arguments on “implementation” of integration allowed Jim Crow schools to proceed with “all deliberate speed” in complying with the Court’s decree, which led to decade-long foot-dragging by southern officials. The chapter concludes with an account of the Little Rock, Arkansas, integration case, Cooper v. Aaron, holding that state officials could not wage “war against the Constitution” by resisting the Court’s orders.

School Desegregation

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-53
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Little Rock ◽  
Clemson University ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Central High

On 17 May 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unanimously in Brown v The Board of Education that segregated public schools are unconstitutional. This chapter describes massive resistance organized by politicians and white supremacist groups throughout the South. Crises are described at Clinton High in Tennessee, Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama, Tuskegee High School in Alabama, and Clemson University in South Carolina as well as the courage of the Reverends Turner, Boggs, Cartwright, Ogden, Campbell, Gray, Davis, Sellers, Morris, Cousins, Lyles, Jackson, and Webster at these locations. It includes statements in support of the decision by the governing boards of major religious denominations, twenty-eight young ministers of the Mississippi Methodist Conference, and contributors to South Carolinians Speak, a booklet on moderation. Later the Supreme Court backed away from enforcing school integration. Scholars Wright, Jacoway, Wolters, Bell, Higgins, and Snider comment.

scholarly journals Segregation Academies Then and School Choice Configurations Today in Deep South States

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Marilyn Grady ◽  
Sharon Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
School Funding ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Public School Funding ◽  
The U.S

In the following article, we present a brief historical review of segregation academies and their impact on students and public schools. Based on the review, we provide a portrait of the vestiges of segregation academies that appear to be currently re-emerging in different educational configurations throughout the U.S. and particularly in Deep South states. The purpose of a historical study is to provide a descriptive overview of specific social problems confined within a predetermined timeframe (Danto, 2008). This historical review’s purpose was to address the following inquiry: What were the characteristics of Deep South segregation academies designed to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka? In what ways are these characteristics manifested in 2015 school choice configurations in the Deep South states, specifically Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina? To what extent, if any, did these manifested characteristics affect 2015 public school funding in Deep South states?

Focusing on the Family

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-158
Author(s):  
J. Russell Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Educational Expectations ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Schools ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Family ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 5 examines how by the early 1970s white evangelicals utilized the emerging rhetoric of colorblindness in service to the defense of their households. When the Supreme Court forced South Carolina to enact substantive desegregation of the state’s public schools in the closing years of the 1960s, white Christian parents interpreted the move as a threat to their children’s well-being. In response, these parents helped create private religious schools that functioned as havens, they believed, for keeping their children safe. White Christian parents rarely discussed race, maintaining instead that they were merely following God’s mandate to shepherd their children by creating schools with stricter behavioral standards and higher educational expectations than the integrated public schools. But this chapter documents how these private schools, in actuality, represented another bastion of religiously motivated resistance to racial equality and helped extend the legacy of segregationist Christianity into the twenty-first century.

Campaigning for a Jim Crow South

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
State Level ◽  
Deep South ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
Jim Crow South ◽  
The New Deal

In the interwar period, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, and Cornelia Dabney Tucker, segregationists in the Deep South, capitalized on their enfranchisement to mobilize voters to shape the system of Jim Crow at the polls. They encouraged women to uphold segregation through political parties, but their politics were as varied as the Jim Crow order they sought to serve. Ogden supported President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal for helping out Mississippians and for following the dictates of racial segregation. Cain opposed the Roosevelt’s expansion of social services and worked against the national party as a Jeffersonian Democrat. After Roosevelt’s proposal to re-organize the Supreme Court, Tucker organized a national anti–court-packing campaign, became a Republican, and lobbied for a secret ballot in South Carolina. These women criticized state-level officials for sacrificing conservative political principles for political gain and nourished the seeds of partisan dissent in the Solid South.

