Civil rights school desegregation cases in the American West

We Shall Overcome: The American Civil Rights Movement as Manifested in Western America Abstract: While many people think of the American south when the Civil Rights movement comes to mind, the seeds of this era were found West of the Mississippi. The Civil Rights movement as it manifested in the west did so in two distinct ways: via political actions made by citizens and activists such as sit-in, boycotts and demonstrations, and via intricate legal proceedings designed to push for integration in public schools, something that was absolutely vital for the proper advancement of an equal and just society. This paper will consider the major cases for public school integration that helped shape and define the Civil Rights movement such as Brown vs. Board, Sweatt v. Painter, Mendez vs. Westminster, and the Little Rock Nine. This paper will examine the sociological forces surrounding all of these cases, why they were so important to the overall Civil Rights Movement and how they helped to influence the greater successes and steps toward equality in the rest of the nation. Finally this paper will look at an area of western America that was removed from the momentum of the Civil Rights movement—Denver, Colorado. This example will demonstrate how in parts of the world more isolated from the strides made in Civil Rights in the rest of the nation, integration in public schools came later and was often dependent of the work of a few brave people. When considering the legendary and transformative period of the civil rights movement, both historians and history students alike tend to focus on the instrumental position played by the American south, and American southerners. This deep acclaim is definitely deserved, however, the American west often receives no recognition and general neglect when it comes to the role it played in the formation of American civil liberties. For decades after the Civil Rights movement, historians generally portrayed this period of history as a culmination of grass-roots organizations in the south, with southern black leaders engaging and guiding the movement and being assisted by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Taylor, 2004). While these interpretations are valid, it’s important to acknowledge that the struggle and the fight for civil liberties were not simply localized to the American south. There are numerous events that occurred during the period of the Civil Rights era that were transformative moments in school desegregation, or parts of wider endeavors to address inequality and injustice. The American West played a big part in moving forward the national transformation, and helping to support the overall goals of the movement, while still pursuing its own unique agenda. This paper will discuss the unique objectives and accomplishments inherent to the American west during the Civil Rights era and will discuss how those elements helped the American south, yet allowed the west to achieve all these things with their own level of distinction from the rest of the nation. Seeds of Development In many ways, one could argue that the heart of the Civil Rights movement began in the American West. In 1865 in Virginia City Nevada, African American residents formed a committee to establish equal rights, as well as the right to vote. Dr. W.H.C. Stephenson of Rhode Island led the movement and helped push for African American male voting rights, along with the right to testify in court, and to abolish the exclusion of African American children from public schools (Taylor, 2004). From a variety of perspectives, the western United States represents an area where the origins of the Civil Rights movement sparked. Almost a hundred years before the Civil Rights era began, Stephenson spoke before a largely white audience in Virginia City, arguing “It is for colored men [to] ...fearlessly meet the opponents of justice .. . . Let colored men contend for \\\\\\\'Equality before the Law.\\\\\\\' [We want] nothing short of civil and political rights” (Taylor, 2004). Much of these pre-Civil Rights endeavors focused on the necessity of achieving the right to vote, as it would help African American citizens select the political representatives and legislation that would best impact their lives. During this time, there was a strong consensus that black men should be given “equal and exact justice” or else be a constant trouble to the state until it was given exactly that (Taylor, 2004). Thus, given this rich heritage, one can see how the Civil Rights era had strong ties to the western areas of the nation. There were two main ways that Civil Rights activity manifested in the West: a legal impetus to push for integration within public schools, as a means of creating justice in education, as well as to normalize society towards desegregation. The desegregation movement was viewed as an essential means of securing both economic advancement and political progress forward as well as more widespread equality. Another means of Civil Rights advancement was through the direct action protests of black westerners through strategic political moves, such as demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts and comparable acts of civil disobedience, deliberately orchestrated designed to bring attention to the injustices of the day and to wipe out discrimination. This paper will focus mainly on the legal activities as manifested in the push towards integration in public schools. One element that characterized the Civil Rights movement as it manifested in the American west, is that it pursued its own distinct local agenda (Taylor, 2004). “For African American westerners, the Movement was not simply a television report of police dogs set on demonstrators in distant Birmingham or Alabama State Troopers confronting voting rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma. It was instead the campaign of ordinary people to end job bias or school segregation in local communities as diverse as Berkeley, Omaha, San Antonio, Phoenix, Wichita, Seattle and Las Vegas” (Taylor, 2004). The strides