Brown vs. Board of Education: celebrating a half-century of hope.

• Author: Moss, Otis, Jr.
• Position: Education - End of educational segregation

WHEN THE HISTORIC Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was issued in 1954. I was a sophomore at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The response of the university's hierarchy and professors, along with the shared thoughts and debates of fellow classmates, spurred the decision into an open seminar throughout the campus.

Moreover, all during my freshman year, there were lectures, papers, debates, and numerous discussions, formally and informally, on the topic. These all centered on what the anticipated decision could, would, or should be. Therefore, May 17, 1954, was another 20th-century D-Day in black ,and white America.

I have some lifelong impressions and a 50-year memory bank that neither time nor space will permit complete expression. To begin, allow me to lift up a small handful of observations on the case that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and finally put it on the books that separate but equal was anything but, and that segregation no longer was the law of the land.

In 2054, our successors and offspring will observe the 100th anniversary of Brown. What we do and say now, or what we refuse to do and say, will impact the life of our nation and the future of our children. Brown u Board of Education did not occur in a vacuum. The previous 19 years had witnessed significant legal victories in education and voting (i.e., the outlawing of "White primaries"), A. Phillip Randolph's courageous fight for the enactment of the Federal Employment Practice Commission, and the heightened and determined struggle against racism growing out of World War II. There was the Pres. Harry S Truman initiative and the desegregation of the Armed Forces as well as the initiative from Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey at the 1948 Democratic National Convention concerning civil and human rights--an effort that caused southern Democrats to bolt the party and become Dixiecrats under the late Strom Thurman of South Carolina. We were witnessing the rising tide against colonialism, the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, and the intense challenge of communism, led by the Soviet Union.

There was what British Prime Minister Harold McMillan later would describe as the "winds of change" sweeping the globe. In addition, the continuing proclamations of hope and protest emanating from the Black Religious Experience--a reality that is forever with us in songs, sermons, writings, and direct action.

The 1954 benchmark

In 1954 and before, there were voices such...