Introduction

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Federal District ◽  
District Court ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Law Firm ◽  
Yale University ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
American Law

Graduation Day At Yale University in late May 2002 was blessed with warm, clear weather. It is the hope for such a beautiful morning that enables outdoor commencements to survive the rain-soaked disappointment of those hopes on far too many better-forgotten occasions. Yale’s Old Campus was filled with faculty, administrators, soon-to-be graduates, and their well-dressed families and friends. Under the canopy-covered stage, there were ten individuals designated to receive honorary degrees because of their significant achievements. I was there at the invitation of one of those honorees, Robert L. Carter, my mentor and friend for more than forty years. Then eighty-five, a senior judge on the federal district court with thirty years of service, Carter had previously enjoyed a long and distinguished career as an NAACP civil rights attorney and, for a few years, a partner in a large law firm. All of these accomplishments would be worthy of the praise and warm applause that other candidates received. When, though, Yale University president Richard Levin announced that Judge Carter was an important member of the legal team that planned the strategies and argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education , noting that the decision was only two years short of its fiftieth anniver­sary, the audience leaped to its feet and, with great enthusiasm, applauded and cheered. On that happy day, Judge Carter was the recipient of the audience’s appreciation for his work in helping litigate a case in which the Supreme Court had held racial segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. The mainly white audience that had assembled for the commencement exercises at one of the nation’s premier universities was not unsophisticated. For them, and so many others regardless or status or race, Brown v. Board of Education evoked awe and respect. I fasked, most would have agreed that the decision was the finest hour of American law. In their view, this long-awaited and now much-appreciated decision had erased the contradiction between the freedom and justice for all that America proclaimed, and the subordination by race permitted by our highest law.

The Supreme Court in the Era of Bifurcated Review IV

2019 ◽  
pp. 600-690
Author(s):  
G. Edward White
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Sexual Preference ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1950S

Equal protection arguments were once described by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as the “last resort” of persons making constitutional claims. The court’s reliance on the Equal Protection Clause was slight until the 1950s, in part because “equal protection” was understood only to implicate legislature classifications that were “partial” rather than general.” After the use of the Equal Protection Clause to invalidate racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, equal protection arguments became a staple of cases involving racial, gender, and sexual-preference discrimination.

Constitutional Law in 1953–1954

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-106
Author(s):  
David Fellman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
General Counsel ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Solicitor General ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Law Degree

The membership of the Supreme Court remained unchanged during the 1953 Term. Chief Justice Vinson died on September 8, shortly before the opening of the Term. Governor Earl Warren of California was given a recess appointment by President Eisenhower on October 2, and was sworn in as the fourteenth Chief Justice on October 5. The Senate Judiciary Committee moved slowly, however, and the appointment did not reach the Senate until March 1, 1954, when it was confirmed by a voice vote without opposition.A week after the 1954 Term got under way Justice Robert H Jackson died, of a heart attack, on October 9, 1954, at the age of 62. For a man who had no law degree, Justice Jackson had done very well in the law. After a brilliant career as a lawyer in Jamestown, New York, he entered the government service in 1934 as General Counsel to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1938, Attorney-General in 1940, and was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt in June, 1941. He served as chief American prosecutor at the Nürnberg trial of top Nazi war criminals. Though appointed with the reputation of being a liberal New Dealer, Justice Jackson was actually close to the very center of the Court in many cases where the Justices were sharply divided. He was one of the most gifted opinion-writers on the Court, with a flair for felicitous phrasing and well-turned epigrams. To take the place of Justice Jackson, President Eisenhower nominated, on November 8, 1954, Judge John Marshall Harlan, whom he had appointed the previous March to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Harlan, once a successful New York lawyer, is the grandson of the Justice Harlan who served with such distinction from 1877 to 1911.

The School Desegregation Era

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Law School ◽  
General Counsel ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Brown Decision

