Reflection's of Brown Vs Board of Education

Oliver Brown, my father, was recruited to join 12 other parents as plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit. And although at the time we didn't know the future impact of the ruling, my family -- much like the country -- has gradually come to understand the importance of the Supreme Court's decision.

Brown v. Board of Education represents three critical aspects in the pursuit of our democratic ideals. First, it placed an emphasis on education reform, because education is fundamental to citizenship. Second, Brown required the country to acknowledge and define race relations. And finally, the court's ruling asserted the rights of African Americans to be full partners in social, political, and communal structures.

The Brown decision and the resulting Civil Rights Movement in the United States inspired and galvanized human rights struggles around the world. At the same time, the ruling was merely a catalyst -- positive relations require more than one willing participant.

For my family, commemorating this anniversary is an opportunity to convey that at the heart of positive race relations is a sense of unity, respect, and acceptance. Being the family of the namesake of this judicial turning point comes with a responsibility to teach and to never let the country forget what it took for some of its citizens to be afforded their constitutional rights.


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Cheryl Brown Henderson is cofounder of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, in Topeka, Kan., which was established as a living tribute to the attorneys and plaintiffs in the case.





We rightfully celebrate the landmark Supreme Court decision that ended the legal segregation of students by race. It was one of the most important policy changes in American history. It broke the powerful symbol of racial inferiority that served to limit the participation of all Americans in all aspects of our societal life. By extending full participation to all, our nation became a better democracy and one of the most successful societies in the world, if not in the history of the world.

Unfortunately an enormous amount of national energy went into school integration efforts without addressing the ill effects of the historical exclusion of African Americans from political, economic, and social systems during and after slavery. These are the systems that enable parents to give their children the kind of experiences that prepare them for adult life, with each generation preparing the next.

Most other groups were able to benefit from these systems -- particularly the economic -- before an education was required to do so. They were able to move in three generations from uneducated, to modestly so, to the high level needed by the 1960s. Large numbers were able to experience the related psychological and social benefits that benefited family life and child development over these several generations.

At just about the time segregation was barred, rapid changes in the nature of the economy made education the major means of access to living-wage employment for most people before many African Americans could move similarly. Many African Americans were able to provide for their families in spite of limited opportunities to participate in the political, social, and economic mainstream, but a disproportionate number were marginalized and traumatized to a degree that they were not able to do so.

The most traumatized benefited least from improved educational and economic opportunities. Fortunately there is evidence that with a focus on child and youth development, communities and schools can help all students develop, learn at a high level, and meet the challenges of today's world. This 50th anniversary commemoration must fuel our efforts to make this happen.


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James P. Comer, M.D., is the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center, associate dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, and founder of the Comer School Development Program. His forthcoming book, Leave No Child Behind, will be published by Yale University Press in fall 2004.





To people of my generation, who were children in 1954, Brown will always stand for America's best hopes and aspirations. It represented a determination to integrate education and, beyond that, housing and all aspects of American society. To be sure, it took much too long for the Supreme Court to enforce Brown and, once that began to happen fully 10 years after the initial decision, "white flight" precluded real integration. Still, Brown represented the dream of which Martin Luther King Jr. spoke so eloquently.

Today the fight for racial equality proceeds on two fronts. Legally, the fight now proceeds through efforts to equalize the financing of schools in under-resourced urban school systems like New York City. Educationally it goes forward within public schools where school leaders and teachers must find ways to make instruction so powerful that all children will learn. The racial achievement gap is the most serious problem we face in education.

Personally, I worry about how enduring our commitment to integration is in this country. Racial integration has proven much more difficult to achieve than people expected in 1954. Matters of social class, which are so closely tied to race, are also hard to overcome. Our society is becoming more, not less, unequal. We tolerate homelessness and extreme poverty in one of the richest societies in the history of the world.

The anniversary of Brown provides us with an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the quest launched by Thurgood Marshall and other leaders in the NAACP's long fight for school integration. They understood, as we must also, that none of us will live well if some of us are barred from opportunities to learn, earn, and otherwise exercise our rights as American citizens. Racial integration must remain our central national aspiration until it is achieved. Celebrating Brown can remind us of that.


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Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education at Harvard University and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.





Brown v. Board of Education is one of the most important decisions in our history. As someone who lived through segregation, I know that Brown made our country more equitable, more just, and more decent. It began a process to make our citizens and our institutions fully respect each other as people. The Brown decision ended the myth that there were two kinds of people. We are all one, together.

Before Brown, the law was no help; it tolerated segregation. In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court found that segregation could be justified because of "established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order." In short, precedent in custom and law was more important than higher constitutional promises and human acts of decency.

But 50 years ago, the Supreme Court, in overturning that odious decision, sent seismic shock waves through this country. In his oral arguments before the court in Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall said that any way you look at the problem, you "can't take race out of this case."

