Equal Protection and Race: The Brown decision

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Equal Protection and Race The Brown decision

• Professor Garcia
• Happy MLK Day! No Office hours
• Monday, but 2-3 today
• Rjgarcia_at_ucsd.edu

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Today

• Scope of the Problem
• Plan of Attack
• Questions Presented in Brown
• Most salient facts
• The Argument
• Brown HoldingReasoning
• What the dissent would have said
• What Brown did not say
• Critiques of Brown

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Scope of the Problem

• For example, Florida did not permit whites and
  blacks to use the same editions of textbooks.
  Texas prohibited interracial boxing. Alabama
  prohibited white nurses from caring for blacks.
  North Carolina and South Carolina segregated
  washrooms in factories and mines. In eight
  states, parks, racetracks, pool halls, circuses,
  theaters, fishing facilities, among others, were
  segregated. Seventeen states and D.C. segregated
  public schools. 11,173 school districts in the
  United States were segregated at the time.

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Plan of Attack

• 1952-52 Term Supreme Court accepts Brown and 4
  other segregation cases from South Carolina,
  Virginia, Delaware, and DC
• Marshall challenges Plessy as well as the
  inequality of resources in public schools
• Marshall relied on higher education cases
  (Sweatt, McLaurin), jury cases (Strauder) a
  residential segregation case (Buchanan) and an
  unequal application of the law case (Yick Wo)
• Court was split, ordered reargument and then
  Chief Justice Vinson passed away

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Questions Presented in Brown

• Does the 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? Reader p. 77
• Does the history of the 14th Amendment require
  desegregation, especially when the Reconstruction
  Congress simultaneously segregated D.C. public
  schools?

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Most Salient Facts

• Topeka, Kansas schools had already ended
  segregation. Reader, p. 78 fn.1
• In the lower court, Dr. Kenneth Clark testified
  regarding his studies using dolls to show that
  African Americans internalized inferiority.
  Reader, p. 80 n. 12
• South Carolina spent hundreds of thousands of
  dollars on colored schools after litigation
  started

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The Argument

• John W. Davis Integration will have a more
  harmful effect on colored children.
• Thurgood Marshall Colored and white children
  play together, they just do not go to school
  together.
• Warren thought that oral argument showed that
  Blacks were not inferior, since Marshall had
  equaled or surpassed John Davis in oral advocacy.

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Brown Holding

• We conclude that in the field of public
  education that the doctrine of separate but
  equal has no place. Separate education
  facilities are inherently unequal.. . .This
  disposition makes unnecessary any discussion
  whether such segregation also violates the Due
  Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See
  Bolling v. Sharpe (decided with Brown,
  segregation in D.C violates 5th Amend. Due
  Process clause equal protection implicit)
• We have now announced that such segregation is a
  denial of the equal protection of the laws. In
  order that we may have the full assistance of the
  parties in formulating decrees, the case will be
  restored to the docket . . . To present further
  argument on Questions 4 and 5 at Reader fn. 13
  p. 80

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Reasoning

• Today, education is the most important function
  of state and local governments. Compulsory school
  attendance laws and the great expenditures for
  education both demonstrate our recognition of the
  importance of education to our democratic
  society. . . It is the very foundation of
  citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument
  of awakening the child to cultural values. . .
  Such an opportunity, where the state has
  undertaken to provide it, is a right which must
  be available to all on equal terms.

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What the Dissent would have said

• Stare Decisis (let it stand) requires adherence
  to Plessy
• Original intent of the 14th Amendment does not
  have anything to do with segregated education
  indeed segregation was in practice at the time
• The political branches should make this decision
  courts should not be involved
• Segregation of the races is for the benefit of
  both races

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What Brown did not say

• The material inequality between Blacks and whites
  would continue
• De Jure Segregation would persist for years in
  many different areas,
• De Facto Segregation would increase as a result
  of the decline in de jure segregation