Yale Law School Professor Alexander Bickel was a major consti­tutional scholar of his time. When, in 1970, he questioned the long-term viability of the Brown decision in a highly praised book, civil rights lawyers and liberal scholars were annoyed. Few of us at that time had any doubts that we would eventually prevail in eradicating segrega­tion “root and branch” from the public schools. Now, more than three decades later, Professor Bickel’s prediction, heavily criticized at the time, has become an unhappy but all too accurate reality. In this chapter I will examine the resistance by whites and the rigidity by civil rights lawyers and leaders that combined to transform Bickel’s prediction into prophesy. Even the optimists among us had continuing reasons to regret the “all deliberate speed” standard for implementing Brown I. The Supreme Court insisted in Brown II that its unique-compliance formula was intended to do no more than allow time for the necessary adminis­trative changes that transformation to a desegregated school system required. After a decade of experience with the standard, Judge Robert L. Carter, former NAACP General Counsel, surmised that the formula actually permitted movement toward compliance on terms that the white South could accept.1 Until Brown II, Carter said, constitutional rights had been defined as personal and present, but under the guise of judicial statesmanship, “the Warren Court sacri­ficed individual and immediate vindication of the newly discovered right of blacks to a desegregated education in favor of a remedy more palatable to whites.” Carter suggests that the Court failed to realize the depth or nature of the problem, and by attempting to regulate the pace of desegrega­tion so as to convey a show of compassion and understanding for the white South, it not only failed to develop a willingness to comply, but instead aroused the hope that resistance to the constitutional imper­ative would succeed. As had happened so frequently before, southern politicians began waving the Confederate flag and equating the Brown decision with a Supreme Court-led attack on states’ rights. Highway billboards called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren, and candidates were elected to office on campaigns based on little more than shouting “Never.”

Access: 1954–1983

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Albjerg Graham
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Training Sequence ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Dropping Out ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Public High School ◽  
The Supreme Court

“I’ll Never go to School with a Nigger!” Dickie, an eighth grader in my social studies class, shouted vehemently as we began to discuss the Brown v. Board of Education case prohibiting segregation in public schools that the Supreme Court had decided a year before, in 1954. Dickie was right; he never did, dropping out of school two years later, before his Virginia public high school began desegregation. I was flabbergasted and appalled by Dickie’s assertion, only gradually coming to realize that my new profession, teaching, was heading on a rocky road to improvement. In September 1955, as a new, navy bride, I began teaching in still segregated Deep Creek High School serving the predominantly low-income white community of the Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia. Prepared as I had been by the mushy adjustment curriculum of my Indiana public schools (lots of attention to my deficient social skills, not much to strengthening my intellect), I had zipped through college. I added the teacher training sequence after I became engaged in order to have a saleable skill when I married on graduation day. My five education courses, most of which I thought academically and professionally worthless, required that I memorize the Seven Cardinal Principles, still the reigning dogma, and I did, believing they represented the fuzzy thinking I associated with public education. I lived in a totally white world, never having had a black friend, fellow student, or teacher. Under Virginia law at that time Deep Creek High School was also a totally white high school world, though surrounded by a black community. The drop-out rate was high: 140 students in eighth grade but only 40 high school seniors. When Dickie made his assertion about segregation, I was astounded both by the language and by the sentiment. We did not use such a term in my household, and, innocent that I was, I thought the Supreme Court had decided the year before in Brown v. Board of Education that public schools could not be legally segregated by race.

Recent Restrictions upon Religious Liberty

1942 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1053-1068 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor W. Rotnem ◽  
F. G. Folsom
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Considerable Proportion ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roger Williams

Within the last five years, the Supreme Court of the United States has added decisions of greater importance to the case law of religious freedom than had been accumulated in all the years since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. The importance of two of these recent decisions rests upon the subordination of freedom of action based on sectarian beliefs to the restrictions of society as a whole. In one of the two cases, the law of society was a board of education order that school children participate in the flag salute exercise on pain of expulsion from the public schools; in the other, it was peddlers' license tax ordinances. Because neither of these decisions has been accepted as a firmly rooted precedent, it will be well to examine them in the light of the history of the federally secured right of religious freedom and in the light of the immediate public reactions to them.A considerable proportion of the early emigration to the thirteen original colonies was undoubtedly due to a desire to escape religious persecution in England and on the Continent. Those colonists, however, were as insistent that their own particular form of religion be adhered to as their oppressors had been. The story of Roger Williams, who was expelled from the colony of Massachusetts because of his non-conformist views and who established the colony of Rhode Island as a sanctuary of religious tolerance, and that of Ann Hutchinson, who also was exiled from the Bay Colony for a like reason, are monuments to the intolerance of the Puritans.

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