Repairing faults.

• Author: Angones, Francisco R.
• Position: Public school segregation - President's page

As president, I always seem to be on the road or in the air traveling on behalf of The Florida Bar. But a confluence of two trips within two weeks last fall struck a historical chord I wanted to share with you.

Traveling to Arkansas for a Southern Conference of Bar Presidents meeting last fall, I was mindful of the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, when in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. It was the first time federal troops had been sent to restore order on American soil since the Civil War. And it was three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that public schools segregated according to race were "inherently unequal."

In his September 24, 1957, address to the nation, President Eisenhower said, "Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts." And he stressed, "A foundation of our American way of life is our national respect for law."

Without further violence, the students enrolled in school and the rule of law, delivered from our nation's highest court and enforced by our commander in chief, had been upheld. Finally, children, black and white, sat together in classrooms, peacefully learning anew that all are created equal under our Constitution, and that the judicial branch is a viable vehicle to right wrongs.

A few days before my Arkansas trip, I visited Missouri, where my friend Charlie Harris, a Kansas City attorney, was honored to become the first African-American president of The Missouri Bar. As I watched Mr. Harris take the oath of office in the same state where the Dred Scott case played out at trial, I was struck by how far we, as a nation, have come.

I was reminded of a famous quote from French philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who said: "The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."

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Because 150 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its painful decision in the case of Dred and Harriet Scott, slaves who sued for their freedom, after spending several years with their owner in free territories before returning to slave-holding Missouri.

St. Louis jurors summoned the wisdom to decide that the Scotts and their two daughters should be set free. But victory was short-lived. Rejecting the "once free, always free doctrine," the Missouri Supreme Court...