Brown v. Board of Education After Fifty Years: Context and Synopsis - James L. Hunt

• Publication year: 2001

SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION

Brown v. Board of Education

After Fifty Years: Context and

Synopsisby James L. Hunt^*

For white Southerners, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education¹ was important because it challenged racial discrimination in the most important governmental function of their communities: public education. As a consequence, the significance of Brown is not limited to the legal strategies of the parties or the decision-making process on the Supreme Court, however critical those activities were. Of additional usefulness in understanding Brown is the experience of the people who would either defy or support it. The essential political nature of Brown requires an effort to consider its impact at the local level. The experience of Macon, Georgia, past and present, provides appropriate context for a summary of the Brown litigation. This approach advances the highest purpose of studying Brown, which is to connect formal legal developments with broader currents in ideas, society, and politics.

I.

Macon, the home of Mercer University, was a segregated city in 1954. "Tradition" or law required that practically every aspect of life, including public schools, employment, higher education,² housing, public transportation, theatres, restaurants, hotels, and churches, be segregated by race. Like slavery, segregation operated through a complex and interrelated set of rules, each of which depended in some manner upon the others' enforcement. When the United States Supreme Court on May 17, 1954, held in Brown that segregation in public elementary and secondary education violated the United States Constitution, the entire edifice of white supremacy, an ideal enforced in Macon since the city was founded in 1823,³ was put at issue.

Macon's white citizens fully appreciated Brown's potential to disrupt the settled order. The local morning daily newspaper, the Macon Telegraph, gave special attention to the decision on May 18, posting the headline "Segregation in Schools Outlawed By Sweeping Supreme Court Ruling" across several columns at the top of its first page.⁴ It even took the unusual step of printing the entire opinion.⁵ According to the Telegraph, both Macon's political leaders and ordinary whites unanimously condemned Brown. Readers learned that Governor Herman Talmadge, an outstanding segregationist even among Southern politicians, renewed his vow that "[t]here will never be mixed schools while I am governor."⁶

As for the Supreme Court, Talmadge, a lawyer, complained that it "has blatantly ignored all law and precedent and usurped from the Congress and the people the power to amend the Constitution."⁷ Similarly, United States Senator Richard B. Russell, also an attorney, called the decision "a flagrant abuse of judicial power."⁸ State legislators from Macon agreed. Denmark Groover announced that Brown reflected "purely and simply sociological views of the court, despite contrary precedents."⁹ He confidently predicted the legislature would "take some action to maintain segregation and at the same time provide educational opportunities for all its citizens."¹⁰ Gus Bernd, a legislative candidate, was also "deeply disappointed," and he hinted that Andrew Jackson's alleged refusal to enforce a Supreme Court decision involving a dispute between the Cherokee Nation and Georgia in the 1830s provided an appropriate example for resistance.¹¹ The sheriff, James Wood, issued a statement proclaiming that enforcement of Brown would mean the end of public education and a manifest decline in race relations.¹²

Local school leaders also rejected Brown. In Bibb County, where Macon is located, Superintendent Dr. Mark Smith did not think the ruling would have an immediate effect.¹³ One reason for this thought was the large number of African-American students. In the 1953-1954 year, Bibb County operated twenty-nine white schools and eighteen black schools; 14,828 students were white, and 8,339 were black.¹⁴ Real integration necessarily required what seemed an inconceivable reshuffling of students. Jones County's superintendent confidently blamed the entire question of desegregation on "outside intervention" and thought violence would occur if his schools integrated.¹⁵ More ominously, the chairman of the Toombs County board predicted "wholesale killing" if segregation ended.¹⁶ Peach County's superintendent expressed confidence in Georgia's program of "equalization," which aimed to avoid integration by improving black schools. His system had just opened a new black school, and the school's occupants seemed "very happy in their own new building."¹⁷ J. H. Clarke, of Monroe County, claimed that blacks there opposed integration.¹⁸

