Plessy Under Attack!!!

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In the suburb of Claymont, Delaware, African American children were prohibited from attending the areas local high school. Instead, they had to ride a school bus for nearly an hour to attend Howard High School in Wilmington. Located in an industrial area of the state’s capitol city, Howard high school also suffered from a deficient curriculum, pupil teacher ratio, teacher training, extra-curricular activities program and physical plant.

In the rural community of Hockessin, African American students were forced to attend a one room dilapidated school house and were nit provided transportation to the school, while white students in the area were provided transportation and a better school facility.

In both cases, Louis Redding a local NAACP attorney represented the plaintiffs: African American parents. Although the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs the decision did not apply to all schools in Delaware. These cases were named for Ethel Belton, and Shirley Beulah.

In our nation’s capitol, eleven African American high school students were taken on a field trip to the city’s new modern John Phillip Susa School for whites only. Accompanied by local activist Gardner Bishop who requested admittance for the students and was denied the African American students were ordered to return to their grossly inadequate school. Bishop and the Consolidated Parents Group had been represented by Charles Hamilton Houston. Sadly Houston the architect behind the legal fight for desegregation died in April of 1950. Before his death, Houston had urged the group to seek out two Howard University Law professors: James Nabrit and George Hayes to represent them. Nabrit and Hayes filed suit on behalf of the group in 1951. The suit was named for Spotswood Bolling.

In Topeka, Kansas a black third grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switch- yard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda’s father Oliver Brown tried to enroll her in the white elementary school but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett the head of Topeka’s branch for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns’ as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. Other black parents joined Brown and in 1951 the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation in Topeka public schools.

The U.S. District court for the district of Kansas heard Brown’s case from June 25 thru June 26 of 1951. At the trial the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites therefore the schools were inherently unequal. The board of education’s defense was that because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere was pervasive in many other aspects of life, segregation in public schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood. The board also argued that segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children. Great African Americans such as Frederick Douglas Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver had overcome just more than segregated schools to achieve what they achieved.

I deciding the request for the injunction, the court on the one hand agreed with the expert witnesses. In their decision they wrote: segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental affect upon the colored children. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. However, the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal schools systems for blacks and whites and no Supreme Court ruling had overruled Plessy. Because of Plessy the court felt compelled to rule in favor of the board of education.

Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951. Their case was combined with other cases challenging school desegregation in S.C. Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

How will the Supreme Court rule? Will they uphold their 1891 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson or will they overrule it?

I’m Penny Marshall. Join us tomorrow for the answer.

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Barbara Johns Takes A Stand For School Equality

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Curtis’ father William Bailey had been born in bondage in Cuba. At some point and time in his life, he along with his mother and father Lucy and Sam and his grandmother, Elvira were transported to Price Edwards County Virginia. After the Civil War armed with a compass, William Bailey set out to find his wife and children in South Carolina. He ended up in Society Hill. It is not known whether he found his wife and children, but he did find Annie Bonaparte and they married and together they had five children.

In the meantime, his mother and father, Sam and Lucy along with his grandmother, Elvira remained in Lehigh Prince Edwards Virginia with William’s numerous siblings.

Lehigh was very close to Farmville, Virginia, which housed the only black high school in the county. That school was named R.R. Moton. Built in 1939, the school was named after Dr. Robert Rousa Moton.

Dr. Moton was born in nearby Amelia county Virginia. He was however, educated in Prince Edwards County. After graduating from Hampton Institute, he became one of the foremost African American educators, succeeding Booker T. Washington as President of Tuskegee Institute.

The school was designed to accommodate 180 students. By 1951 it was housing 450 students. To address the over crowding, the county decided to build three tar papered shacks to be used as classrooms. The tar papered shacks looked like dilapidated black chicken coops. In the winter, the schools were very cold requiring the students to wear their coat inside. When it rained, the water would come through the ceiling necessitating the strategic placement of pales around the classroom and the use of umbrellas by the students as a method of keeping the water off their heads.

The condition of Moton in 1951 was not conducive to a learning environment. Fed up with these atrociously sub-standard conditions, Barbara Rose Johns organized a student strike on April 23, 1951. Over 450 students walked out and marched to the homes of school board members who refused to see them. Thus was the beginning of a two weeks protest.

Barbara Johns wanted to take the protest a step further, so she contacted Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, tow lawyers from the NAACP. Robinson and Hill was a month away from litigating the Briggs case in Clarendon County, S.C. Because they were busy with their preparations they did not initially respond to Barbara Johns call. Johns, however, was very persistent and would not yield until she spoke with Oliver Hill. She told Hill that the people in Farmville needed him and that he just had to come. Barbara Johns continued to call until he decided to accept the case. Barbara Johns and the people of Farmville only wanted school equal to that of whites. The NAACP lawyers told them in a meeting that they would only accept the case if they could sue to end segregation. The African Americans within the Farmville community were very reluctant to challenge segregation but they also thought that it would be in the best interest of their children, so they accepted the NAACP lawyers’ terms.

On May 23, 1951 some five days before they were to try the Briggs case, Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill filed suit on behalf of the students against the school district to integrate the schools. In February of 1952 the case was heard before a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court. Within weeks of the hearing, the three-judge panel unanimously rejected the students’ request for integration. The Court stated that they found no hurt or harm to either race. The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I’m Evelyn Queen. Joins us tomorrow as we continue to explore standing on the shoulders of unsung heroes.

For Spanish and hearing impaired versions, please go to the Febone1960.net Black History Month Calendar

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