Brown at Seventy
What the landmark Supreme Court decision tells us about politics, past and present
Last Friday was the seventieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. The decision remains popular among Americans, but, as this Washington Post report points out, opinion about how to carry it out is much more divided. At a time when we often lament the level of division we have now compared to the past, it’s important to note the kind of division that accompanied this decision – what led to it, and what came after.
Why the courts?
Everyone who stands still near me long enough will eventually hear that they should read Megan Ming Francis’ Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. This book focuses on the development of the civil rights movement decades before Brown, with an emphasis on the NAACP. The group honed its legal capacity fighting lynching in the 1910s and 1920s, where it finally attained some measure of success in the courts. The other branches had notable failures in this area: the Senate filibuster killed the Dyer anti-lynching bill after a hard-won passage in the House.
The story that Francis tells about the executive branch is more complicated and sets the stage for what presidents did after Brown, too. Presidents Harding and Wilson were somewhat receptive to anti-lynching efforts. But both ultimately stopped short of really rocking the political boat in order to support such legislation. FDR would later also duck the anti-lynching fight in favor of protecting the New Deal coalition.
The story of how the school integration battle came to be fought in the courts has important implications for how we think about rights today. The South had veto power in the national elected branches – both Democrats and Republicans needed to court Southern approval for their presidential nominations, and the Senate filibuster had blocked anti-lynching legislation back in the 1920s. The civil rights movement learned from these efforts and honed a legal strategy.
But there were drawbacks to this approach. One was that the pursuit of progress in the courts has been vulnerable on two fronts – first, populist attacks, and later, judicial repeal and reinterpretation. Courts also lack enforcement mechanisms, which meant that as soon as the Brown ruling came down, the question of who would implement it became the central one.
Massive resistance
After the ruling, Southern leaders pursued a strategy of local resistance to school integration, citing both belief in racial separation and a defense of states’ rights. The Southern reaction to the Brown v. Board decision highlights how the South viewed itself as a distinct region, and how this regional identity fueled angry populism in which Southern whites presented themselves as victims of an overreaching federal government. It also showed, as Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s book illustrates, the depth and commitment to school segregation. It’s also an example of the challenge that federalism posed to the struggle for racial equality, and the baggage that any argument about “states’ rights” still carries.
Remembering massive resistance to school integration also simply highlights the history of ugliness surrounding this topic – violence, hideously racist rhetoric, and attacks on children trying to attend school. Many of these children are still living! The images and accounts we have from this time complicate a narrative of pure progress and remind us of the need for ongoing organized political action.
Presidential politics
The story of Brown – its implementation and lack thereof – is one of the limits of presidential power. This is especially significant because the decision happened at a time when the presidency was gaining power through the growth of the administrative state and the security state. But in the area of civil rights, some presidents reacted to developments rather than leading them. Scholars debate about Dwight Eisenhower’s record: he did appoint Earl Warren, a pivotal figure in the “rights revolution” that arguably started with Brown. And he signed and supported the first federal civil rights bill of the 20th century. Historical accounts suggest, however, that Eisenhower was less than pleased that the Brown decision had come out on his watch, specifically because of the challenge of enforcing it.
Eisenhower’s record on race is difficult to classify – he was on record both expressing his moral distaste for racial prejudice, and his sympathy for concerned parents in the area of school integration (there are a couple of different versions of the quote in this article- but all point to the sexual fears associated with integration). Ultimately, when it came to enforcing Brown, Eisenhower took the action he needed – sending national military presence – after several weeks of deliberation. The action was accompanied by a televised speech stressing the importance of following the law – but not with the moral imperative of racial integration. So there’s a lot of ambivalence in evaluating this record.
President scholar Richard Neustadt referred to Eisenhower’s actions in Little Rock as a “case of command” – in other words, a failure of presidential persuasion and a show of Eisenhower’s political weakness. But it’s unclear whether anyone could have talked Southern governors into carrying out the law, given the political circumstances.
The larger lesson about presidents and racial progress is a sobering one. Presidents, even at the zenith of the office’s power, have at best been followers most of the time when it comes to racial progress. There are few political incentives for disturbing delicate alliances and compromises. In retrospect, we can see how the South wielded power in mid-century politics, constraining the actions of presidents in both parties. But the question of how to enforce Brown extended beyond the 1950s and beyond the partisan politics of the moment. Subsequent presidents also struggled with what to do, and the rhetoric of “forced busing” in the 1970s became political toxic well north of the Mason-Dixon line. Arguably, this issue has never been resolved.
In an era in which we debate constantly about whether our institutions are working and whether they will save us, civil rights – especially policies that attempt to bring about equality in day-to-day, social spaces – is one area where it’s pretty clear they won’t. Institutions, even supposedly disruptive ones like the presidency, function to maintain the status quo. As a result, they are often ill-equipped to address political forces that want to maintain hierarchy and inequity. The work of equality is unfinished, and its fate still rests with groups of citizens who are willing to organize to challenge existing structures.
Well done as far as it goes (and of course, this is a blog post, not a course outline!). Extending the analysis a little further, it seems you skipped over the Johnson administration--arguably the president most committed to civil rights in the country's history (including, btw, Obama). It seems clear to me that the end of overt resistance to school desegregation resulted from the assertion of what is now castigated as "deep state" power. That is, the massive funding for schools provided by HEW, but funding contingent on dismantling segregation.
Of course, this did not end segregated schools--instead it moved the level of segregation down to the neighborhoods, and boosted private school enrollment, so that white parents could avoid having their children attend school with Black kids, by avoiding public schools altogether.