Wiley Austin Branton and "Cooper v. Aaron": America Fulfills Its Promise

Abstract

MOST PEOPLE THRILL TO THE POWER of a man standing up for what is right in the face of threats and intimidation from his neighbors. In real life, most of us must wonder whether, confronted such a situation, we would sacrifice ourselves or our children to principle and the right thing. In May 1954, the white citizens of Little Rock and officials on its school board were faced a decision of principle. After decades of permitting segregation under the separate but doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court finally declared that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. Two decisions in 1954 and 1955, both titled Brown v. Board of Education and known as Brown I and Brown II, ordered the states to integrate schools with all deliberate speed.1 The implications were clear for Little Rock, which was not even living by the letter of Plessy. Little Rock school officials had been put on notice that its segregated black schools were not equal to those provided for white students.2 When Brown was decided, Wiley Austin Branton, a thirty-two-year-old lawyer, was president of the Pine Bluff chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and chair of the Redress Committee of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP.3 He was married and had five children, four of whom attended segregated schools in Pine Bluff. Branton had become an equal rights advocate during his service in the segregated U.S. Army during World War II. After returning home, he joined the NAACP and was active in efforts to eradicate unequal treatment of black citizens. He had been instrumental in integrating the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1948. He later obtained his law degree from that school, becoming a lawyer in 1952. Branton rejoiced as state and school officials declared they would comply the Court's ruling. Then he watched as school officials first temporized, then retreated from a draft plan that would have integrated all Little Rock public schools fairly quickly. The Little Rock School Board and Superintendent Virgil T. Blossom created their plan for integration grudgingly and an eye to public relations. Fear of community disapprobation made Little Rock school officials determined to avoid any suspicion that they personally favored integration. They publicly announced that the final integration plan was the least they could do without violating Brown.4 When it became clear that the school board's final integration plan would minimize and delay real integration for as long as possible, Branton agreed to represent the parents of thirty-three black Little Rock school children who had attempted to register at previously all-white schools but been denied admittance. The suit was an attempt to force the school board to expand the Blossom Plan and achieve full integration more quickly. With help from two lawyers employed by the national NAACP (regional counsel U. Simpson Tate and Robert Carter), Branton filed the action titled Aaron v. Cooper in the United States District Court at Little Rock on February 8, 1956. At trial on August 15, Branton and Tate failed to convince the court that there was anything wrong the board's integration plan.5 The trial judge found the plan to be a reasonable effort to comply Brown. Branton and Carter then appealed the decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals where, in a decision dated April 26, 1957, they also lost.6 The plaintiffs and Branton decided not to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Further appeal risked the possibility that the school board would postpone integration of any sort in 1957, a primary concern for the local black parents, and that the vague and drawn-out Little Rock plan also might be approved by the Supreme Court, thus becoming a model for school districts in other states.7 This last was a concern of the national NAACP, since Little Rock was not the only school district in the country where white resistance to integration forced black citizens to sue in an effort to gain the equal access to education granted by Brown. …