Interviews conducted with other whites revealed fear, racism, disappointment in the Supreme Court, and unanimous opposition to its ruling.¹⁹ The decision was the number one topic of conversation around town.²⁰ One theme of the interviews was that whites and blacks were happy with the way things were, so why change?²¹ One man thought the Court was trying to legislate "brotherhood," an impossibility.²² Yet the coercive effect of white solidarity came at a price: "[I]f you let it get out that you've stated one way or the other on [segregation], it'll hurt your business. I'm trying to make a dollar. Don't use my name."²³ Some offered the hope that "my children can finish school before they bring in the Negroes."²⁴ Miss June Wood, a fifth grade teacher at the white Alexander II school, adjacent to the Mercer campus, believed that "Georgia and the South will find some way around the ruling."²⁵ All agreed that getting time to protect segregation was critical: The day when whites and blacks "might be forced to go to school together must be delayed to give the citizens time to formulate a new system of segregation."²⁶ At least one person implied the potential for violence by conceding that it would take "guts" for a black student to integrate a white school.²⁷

The editors of the white-owned Macon Telegraph adopted what passed in Georgia for a moderate response.²⁸ They rejected "an attitude of defiance against the Supreme Court."²⁹ Yet Georgia was not ready to abandon segregation, and any change would not be "in the near future."³⁰ On the other hand, the paper chided reactionaries, without mentioning Talmadge by name, noting the importance of a "proper example" set by the state's political leadership.³¹ Bert Struby, the executive editor, emphasized the point, suggesting fallout from Brown would separate demagogues from those politicians "who are sincerely interested in the welfare of the citizens of our state, white as well as colored."³² Struby even predicted Brown would lessen the race issue in political campaigns.³³ He did not, however, guess when that would occur.

Predictably, the Macon Telegraph, a segregated institution itself, gave little attention to the reaction of blacks. The newspaper's interest in that part of the community was restricted to a separate page, "Personal and Social News for Colored People," which the paper represented as "Edited and Managed Exclusively by Colored People."³⁴ The section chronicled the life of Macon's blacks in segregated schools and churches. As a result, the black response to Brown, other than the Telegraph's assumption that black people liked segregation, was largely ignored.

Nonetheless, the paper reported that an African-American math teacher at Ballard-Hudson High School agreed that integration would have to wait because whites opposed it.³⁵ Another teacher praised the manner in which Bibb County operated a dual system.³⁶ Yet there were hints that blacks who were less dependent on white employers could have a different view. The Macon Committee on Interracial Cooperation issued a hopeful statement that praised the Supreme Court, the only public support for the decision mentioned by the Macon Telegraph.³⁷ The group asked "all men and women of good will in our community to see that the moral and legal implications of this historic ruling are honored and respected in the months and years ahead."³⁸ It reminded whites that other races made up two-thirds of the world's population.³⁹

These views appeared in a social and economic context that make it clear why Brown received such criticism from whites, particularly whites who normally had little contact with the legal system. In 1949 Bibb County had a population of about 114,000, of which approximately 35%, or roughly 40,000, was African-American.⁴⁰ Although relatively small in area, the county contained two distinct communities, defined by race, quantitatively separate in their educations, incomes, and occupations. First, dramatic educational differences existed between whites and blacks. Approximately 67% of the black population over 25 years old had 6 or fewer years of education; the median for the race was 5.3 years.⁴¹ At the other end of the scale, only 3% of Macon's African-Americans had any college education, while 1% had a college degree.⁴² In contrast, among white adults, approximately 36% had 6 or fewer years of education (about half the rate for African-Americans), while more than 12% had some college education (four times the African-American rate), and just over 5% had a college degree (five times the African-American rate).⁴³ Whites, on average, possessed 8.3 grades of schooling, three grade levels higher than African-Americans.⁴⁴ Although the data show the limitations of Georgia's education system as late as 1950 for both races, including the astonishing fact that 5% of the adult population had not completed the first grade,⁴⁵ there were sharp differences in the experiences of whites and blacks at the top and bottom of the educational scale.

Not surprisingly, employment practices also reflected differences. Of approximately 16,000 black workers in Bibb County, the census classified only about 500 as "professional and technical."⁴⁶ In contrast, more than 95% of African-American males...