Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Fight for Equality

Overview of Simple Justice

Simple Justice: The History of 'Brown v. Board of Education' and Black America's Struggle for Equality, by Richard Kluger, recounts the story of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case heard in Topeka, Kansas — a ruling that, simply stated, created non-segregated public education in America. The author wrote the book so that the nation could examine how to "exploit its inner resources" and work through the continuing problem of racial segregation. As Kluger puts it, "Material values in themselves, in short, can neither explain nor sustain the American achievement: the nation must exploit its inner resources as well if it is to remain long at the center of the global stage" (ix). The case helped create the busing of Black children into white schools, where they could receive a better education, but it certainly did not end the racial strife and hatred that still persists in the country today.

J.A. DeLaine and the School Busing Movement

This is an important book covering a monumental decision, and many events and individuals contributed to the overall outcome of the case. One of the most influential figures in the book is Joseph Albert DeLaine, who might be called the "father" of the school busing issue. What Rosa Parks was to the broader civil rights movement, DeLaine was to the issue of school busing for Black children. The white children of Clarendon County, South Carolina had school buses, but the Black children did not. When parents asked for one, they were told by the white chairman of the school board: "We ain't got no money to buy a bus for your nigger children" (Kluger 4). Unfortunately, as a result, most Black children in the county did not attend school, and most Black residents of Clarendon County were illiterate.

J.A. DeLaine — a teacher and a preacher — wanted to do something about it. Initially, his ambitions were modest: he simply wanted a bus for local Black children who lived in outlying areas of his small South Carolina town. Eventually, however, his campaign would lead to a nationwide confrontation about school desegregation and busing that would "change America profoundly" (Kluger 26). It would also change DeLaine's own life profoundly. His stubborn determination eventually cost him his church, his home, his livelihood, and nearly his life, when vindictive whites burned down his home and church, fired him from his teaching job, and literally ran him out of the county. The original case he championed, Briggs v. Elliott, mushroomed into a case eventually heard by the Supreme Court on December 7, 1953 — lumped together with several other cases from across the United States into the now-legendary Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. As DeLaine waited to enter the courtroom to hear the Court's decision, he said: "If I had it to do over again, I would. I feel that it was worth it. I have a feeling that the Supreme Court is going to end segregation" (Kluger 667).

The Civil War's Legacy and Jim Crow Segregation

As the judgment of the Supreme Court noted, the Civil War played an important role in the entrenchment of segregation, particularly in the South. Justice Robert Jackson noted in a memo to the Court:

"Since the close of the Civil War the United States has been 'hesitating between two worlds — one dead, the other powerless to be born.' War brought an old order to an end but as usual force proved unequal to founding a new one. Neither North nor South has been willing really to adapt its racial practices to its professions. The race problem would be quickly solved if some way could be found to make us all live up to our hypocrisies" (Kluger 688).

After the Civil War, Black Americans were emancipated and freed from the bonds of slavery, but they were far from equal in society. It took them over a hundred years to gain civil rights, and the Supreme Court's desegregation decision was only the beginning of a long and bitter struggle for equality and justice. The end of the Civil War freed the slaves, but whites in the South remained deeply bitter about their defeat, and they frequently blamed free Black people for their troubles. As a result, Black Americans were continually beaten down and oppressed. Their children were kept from quality schools, their wages were lower than those of whites, and they were at the mercy of white business owners and politicians. This dynamic was evident in Clarendon County, where the Black residents who brought the original suit against the school district were fired from their jobs, denied loans from local banks, and in some cases driven out of the county entirely, as DeLaine was.

The Civil War created an enduring and painful divide between white and Black Americans, especially in the South. White resentment of Black Americans — rooted in fury over the loss of a plantation-based way of life — produced persistent prejudice and oppression that eventually created an intolerable situation. Black Americans had to fight back to reclaim their dignity and their equality. Tragically, the war also gave rise to the southern Jim Crow Laws, which served no purpose other than to keep Black people in their "place" by denying them social and political freedoms. These laws were enacted across the South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and many remained on the books until the 1960s and beyond. The Civil War created the conditions that made segregation possible; the Supreme Court tried to end it. Yet, as Kluger noted with sadness near the close of the book: "But in the Summerton area, in the school district where Reverend DeLaine had organized the 'Briggs' case and paid so dearly for it, the public school system twenty years later had an enrollment of more than 3,000 black youngsters — and just one white child" (778). Clarendon County had won the legal fight, but was still losing the broader war.

Conclusion

Many events led up to the monumental Supreme Court decision that brought about the desegregation of America's schools. Bringing the issue to the courts involved brave men and women, a hope and a need to alter history, and the people's demand for racial equality. Brown v. Board of Education was the first step down a long road toward racial harmony, but we have still not reached the final destination — and sometimes it seems as though we never will.

Bibliography

Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of 'Brown v. Board of Education' and Black America's Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.