Key players in the conflict over civil rights 173December 1953. The ruling was postponed for so long because the Court was keenly
aware of the firestorm that would ensue. In its unanimous decision, the Court ruled:
“In the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, depriving the plaintiffs of the
equal protection of the laws. Segregated facilities may generate in black children a
feeling of inferiority that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to
b e u ndone.”^58 The case was significant not only because it required all public schools
in the United States to desegregate but also because it used the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in a way that had potentially far-reaching
consequences.
Nonetheless, the decision was limited because it focused on segregation in
schools rather than segregation more generally and it focused on the psychological
damage done to black schoolchildren through segregation rather than on the broader
claim that racial classification itself was not allowed by the Constitution. Chief
Justice Earl Warren wanted a unanimous vote and knew that two justices would not
support a broader ruling that would overturn Plessy v. Ferguson and rule segregation
unconstitutional in all contexts. Even if segregation in other public places still was
legal, the Brown ruling provided an important boost to the civil rights movement.The Push to Desegregate Schools In 1955, Brown v. Board of Education II
addressed the implementation of desegregation and required the states to
“desegregate with all deliberate speed.”^59 The odd choice of words, “all deliberate
speed,” was read as a signal by southerners that they could take their time with
desegregation. The phrase does seem to be contradictory: being deliberate does not
usually involve being speedy. Southern states engaged in “massive resistance” to
the desegregation order, as articulated by Harry F. Byrd, the segregationist senator
from Virginia. In some cases, they even closed public schools rather than integrate
them—and then reopened the schools as “private” segregated schools for which
the white students received government vouchers. However, Maryland, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Missouri, and the District of Columbia desegregated their schools
within two years.
Eight years after Brown I, little had changed in the Deep South: fewer than 1 percent
of black children attended school with white children.^60 Through the 1960s, the courts
had to battle against continued resistance to integration. In 1971, the Court shifted its
focus from de jure segregation (segregation mandated by law) to de facto segregation
(segregation that existed because of segregated housing patterns) and approved school
busing as a tool to integrate schools.^61 This approach was extremely controversial.
The Court almost immediately limited the application of busing by ruling in a Detroit
case that busing could not go beyond the boundaries of a city’s school district—that is,
students did not have to be bused from suburbs to cities—unless it could be shown
that the school district’s lines were drawn in an intentionally discriminatory way.^62
This rule encouraged “white flight” from the cities to the suburbs in response to
court-ordered busing.
In 2007, in perhaps the most important decision on race in education since Brown,
the Court invalidated voluntary desegregation plans implemented by public school
districts in Seattle and Louisville. Both districts set goals for racial diversity and denied
school assignment requests if they tipped the racial balance above or below certain
thresholds. In a ringing endorsement of the color-blind approach, the majority opinion
said: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating
on the basis of race.” In this case, the discrimination was against white students who
wanted to be in schools with few minority students, rather than black students who
wanted to be in integrated schools.^63de jure
Relating to actions or circumstances
that occur “by law,” such as the legally
enforced segregation of schools in the
American South before the 1960s.de facto
Relating to actions or circumstances
that occur outside the law or “by fact,”
such as the segregation of schools that
resulted from housing patterns and
other factors rather than from laws.Full_06_APT_64431_ch05_148-197.indd 173 16/11/18 1:29 PM