He was right. This wasn't about custom or the other ways of cloaking the debate. Segregation was about genetics and skin color. Period. Finally, the doctrine of "separate but equal" in education was exposed as unconstitutional.

Segregation didn't disappear right away. The pace of change was slow, and remains slow, measured in decades and generations. Equality of opportunity must be more than just a statement of law; it must be a matter of fact. And factually speaking, this country does not yet promote equal opportunity for millions of children. Some fortunate students receive a world-class education. There are islands of excellence, schools where there are many fine teachers and administrators. But there are also millions mired in mediocrity, denied a high-quality education. Millions of children are left behind. In my view, this is immoral and unjust.

I give President Bush much credit for seeing this problem and willingly making it an issue in the last national election. He said that, if elected, he would institute change, and he did. Within four days of assuming office, he initiated a blueprint that became the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The act was passed with wide bipartisan support; the president immediately signed it, and it became the law of the land. It is now two years old. With this law -- this tool -- we are beginning to redress this achievement gap. This law is a historic reform. The "old ways" will no longer be tolerated. We demand equity, justice, and inclusion. The name is a constant reminder: no child left behind. For the first time in the history of our nation, every state in our nation has an accountability plan that holds all schools and all students in their state to the same high standards. For the first time, parents and teachers will be able to work together to make sure no child is left behind. Every child counts.

No Child Left Behind is a powerful, sweeping law. It is the logical next step after Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation. If this country is firmly committed to a future in which racism is eradicated, then we must recognize that Brown itself was just a start and that affirmative action is only transitional. At some point we must eliminate disparities directly. The No Child Left Behind effort does that. It demands that each child is respected, educated, and honored. It does not allow entire classes of children to be undereducated or ignored.

Fifty years have passed since Brown. It may take generations to finally achieve equality of opportunity. But a racism-free society must start with fair and inclusive education. That is where we must build the foundation of fairness, hope, and decency. We must make our schools equitable in order to make our society and culture equitable. Our schools are the leading indicator for later problems. So unless we begin in schools, other later attempts to eliminate racism and discrimination will probably be unsuccessful. Our work for the future begins now, and it begins in our educational institutions.


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Rod Paige is U.S. Secretary of Education.



Like so many crucial Supreme Court decisions, Brown v. Board of Education speaks ambiguously to the strengths and weaknesses of the American political system. After more than a half century of Jim Crow distortions of the separate but equal doctrine put forward in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Warren court finally hammered a sharp nail in the coffin of segregation and the deep inequalities Plessy had rationalized. In doing so, it manifested the Supreme Court's vital role in upholding rights when the sovereign American majority fails to do so through its legislative institutions.

Yet at the same time, the court displayed its activist tendency to intervene in arenas that are deeply political, often spurred on by reluctant or frightened public officials unwilling to risk a public debate. In doing so, it insulated the electorate from taking responsibility for the enforcement of rights under the law, possibly making their long-term exercise more problematic. In usurping the citizenry's role in protecting minorities, the court absolved ordinary Americans of responsibility for implementing whatever solutions the judiciary imposed.

There is a delicate balance involved in democracy's dance with liberty. On the one hand, there is a need to force the majority to deal with minority rights it does not yet recognize. A majority disinclined to act ought not to have its power usurped but be helped to become inclined to do so. For even when a court imposes a solution, it generally requires civic enforcement for its realization. An electorate left out of the decision to protect rights makes a poor partner in guaranteeing them.

The sad history of intransigence, backsliding, and evasion that greeted Brown v. Board pays unhappy tribute to that reality. If public schools were to be integrated by judicial fiat, the ornery electorate would simply start private schools (leading to today's voucher movement, which, for all its bows to parental empowerment, still harbors a certain covert racism). If school-based integration was to reflect residential integration, then defeat integration through residential segregation: "Sure, every last kid in the neighborhood can go to the same school! Just happens that our new [first ring, second ring, whatever ring it takes] neighborhood is all white! Chuckle, chuckle."

On the other hand, a long history of rights abuse by a majority that has refused to act is itself a powerful rationale for judicial intervention -- indeed, it can be said to establish an absolute obligation to intervene. How long must an abused group wait while citizens catch up with their responsibilities under the law? Indeed, is it not often a court decision that ignites the very political struggle that, had it come earlier, would have obviated the need for a court decision? Can one really imagine the civil rights struggle of the late 1950s and early 1960s absent the Warren court's mighty battle cry against segregation?

