Enforcing Desegregation: A Case Study of Federal District Court Power and Social Change in Macon County Alabama

• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12105

Enforcing Desegregation: A Case Study of Federal

District Court Power and Social Change in Macon

County Alabama

Brian K. Landsberg

This case study of Lee v. Macon County Board of Education demonstrates that

a federal district court in Alabama, enforcing Brown v. Board of Education,

brought about significant social change despite constraints on the courts. The

court’s application of Brown played a decisive role in ending the racial caste

system in this Alabama Black Belt county. The court, by adding the U.S.

Department of Justice as a party,overcame constraints that had precluded the

executive branch from pursuing school desegregation. Change came through

the courts before Congress legislated against school segregation. Seekers of

social change must evaluate the constraints on the courts relative to the

constraints on the other branches and levels of government.

This article closely examines Lee v. Macon County Board of Edu-

cation, a case that grew from a challenge to school segregation in a

small Alabama county and became the vehicle for statewide school

desegregation. In its examination, the article, following the sugges-

tion of Schultz and Gottlieb (1996: 90), deviates from the method-

ology used by Rosenberg and examines the role of the judiciary

in school desegregation at the micro level. It explores the question

whether and how lower court enforcement of a Supreme Court

decision such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954)

(Brown) may bring about social change even though “in a govern-

ment in which [powers] are separated from each other, the

This article grows out of a larger project. Thanks to Anne Bloom and participants in a

Pacific McGeorge Works in Progress program. Thanks to Steve Pollak and Dorothy

Landsberg for comments on early drafts, and to Stephen L. Wasby for his ongoing advice

both on this article and on the larger project. The editors and reviewers for Law and Society

Review contributed valuable suggestions. I benefited also from feedback on a related article

at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in 2013, especially from Ira Strauber

and Thomas Keck. Thanks to archivists at Tuskegee Institute, Library of Congress,

National Archives and Records Administration College Park, Kennedy Presidential Library,

and Alabama State Archives. A number of research assistants have helped on this project:

Jocelyn Blinn, Keith Banks, Michael Heumann, Jacqueline Hassell, and Abby Maurer.

Robert Mayville provided helpful research assistance on this article. Finally, Joseph M.

Bagley generously shared with me his extensive research on Lee v. Macon County Board of

Education.

Please direct all correspondence to Brian Keith Landsberg, McGeorge School of Law,

University of Pacific, 3200 Fifth Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95817; e-mail: blandsberg@

pacific.edu.

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Law & Society Review, Volume 48, Number 4 (2014)

© 2014 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

judiciary . . . will always be the least dangerous. . . .” (Hamilton

1788). To what extent are the courts constrained by “the inability to

develop appropriate policies and . . . lack of powers of implemen-

tation?” (Rosenberg 2008: 10).

Rosenberg lists three constraints on the ability of courts to

produce meaningful social change: the limited nature of constitu-

tional rights, the lack of judicial independence, and the judiciary’s

lack of powers of implementation. The second constraint, he says,

can be overcome only with support from Congress and the execu-

tive, and the third only with support from some citizens or low

levels of opposition from all citizens (Rosenberg, 35–36) Yet, Lee v.

Macon County Board of Education produced meaningful social

change despite the lack of support from Congress and a high level

of opposition from whites in Macon County.

To those who seek instruments of social change, the question

“Can courts bring about social change?” is the wrong question. As

McCann (1994: 136) demonstrates, social change depends upon

the confluence of several forces. Opponents of the racial caste

system engaged in a multipronged attack in which the courts

were an essential element. Litigation, pressure on the executive

branch, lobbying Congress for legislation, marches, boycotts, sit-ins,

Freedom Rides, and voter registration campaigns were the tools.

The courts enabled many of these methods, even encouraging

some of them, and they began enforcing Brown before Congress’

landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered federal agencies to

enforce school desegregation. John Doar succinctly summarized:

“Look, if you’re going to bring about a big cultural change in this

country, you need the three branches of the federal government to

work together . . .” (Doar 2013: 304; see also Cummings (2013:

185), McCann (1992: 728), and Epstein and Walker (2007: 123)).

Examining litigation for social change through the lens of Lee v.

Macon County Board of Education in its early phases reveals the

complex interaction of the district court, the proponents of social

change, the state and local governments, the federal executive

branch, and the Congress. This article covers the first two years of

the case, 1963–1965. By 1966, the enforcement of the Civil Rights

Act of 1964 reinforced the judicial enforcement of Brown. But

implementation of Brown in Alabama began when Congress had

done nothing either to implement or interfere with the Brown

decision.

This article examines the difficult question of causation: Did

Brown bring about social change, or would the schools of the South,

as Klarman seems to suggest, have desegregated faster if the Court

had not decided Brown? It also examines whether the original

objectives of the proponents of social change were met by the

litigation. Any number of cases could serve as the vehicle for an

868 Enforcing Desegregation