Personal Rights, Public Wrongs: The Gaines Case and the Beginning of the End of Segregation

Abstract

Personal Rights, Public Wrongs: The Gaines Case and the Beginning of the End of Segregation Kevin M. Kruse From its founding in 1909, the NationalAs­ sociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) searched for a strategy with which it couldbetterthe lives ofAfrican-Ameri­ cans. The legally sanctioned institutions ofra­ cial segregation, though only a few decades old, appearedto be firmly entrenched on theAmeri­ can landscape. In the eyes ofmost, the daunt­ ing task of changing the racial status quo seemed impossible and most mass-action pro­ grams suffered accordingly. Hoping to reverse this trend, the NAACP sought a course of ac­ tion that would only require a small group of activists but would affect wide populations of black Americans. The courts seemed to hold the answer. The early years of the legal campaign did little to fulfill the hopes ofthe NAACP leader­ ship. Under the watch ofthe archconservative Taft Court, the battle in the courts had degen­ erated into a pendulum swing ofvictories and setbacks. The seeming victory over residen­ tial segregation in Buchanan v. Warley (1917) was erased by the unanimous upholding ofre­ strictive covenants in Corrigan v. Buckley (1926). The Court then went out of its way to crystallize its beliefin segregation by applying it to elementary education with Gong Lum v. Rice (1927). Political discriminationremained, despite the nominal successes in Nixon v. Herndon (1927) and its descendants. By the close ofthe 1920s, the Supreme Court seemed impervious to any frontal assault on segrega­ tion and discrimination.1 In the early 1930s, a new self-reliant gen­ eration ofblack leaders took command of the NAACP.2 In their reexamination of the legal campaign, these new leaders latched onto aplan put forth by Nathan Margold, who advocated an attack on segregation from the safest pos­ sible ground. Instead of immediately seeking the overruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Margold argued, the NAACP should do nearly the exact opposite: it should force a strict ob­ 114 JOURNAL 1997, VOL. 11 servance of“separate but equal” on the South­ ern states, by striking the South where it could most easily be proven negligent—educational funding. Through relentless litigation, the NAACP hoped to force segregated society to provide blacks with educational facilities truly equal to those ofthe whites and therefore make Jim Crow schools a costly luxury for Southern states. By holding segregationists to the very letter of their own doctrine, the NAACP planned to make that same doctrine impossible to keep. Faced with the option of integration or financial ruin, the South would grudgingly choose the lesser of two evils—integration.3 In hammering out the specifics ofthis broad structure, the new NAACP leadership forged an informal alliance with another rising force in civil rights activism, the Howard University Law School. Radically overhauled in 1930 and 1931, the institution was fast becoming a cru­ cial weapon of the movement, teaching a new generation of lawyers a hands-on civil rights legalism that interpreted the law specifically as it applied to blacks. Dean Charles Hamilton When Charles H. Houston (right) served as dean of the Howard University Law School in the 1930s, he turned the school into a powerful force for civil rights activism. He also directed the NAACP’s legal cam­ paign, which focused on graduate education, where the most blatant inequalities of Jim Crow schooling existed. Houston fervently believed that the “graduate and professional cases were essential to the development of ‘the leadership of the race’” and committed himself to winning them. Above is a blueprint of Howard University’s law library, constructed in 1951. G/lZV/iSDECISION 115 Houston, the driving force behind the law school’s new spirit, was soon guiding the NAACP legal campaign as well, first as an ad­ visor and then as its official head.4 Houston viewed education as “apreparation forthe com­ petition of life” and therefore saw it as a logi­ cal focus for the NAACP’s plans.5 The dean honed the legal strategy, deciding to concen­ trate their efforts on graduate and professional education, where the most blatant inequalities of Jim Crow schooling existed.6 Houston fer­ vently believed that the “graduate and profes­ sional cases were essential to the...