Yet for all this, judicial activism has a chilling effect on political education and political activism and thus on real political results. Accelerating the judicial process in the name of protecting abused rights can decelerate the learning process by which a stubborn citizenry comes to understand the meaning of rights for the group putting forward its claims. A court decision may jump-start a necessary political debate, but it may also short-circuit the emergence of a politics that allows the full implementation of rights

There is no easy answer to the question of whether the continued legacy of intransigence in the face of integration would have been even worse in the absence of Brown v. Board (racism is racism is racism), or whether throwing the issue into the political mix of the 1950s would have achieved a slower but more widely accepted solution that would have resulted in more real equality today. But as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board in a climate in which full equality has yet to be achieved, we ought to be willing at least to pose the question; not just because we care about educating citizens to their responsibilities in a democracy, but because the protection of rights itself ultimately depends on citizen acceptance, whatever a court -- or for that matter, the constitution -- says.

This is why James Madison worried that a written Bill of Rights would do little to ensure their actual protection. Such a bill was a mere scrap of paper in the absence of competent citizens willing to uphold the rights it enumerated. Nor is this just a question of historical interest. For America is likely to replay the democratic dilemmas of Brown v. Board in the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision enjoining that state's legislature to enact a full gay marriage bill. (Civil unions will not suffice.) Given that a majority of the country is currently opposed to such a bill -- and that, while many Americans acknowledge the partner rights guaranteed by gay civil union, far fewer recognize a gay "right" to marriage -- one may surely wonder whether the long-term interests of gay couples are being advanced or thwarted by the court's decision.

It is in the nature of rights that the struggle for them must run ahead of popular thinking. This is enough to justify the role the courts have played. But where the struggle runs too far ahead, judicial rulings that impose by fiat interpretations for which the public is not ready can play out destructively. Those who think the courts must say what they think is right will not care. But those who believe the court must take responsibility for the consequences of its rulings will ask whether there are not times when a court can best advance rights by refusing to take the heat off American citizens.


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Benjamin R. Barber is Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland and director of the New York Office of The Democracy Collaborative. © 2004 Benjamin R. Barber.



Brown is arguably the most important domestic event of the 20th century, finally putting to rest the most divisive issue in the history of the republic, the practice of invidious racial discrimination. Fifty years ago this spring, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation by race was unconstitutional -- almost 90 years after Grant accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House.

True, the implementation of Brown was often uneven and slow, but the policy die was cast, and a one-way ratchet was applied to segregation. It was dismantled step by step, slowly at first, then more rapidly, until today its last physical vestiges have all but disappeared. True as well, traces of racism remain, particularly in the subtle realm of attitudes and private behavior. In some places and some cases, the traces are strong, but public policy and public attitudes are firmly on the right side of history. Unfinished business is not the same as indifference.

In this context, remembering the issues raised by Brown -- the wrongs righted, the remedy sought and achieved -- is more than an exercise. The Brown plaintiffs were forced by state law to send their children -- by bus -- to a segregated school. They sued. The right they sought, and the remedy they achieved, was the right to let their children walk to their neighborhood school.

This was not only a signal victory for the Brown plaintiffs and racial minorities across the nation -- indeed, around the world -- it was a sign of maturing social policy at the national level. Chief Justice Earl Warren recognized the historic importance of overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson and understood that unanimity was essential to so significant a case. To the surprise of many, he rose to the occasion, securing a unanimous court in the face of strong opposition. To the disapprobation of many, the court was criticized for using social science research as part of its reason for overturning Plessy. (Footnote 11 in the decision cited findings of diminished self-image occasioned by racial segregation.) With the virtue of 20-20 hindsight, it is clear that social science research is a slender reed for the court to lean on. The stronger case is the purely moral one -- separate is self-evidently not equal, and Plessy was simply bad law, just as slavery was unconscionable social policy.

No matter the fine points, Brown remains a momentous and noble ruling; the fact that its impact was not perfectly felt -- that even 50 years later unfinished business remains -- should not diminish its importance. To the contrary, it should remind us all of the integrity, boldness, and power of its vision.


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Denis P. Doyle is cofounder and CAO of SchoolNet Inc., a school reform company. He is the editor of The Doyle Report, an electronic newsletter, and writes a monthly column for Educational Leadership.



Brown v. Board of Education is both simple and profound. On its simplest level, Brown deals with the rights of black students not to be forced to attend segregated public schools. On a broader level, it deals with equity, justice, and the promise that every child deserves the right to a high-quality public education.

Brown has made our country more equitable, more just, more decent. Yet in 1954, it was met with strong and mixed emotion.

For much of the education community -- including the National School Boards Association -- the decision was consistent with stated political beliefs. In 1951 NSBA had set forth an "American Plan" of education, which began with these words: "Public education of all children and youth, without discrimination, lies at the heart of the American plan."

