A Continuity of Conservatism: The Limitations of Brown v. Board of Education

Abstract

ON MAY 17, 1954, THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT ISSUED THE landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that laws mandating racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. Some civil rights activists reacted with caution to the decision, most conspicuously the man who had led the legal challenge against Jim Crow education, Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Nonetheless, many supporters of the civil rights cause saw the ruling as a decisive breakthrough. Charles S. Johnson, president of the black Fisk University, articulated the excited sense of expectation that the ruling would break down social barriers not only in schools but in all areas of public life: If segregation is unconstitutional in educational institutions, it is no less so unconstitutional in other aspects of our national life. (1) The New York Amsterdam News was even more emphatic, declaring that 'The Supreme Court decision is the greatest victory for the Negro people since the Emancipation Proclamation. (2) Despite the initial optimism of civil rights campaigners, the process of school desegregation was beset by obstruction and delay. Although the era of massive resistance was relatively short-lived, white southerners subsequently succeeded through less confrontational tactics in restricting the implementation of the Brown decision. The defiance of federal authority by segregationists ignited a broad conservative reaction against the judicial activism of the Supreme Court, while Brown also inspired a southern white backlash against Washington that persists to the present day. My purpose is to assess how white southerners mobilized in opposition to school desegregation and then to turn to the longer-term impact of conservative political strategy. It has been argued that the Brown decision impeded the gradual process of racial change that had been taking place in the southern states since the late 1940s. According to this interpretation, the Supreme Court seriously miscalculated by selecting education as the target for a judicial assault on segregation rather than choosing the less emotionally sensitive area of voting rights or public transportation. Instead, the ruling undermined the reform of Jim Crow practices by provoking a militant backlash among southern conservatives. The integration of public facilities occurred because massive resistance stirred blacks into mobilizing a more effective protest movement that forced a previously complacent federal government to impose coercive civil rights legislation. (3) One of the principal criticisms of this analysis is that it overstates the momentum of racial reform in the pre-Brown South. The years during and immediately after World War II witnessed a resurgence in racial violence as whites attempted to repress the growing political assertiveness of the black population. Between 1941 and 1946, white lynchers murdered at least twenty-two African Americans. (4) Despite substantial increases in membership that occurred during the war, civil rights organizations struggled to score any decisive political breakthroughs. The efforts of southern blacks to build a stronger political power base through the integration of labor unions also suffered as a result of the racially divisive tactics of employers. Although there were some signs of change in the air, they were less a strong wind than a faint breeze. In the early 1950s several southern states attempted to preempt a legal challenge to public-school segregation by eliminating the most blatant disparities in educational facilities for black and white students. More than half a century after the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, white southerners were finally taking measures to provide practical meaning to the doctrine of separate but equal. Yet such action only underlined their determination to protect the social order from federal interference. Proponents of the backlash thesis are more persuasive in their assertion that the Brown decision was not the principal catalyst for the development of the civil rights movement. …