made by minorities in the American west helped to buttress the overall movement for the nation as a whole. One of the most famous and historical ways this manifested was in the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Brown v. Board of Education The case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka started from a very human place and originated in Kansa—in the American West. Linda Brown, a young girl, was not allowed to go to the local public school that was located near her house because it was just for white children. She was forced to attend a black school that was much further away and much harder to get to. “Nor were her parents dissatisfied with the black school she was attending. What upset Oliver Brown was the distance Linda had to travel to get to school — first a walk through a rail yard and across a busy road, then a bus ride. ‘When I first started the walk it was very frightening to me,’ she said, ‘and then when wintertime came, it was a very cold walk. I remember that. I remember walking, tears freezing up on my face, because I began to cry’” (Glenzinger, 2018). This demonstrates the humanity that is at the core of inherent social change. In this case, segregation imposed by the nation was creating both a danger, disadvantage and inherent unfairness to the child. In being forced to follow the code of segregation, the child’s own life was coming under a direct risk and grave hazard. Brown v. Board was actually a consolidation of give other school segregation cases that came before the Supreme Court in 1952 and was personally argued by Thurgood Marshall. Marshall relied on a host of legal pillars to argue the case, he leaned heavily on how segregation in schools was a violation of the fourteenth amendment and a violation of the equal protection clause inherent in that amendment (uscourts.gov). Moreover, Marshall also relied on the sociological tests orchestrated by Mamie and Kenneth Clark that are famously referred to as the “doll tests.” According to the Clarks, the doll tests were not orchestrated for the sake of litigation, but were performed all over the country to determine the impact of segregation on children of all races. Quite simply, the researchers collected a participant group of children between the ages of three to seven. Each child was given a set of baby dolls that were identical except for the skin color: one baby doll was black and the other was white. The children were asked which doll they preferred. The overwhelming bulk of the children said they preferred the white doll and that was the doll that given exclusively positive characteristics (Naacpldf.org, 2018). The data that this sociological test provided was crucial to Marshall’s overwhelming argument of the innate damage and unfairness that segregation creates. For example, “In a particularly memorable episode while Dr. Clark was conducting experiments in rural Arkansas, he asked a black child which doll was most like him. The child responded by smiling and pointing to the brown doll: ‘That\\\\\\\'s a nigger. I\\\\\\\'m a nigger.’ Dr. Clark described this experience ‘as disturbing, or more disturbing, than the children in Massachusetts who would refuse to answer the question or who would cry and run out of the room’” (Naacpldf.org, 2018). This is an example of the type of evidence that was used to demonstrate how segregation in public schools does not simply equate to some sort of innocuous separation that allows white children and black children to thrive separately but equally. This type of evidence showed without a shadow of a doubt that segregation had a direct hand in making black children experience a crippling sense of inferiority to white children. As Kenneth Clark testified, ““To separate [African-American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone” (Naacpldf.org, 2018).  Hence, the landmark Brown v. Board decision was a reversal of an earlier ruling of the Supreme Court in the case Plessy v. Ferguson that deemed “separate but equal” as constitutional. The Brown v. Board decision was a case that started in the American west, but it quickly reverberated strongly with the rest of the country. Sweatt v. Painter It’s also notable to acknowledge that the road to the successful ruling in Brown was paved by an earlier case, Sweatt v. Painter, which also originated in the American Southwest. The case started in 1946 when an African American man named Heman Sweatt submitted and application for consideration at the University of Texas law school, an institution that was predominantly white at the time. Grover Sellers, the attorney general of Texas at the time asserted, “Heman Sweatt will never darken the doors of the University of Texas (Lavergne, 2010).The law school wanted to keep their student body strictly white (and probably all male) so they quickly set up an all-black law school on their university campus. In order to protect their racist and separatist ideologies in tact, the State of Texas spent millions of dollars to change a glorified trade school into a university that would have a law school and called it “Negro higher education” (Lavergne, 2010). This school was shoddy and underfunded, but the board rationalized that if a black school already existed, they would not be forced to admit him into their white school. “At this point, Sweatt employed the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and sued to be admitted to the University\\\\\\\'s ‘white’ law school. He argued that the education that he was receiving in the ‘black’ law school was not of the same academic caliber as the education that he would be receiving if he attended the ‘white’ law school” (uscourts.gov, 2018). The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950, and the Court wholeheartedly agreed with Sweat, as there was copious evidence for the massive inequalities between the two schools. There was absolutely no credence for asserting that these two schools were “separate but equal.” Hence, the University of Texas found that there was very little to do other than admit Sweatt into their all-white law school (uscourts.gov, 2018).

