[On June 12th,
1967, the Supreme Court ruled
in Loving v. Virginia to strike
down all remaining laws prohibiting interracial marriage. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
Loving and four other cases in which
the Court helped advance social progress, leading up to a special weekend post
on the role of courts and judges in our own society!]
On the forgotten figures at the heart of the crucial Civil Rights victory.
I don’t think I would get much argument if I called Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka (1954) the most
famous Supreme Court decision to advance social justice and equality (ie, as contrasted with equally
famous high court decisions such as Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, or Citizens
United that upheld or amplified inequalities instead). With yesterday’s
blog subject and NAACP Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall successfully arguing
the case for the plaintiffs, a
group of African American parents constituted out of the plaintiffs from five parallel
lower court cases including Brown, Chief Justice Earl Warren and the Supreme Court returned a unanimous, landmark decision that
overturned the concept of “separate but equal” in the nation’s public education
system, set in motion the long, slow, painful, crucial process of desegregation, and is generally considered the first key moment and victory in the modern
Civil Rights Movement.
So Brown is already very well
known, and justifiably so. But I would nonetheless argue that its plaintiffs,
and most especially the 13 Topeka parents who filed the initial 1951 class action lawsuit against that
city’s Board of Education on behalf of their 20 children, remain almost
entirely unremembered and unknown. Like Rosa Parks and many other
seemingly individual Civil Rights activists, these parents took action as part
of a coordinated campaign: the Topeka chapter of the NAACP decided in the fall
of 1950 to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine in the city’s schools,
and the group of parents were recruited and selected by local NAACP leaders
including chapter president McKinley Burnett, secretary Lucinda Todd (who also became
one of the plaintiffs), and lawyers Charles Scott, John Scott, and Charles
Bledsoe. Yet that broader context does not in any way invalidate the unique and interesting identities and stories of each of those thirteen Topeka parents, such as lead
plaintiff Oliver Brown (a welder, assistant pastor, and the only male
plaintiff, fighting for his third-grade daughter Linda) or Lena Carper (a
clinical child care worker at a children’s hospital, fighting for her daughter
Katherine), to name only two. While it might be more difficult to remember a
moment through 13 brave individuals (as opposed to through one like Rosa
Parks), each and every one of them deserves a place in our collective memories
of Brown and the Civil Rights
Movement.
Moreover, better remembering the Brown
plaintiffs would help us remember the vital historical lesson for which I
argued in this piece for the Washington Post’s Made by History blog. As I argued there, many (if not most) of our most significant legal
and social advances and victories have originated with courageous and dedicated
individuals, relatively “ordinary” Americans (ie, not presidents or other
already-prominent public figures) pursuing justice and equality for their own
lives and families. To be sure, they have had to ally with powerful friends and
organizations to achieve that success, just as the Topeka families worked with
the NAACP at both the local and national level. And of course the powers that
be (such as the Supreme Court) have not always come down on the side of these
activists for justice. But often they have, and in any case these inspiring
individuals and families represent a crucial and far too easily overlooked
thread in our collective history and story. Just one more reason to better
remember the 13 parents who set in motion Brown
v. Board of Education.
Last decision
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Supreme Court decisions or contexts you’d highlight?
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