The Rhetorical Road to Brown v. Board of Education

Abstract

The Rhetorical Road traces the symbolic battle that provided the locus for change in Brown v. Board of Education. Elizabeth and Waties Waring entered this battle when they delivered thirty-five speeches from 1949 to1952. Elizabeth Avery Waring was a twice-divorced Northern socialite. Her husband, federal Judge J. Waties Waring, was an eighth-generation Charlestonian whose family had enslaved people of African descent. The Warings’ goal was to arouse silent white people and pressure the federal government to intervene in the South. Elizabeth and Waties took purposeful steps to ensure that their oratory reached audiences across the United States. With each speech and media interview, they received letters – positive and negative – that they then circulated to more audiences. The responses demonstrate that a cadre of white allies existed in the pre-Brown era. The timing of the Warings’ campaign is significant in terms of Briggs v. Elliott, the school segregation case that originated in Clarendon County. Initially a bus transportation case in 1948, then an equalization case, the parent-plaintiffs persisted and in 1950, filed the first federal lawsuit to challenge legally-mandated school segregation. The Black community sustained Briggs through the appeal process until it was consolidated in Brown. This book weaves the Warings’ public address with local organizing, NAACP legal strategy, and national politics. The rhetorical history of Brown v. Board of Education reveals the terms upon which segregation was defended, the reasons that white people remained silent, and the ways that white Americans reconciled the contradiction between American democracy and white supremacy.