The Little Rock Nine Perhaps one of the most notable historical events within the American west that confronted the issue of segregation head on, was the emergence of the Little Rock Nine, via the integration of Little Rock Central High School. One historian referred to it as “the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War” (Branch, 1988). The events at Little Rock Central High School occurred three years after the tremendous and landmark Brown vs. Board of education decision—a decision that effectively ended segregation in public schools, finding it unconstitutional. However, historically southern states and in this case, a southwestern state, (as Arkansas is west of the Mississippi river) often follow their own code of culture, sometimes ignoring federal mandates. Three years after segregation in public schools was deemed unconstitutional, many areas in America had still refused to integrate—Little Rock was one of them, though eventually a federal court ordered this city to follow federal orders. What happened subsequently demonstrates the immense courage the nine students possessed who sought to integrate amid Central High School (one of the most prestigious schools in the state): livid mobs of racist segregationist students swarmed around the students, chanting racial slurs and chanting things like, “Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate” (Mai, 2017). The local government continued to ignore federal orders and sought refuge in their own racist politics. Governor Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas sought to preserve segregation and he had dispatched the state’s own national guardsmen to prevent the students from entering. Eventually Faubus dismissed the national guard, leaving the students to the mercy of the angry mob; the police had to evacuate the students (nps.gov). This is perhaps one of the lowest moments in the state’s history. The state sought to undermine the sheer bravery that these students had exhibited and was determined to prevent them from their right of an excellent and equal education. President Eisenhower expressed enormous outrage at this issue, and rightly so. It was this type of incident that inspired the federal and presidential outrage necessary to create real change in the world. “‘Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of the courts,’ he said in a televised speech on Sept. 24, 1957. The president sent 1,200 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to protect the teenagers” (Mai, 2017). However, even though every single student that was part of the Little Rock Nine received an individual military escort for the duration of the year, the troops were not allowed total access of the school—there were still many places where these students had to endure racist abuse—such as classrooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms. “As a result, LaNier, like the eight other black students, endured daily indignities, threats and violence. Students spat on her and yelled insults like ‘baboon.’ They knocked books out of her hands and kicked her when she bent down to pick them up” (Mai, 2017). LaNier reflects in her memoir that while the military escorts were there to ensure the students stayed alive, she would be on her own when it came to dealing with the constant petty abuses and racist diatribes. Part of what made this movement in the southwest so effective for desegregation and for the Civil Rights movement as a whole was because the media followed the story so closely, and by this time most households had televisions in them. Nightly national news coverage showed images of the students dealing with the rampant hostility around them. The issues pervading Central High became a symbol of the national struggles with race relations, equality and desegregation. According to historian Michael Brenes, the issues at Central High were “the first really public and visible test case of whether Brown is going to succeed” (Mai, 2017). Ultimately the bigotry of Faubus prevailed, and while the Little Rock Nine were able to finish the school year they started, Faubus closed all the public high schools as a move to prevent integration. While Little Rock wasn’t the only town in America to experience downright hostility to integration, the visceral images connected to the Little Rock Nine and the fury they provoked, continued to fuel ongoing support for desegregation all over the nation (Mai, 2017). “‘When people saw what was going on, they were genuinely shocked and horrified,’ says Brenes. ‘I don’t think you would have had the growth in the Civil Rights Movement if not for Little Rock’” (Mai, 2017). Thus, even though the hatred and bigotry present was only directed at the courage of nine students, it became an event which enraptured and rocked the nation, compelling so many to better understand the importance of integration, and giving the Civil Rights movement added steam and momentum.

Mendez vs. Westminster While this instance of school desegregation received nationwide attention and claimed a place firmly in the history books, even further west was the setting of another landmark school desegregation case. The case Mendez v. Westminster was a case that took place in California in 1947 and focused on the issue of separate facilities for students of Latin descent, something that went against California law at the time. Thurgood Marshall represented Mendez, and historians have noted that the arguments used to win this case were also what he used to later win the landmark Brown v. Board decision. Sylvia Mendez was not allowed at public schools in California for “whites only” when she was 11 years old. This rejection in many ways fueled her father’s (Gonzalo Mendez) determined outrage through the appropriate educational, civic and legal avenues. With Marshall, Mendez was able to take four school districts located in Los Angeles, winning class action lawsuits within the federal court system (Uscourts.gov). This very western aspect of the Civil Rights movement was so important because it definitively paved the way for the ultimate success of Brown. “From a legal perspective, Mendez v. Westminster was the first case to hold that school segregation itself is unconstitutional and violates the 14th Amendment. Prior to the Mendez decision, some courts, in cases mainly filed by the NAACP, held that segregated schools attended by African American children violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because they were inferior in resources and quality, not because they were segregated” (Blanco, 2010). Hence, this case clearly paved the way for the collective consciousness to consider the destruction that segregation was causing within public schools. While this case didn’t orbit around rights of black people, it did demonstrate how any kind of discrimination can infect the minds of young people, and promote injustice, in a truly negative and insidious way. This case truly was a landmark one, which helped to influence the successful victory experienced by Brown. It’s also important to note that the Mendez case was so victorious because it was a grassroots, community effort. Before the case even went to court Latino parents communicate with school administrators and organized collective meetings at the community level (Tobar). “In 1947 they won. Their victory in federal court helped integrate all California schools and reverberated throughout the Southwest, where segregation of Latino students was common” (Tobar, 2010). Many journalists and historians have speculated as to why this victory did not endure the way that Brown has, particularly given the fact that this was a first win in this regard. Many of speculated that it had to do with the pain and shame that segregation generates. Much of the segregation that occurred in parts of California have been scrubbed from history. Once Orange County administrators had no choice but to integrate the schools, the schools that had been catering to Mexican students were declared to be substandard and razed to the earth (Tobar, 2010). “The Latino families who had fought to integrate the schools were ashamed of what they\\\\\\\'d been forced to endure — so they didn\\\\\\\'t celebrate or commemorate their victories” (Tobar, 2010). As influential as this case was, it didn’t receive the victorious historical commemoration that it deserved. This is unfortunate as the shame experienced by these families should actually be pride, as they worked courageously to reverse a grave injustice and also to clear a path for other such injustices to be reversed.