Decision In May Research Articles

Blackburn v. Attorney-General. Court of Appeal, London. Decision of May 10, 1971

<i>Blackburn</i> v. <i>Attorney-General</i>. Court of Appeal, London. Decision of May 10, 1971

Some Problems in the Desegregation of Higher Education in the "Hard Core" States

Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina form a contiguous geographical unit in the lower southeastern section of the United States. More than this, they also form the core of an ideological and legal resistance to the United States Supreme Court's decision of May 17, 1954 which has been very successful up to the present time. These states have always been foremost among those that invariably have resisted progressive economic, political and social changes. Now, they bitterly resent having to give up the remnants of an internal type of colonialism which for years under segregation placed the Negro in a strategic position to be continuously exploited and suppressed. An uneducated people can be more easily exploited under the separate but equal doctrine, therefore these and other states refrained from giving the Negro his proportinate educational shares. As a matter of record, they had no intention of giving the Negro an equitable system of education which would be comparable to that which the whites had. They had only accelerated this process in a limited measure under legal pressure before the United States Supreme Court ruled

The Role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the Desegregation Process

Because the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People played a major role in the legal action which resulted in the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, it is natural that estimates of its continuing activity would place major emphasis on law suits. This is doubly logical in view of the fact that its attorneys now are armed with an actual opinion on the unconstitutionality of racially segregated schools, rather than the mere belief in that unconstitutionality and the hope of such a pronouncement.

The psychic cost of segregation

HE importance of the Supreme Court's historic decision of May 17 outlawing segregation in the public schools lies in part in the fact that the psychological facts of life have received judicial recognition for the first time. To the obvious impact of segregation in depriving Negroes of external opportunities cultural, economic, and political the Court has now added the less conspicuous but perhaps even more important psychic results as constitutionally significant factor. The great achievement of Justice Brandeis, decade before he joined the Court, in winning approval for maximum hours legislation by educating his future colleagues to the economic facts of life has been extended by his successors to another discipline in the social sciences. Education, Chief Justice Warren wrote, is today a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values . . . and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. But if normal adjustment to the environment is function of education, the educational environment itself must be built on democratic norms or serve to produce undemocratic personalities of type better suited to an authoritarian than free society. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time the separate but fiction was established, the Court now holds that segregation generates in the minority a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their habits and minds in way unlikely ever to be undone. As southern attorneys-general prepare briefs to parry the impact of this decision, it is appropriate to ask just how great the psychic costs of segregation are. As professors with different skin pigmentation in Florida's segregated university system (but, more important, as colleagues in the social sciences), the authors of this article have accordingly attempted to measure the degree of authoritarianism implicit in the personality structures of their respective students. Is the Court correct in assuming that segregation permanently marks the personalities of southern Negroes? If so, in what respects? And, of equal significance, what is its comparative effect on the whites? The test of authoritarianism developed in the monumental study of The Authoritarian Personality (T. W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, New York, 1950) by group of California psychologists offered the best tool available for answering these questions. Designed to measure underlying

The Meaning and Significance of the Supreme Court Decree

On May 31st, 1954, the long-awaited decision of the Supreme Court, on how to implement its opinion declaring segregation in public education unconstitutional, was handed down. Like the decision of May 17, 1954, it was read by the Chief Justice of the United States for a unanimous Court, and its language was simple, direct and non-technical. After the 1954 opinion, it seemed anti-climatic, but nothing world shaking should have been expected. Utterance of a practical formula pursuant to which a great constitutional and moral abstraction may become a part of our daily lives sometimes seems to have far less impact than the initial statement of the principle itself. And that seemed to be the situation in this case.

Desegregation in the Public Schools of Mississippi

Supreme Court decision of May 17, 19545, found the Mississippi Legislature in an extra session called by the governor of the state. This body had been in session for some time, working strenuously to devise a system of taxation whereby salaries and facilities for Negro and white schools could be equalized and kept separate. While the legislative mills were grinding slowly, the Supreme Court of the nation made its momentous decision against segregated public schools. effect of the epochal decision upon the Mississippi Legislature and the entire state was indescribable. walls of Jericho had come tumbling down suddenly and the resounding crash reached the ears of everybody everywhere. A period of painful silence followed for a time, only to be broken by the clarion voice of Mississippi's senior senator at Washington: We will not obey nor abide by the decision of the statement seemed a signal for the local papers to begin releasing pent-up energy on the Supreme Court's far-reaching edict, and at the same time, display pardonable pride in the fact that a few senators and some of the populace requested copies of the speech that defied the decision handed down by the high Court. Jackson Daily News, running true to form, termed the Court's decision purely political and then proceeded to picture dire consequences resulting from mixing the races in public schools. Its vision of the flow of blood as an inevitable sequence of integration in schools was repeated in a speech before a session of the Editors and Publishers Convention and the charge of foreseen carnage would be properly placed on the marble steps of the Supreme Court building in the nation's capital. Disapproval of the Court's findings were. widespread over the state of Mississippi, a thing generally expected. However, a different note was sounded by the Delta Democrat Times. In the issue of that paper dated May 18, 1954, editor Hodding Carter of Greenville, Mississippi, writing under the caption, The Court's Decision, had this to say in the first paragraph: The Supreme Court's decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional was to be expected by almost everyone who has followed the historical struggle between defenders and opponents of racially separated school systems. More significant than surprising, too, was the unanimous nature of the decision. Justices who made it are men from every section of the nation, men of various social backgrounds and beliefs and political outlook. That they should be so united in this case can be interpreted only as meaning that they were completely convinced that morality and democratic tradition were on their

