This week marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregation in public education unconstitutional. Many historians consider this to be the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement. After hundreds of years of denying or limiting education for most Black people and nearly 60 years of the unjust federal policy of “separate but equal,” the Court decision on May 17, 1954 opened up a way for racial equality in public education. The case was actually comprised of cases from five different localities that practiced legal segregation including a case from Farmville, VA. The photo posted below is the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on the grounds of the state Capitol in Richmond. It commemorates the Virginia case included in Brown which started with a student boycott of Moton High School led by 16 year old Barbara Johns.The following quote from the unanimous Brown ruling emphasized the harm that segregated education inflicted on the lives of Black children:
Separating black children from others solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The impact of segregation is greater when it has the sanction of law. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law tends to impede the educational and mental development of black children and deprives them of some of the benefits they would receive in an integrated school system.
The Brown v. Board case is certainly worth celebrating for its historic value of establishing the principle of equal public education for children of all races. However, it is equally important to lament the fact that this principle has never been fully implemented in the 70 years since that decision. Almost immediately states and localities throughout the South organized what has become known as “massive resistance” to the racial integration of public schools. Virginia politicians and authorities were primary leaders of this resistance. Finally by the late 1960’s through the 1980’s, racial integration in public education became the rule rather than the exception. Sadly over the last 30-40 years, many school systems have resegregated as the result of both court decisions that reversed previous court ordered desegregation plans and demographic changes that resulted in racially and economically homogeneous communities. Racial segregation in public education by law has been gone for 70 years. Racial segregation in public education in practice is still very much with us today. The basic principle of the Brown v. Board decision as quoted above is foundational for a society based on liberty and justice for all. We are still in a struggle to make this a reality for all God’s children. The video posted below focuses on both the history of the Brown decision and the challenge to implement it more fully today.