Desegregation of Public Schools in Kentucky--One Year Afterward

As this is written, a year after the Supreme Court's historic decision of May 17, 1954, Kentucky's attitude about desegregation of its public schools is still mostly wait and see. There has been no instance of actual desegregation of public elementary or secondary schools in the state, and, despite the well-publicized and unchallenged positions to the contrary taken in several states, the state Attorney General has stated that Kentucky's state segregation remains in effect, until repealed or specifically declared invalid by court decision or decree. A few school districts are actively planning for desegregation, but in the great majority there is no public discussion and any planning or official thinking about the matter is being kept undercover. Even parochial school desegregation is confined to a very few schools, involves only a handful of Negro students, and has been kept out of the newspapers. Yet in a good many ways the state displays a certain degree of readiness for adjustment to the Court's decision. Both before and after the decision, the Governor and state school and legal officials stated publicly that Kentucky would obey the law and would make whatever adjustments were required. After the decision, the Governor predicted that desegregation would be easier in Kentucky than in any other southern state, and several school superintendents stated that they foresaw relatively little difficulty in adjusting in their districts. The general public greeted the decision fairly calmly. There was a flurry of letters to the in the newspapers, but these were both pro and con. A cross was burned in the yard of the Lexington City Superintendent of Schools (who had made a very innocuous public statement), but little was made of the incident and it apparently represented no organized protest. Letters to the editor soon dwindled, and during the year since the decision there have been no reports of citizens' councils or other organized groups with the objective of preventing desegregation. On the other hand, many clubs, churches, and organizations have been having speakers and discussions on desegregation, and some have passed resolutions supporting the change and calling for the cooperation of their members and others.

The Realities and Ethics of Desegregation

THE SUPREME COURT DECISION of May 17, 1954 which unanimously declared that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional has provoked widespread discussion of practically every aspect of Negro-white relations in the United States. Some of the most important topics include the enforceability of an unpopular decision; the nature and susceptibility to cure of race prejudice; intermarriage; the morals, economic status and intelligence of Negroes; the capacity of Negro teachers; the police powers of states; methods of evading or nullifying the Supreme Court decision; gradualism versus the fellswoop; the political and international implications of the decision; the ethics of segregation. One hears again the famous dictum of William Graham Sumner that Stateways cannot change folkways. That is to say that it is futile for government to seek through judicial, legislative or executive means to overcome deeply rooted attitudes and behavior. Like most dicta, this one is too sweeping. The failure of prohibition is the classic example to justify it. A law to prohibit smoking or to require intermarriage of persons of different races, religions and cultures would similarly fail. On the other hand, the civil rights law of Ohio, after having been violated for many years, is now being enforced in many parts of the state. The Supreme Court decision, Smith v. Allwright, I944, has resulted in a wider use of the suffrage by Southern Negroes than at any time since Reconstruction despite the threat that, if the

Some Principles Related to the Problem of Desegregation

In its historic decision of May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that state laws which require racial segregation in public elementary and high schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. This unequivocal decision, which has been described as being a great social science document as well as a great legal document, left the problem of the specific procedures for the desegregation of the schools to be decided after further argument before the Court in the fall of 1954.

The Psychic Cost of Segregation

HE importance of the Supreme Court's historic decision of May 17 outlawing segregation in the public schools lies in part in the fact that the psychological facts of life have received judicial recognition for the first time. To the obvious impact of segregation in depriving Negroes of external opportunities cultural, economic, and political the Court has now added the less conspicuous but perhaps even more important psychic results as constitutionally significant factor. The great achievement of Justice Brandeis, decade before he joined the Court, in winning approval for maximum hours legislation by educating his future colleagues to the economic facts of life has been extended by his successors to another discipline in the social sciences. Education, Chief Justice Warren wrote, is today a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values . . . and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. But if normal adjustment to the environment is function of education, the educational environment itself must be built on democratic norms or serve to produce undemocratic personalities of type better suited to an authoritarian than free society. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time the separate but fiction was established, the Court now holds that segregation generates in the minority a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their habits and minds in way unlikely ever to be undone. As southern attorneys-general prepare briefs to parry the impact of this decision, it is appropriate to ask just how great the psychic costs of segregation are. As professors with different skin pigmentation in Florida's segregated university system (but, more important, as colleagues in the social sciences), the authors of this article have accordingly attempted to measure the degree of authoritarianism implicit in the personality structures of their respective students. Is the Court correct in assuming that segregation permanently marks the personalities of southern Negroes? If so, in what respects? And, of equal significance, what is its comparative effect on the whites? The test of authoritarianism developed in the monumental study of The Authoritarian Personality (T. W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, New York, 1950) by group of California psychologists offered the best tool available for answering these questions. Designed to measure underlying