Then, in 1955, NSBA's Delegate Assembly unanimously adopted the following statement of belief: "The Association advocates that every member of a school board shall represent open-mindedly the entire school district and, in consequence, must let his considerations for the entire district take precedence over every form of partisanship and special interest -- political, racial, religious, geographic, economic, social, civic, or other."

But we were not all brave or bold on this issue. As reported in School Board News, then a part of the independent American School Board Journal, the school board of Sheridan, Ark., voted to integrate its schools for the 1954-55 school year. That decision was rescinded the following day in reaction to a "mass meeting of citizens."

Elsewhere in Arkansas, Gov. Orval Faubus declared that "blood will run in the streets" if black children tried to attend Little Rock's Central High School. On Sept. 2, 1957, he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school to stop any integration attempt. Central High was not integrated until the Supreme Court made it clear in Cooper v. Aaron that the state had no power to stand in the way. President Eisenhower federalized the National Guard, and on Sept. 26, 1957, the troops escorted the first group of black students into Central High School.

The Brown decision started us down that path. Fifty years later, few can deny that real progress has been made. The "whites only" signs on the drinking fountains and restrooms are gone. Black voters now freely register and vote in record numbers. The laws prohibiting interracial marriages have been repealed.

Today the United States has the most diverse group of students in its history, and within a generation, the majority of our school-age population will be nonwhite. Equity is critically important in our public schools. Children learn what they see. If children are treated fairly, they become fair people. If children are respected, they learn to respect others. If they are respected and treated equitably, they learn good citizenship, they learn to value liberty, and they become a part of our democratic community.

As Justice Thurgood Marshall said in 1958: "Education is not just the teaching of the three R's. Education is the teaching of overall citizenship, to learn to live together with fellow citizens." Our democracy is a reflection of our educational system. Our schools build and create our communities, our businesses, our society. Our schools build and create our future.

The promise implicit in Brown is that every child deserves the right to a high-quality public education. The fulfillment of this promise is the heart of our public schools.


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Anne L. Bryant is executive director of the National School Boards Association, Alexandria, Va.



Twenty-five years ago, in a series of programs for National Public Radio called "Race Against Time," I went back to the five communities involved in Brown v. Board of Education and interviewed many of the people who brought the lawsuits -- the ordinary folks. I was struck by their dignity and heroism, and I hope we have not squandered that gift. Clearly, schools have resegregated since Brown, but the general picture strikes me as a matter of two steps forward, two steps back.

I frankly think that the solution to America's continuing problem with race has less to do with desegregation and more to do with excellence and opportunity. If I were in charge, I would use tax policy to ensure that the best teachers went to the neediest schools. I would give huge tax deductions to those willing to teach and be principals in the neediest schools, and I would make sure those schools were empowered (that is, had control over their budgets). Money talks louder than race in America, when the day is done.

Such a policy would have to be enacted at the federal level, and it would have to trump union seniority and merit pay arguments. But we must act.


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John Merrow is host and executive producer of "The Merrow Report" on the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, president of Learning Matters Inc., and author of Choosing Excellence: "Good Enough" Schools Are Not Good Enough.



It's become fashionable to say, in effect, that Brown v. Board of Education has turned out to be One Big Disappointment. So much promised, so little accomplished.

Well, yes and no.

Almost no one celebrates the reasoning of the decision. Chief Justice Earl Warren's opinion is thin, flimsy, and frustrating. The 14th Amendment is almost missing in action.

In 1896, Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting in Plessy v. Ferguson, argued that "our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." But that wonderful dissent was the radical vision of a man who has remained a voice in the constitutional wilderness. In Brown, the court announced only that segregation had a "detrimental effect" on black children. "In the field of public education ... separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." No singing phrases. No majestic moral statement making racial identity irrelevant in American law and public policy.

Nevertheless, Brown signaled the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. By 1970, America had finally changed permanently -- and there was no going back.

There was no going back, and there has been no backsliding. It is often said that schools have become "resegregated." Nonsense. Brown was obviously about the state-sanctioned separation of children, but even leaving that important fact aside, schools are more racially integrated today than ever before -- less imbalanced relative to the racial mix in the district, which should be the only important measure.

There are those who argue otherwise. But they ignore America's changing demographics. Sure, a school in Los Angeles is generally majority-minority. That's because whites have become a minority in the state. But the typical white child in L.A. is attending classes with a mix of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. This is hardly the sort of Jim Crow segregation that the court found so constitutionally unacceptable in 1954. Indeed, isn't it what we dreamed about not so very long ago? Schools that reflect the diversity of a country that is racially and ethnically rich?

Brown promised an end to segregation, sanctioned by law. But it also spoke of educational "opportunity," and here the news is less heartening. The typical black or Hispanic student is graduating from high school with an eighth-grade education. America, in so many ways, is a land of opportunity -- but not for those without skills and knowledge. If schools cannot close the appalling racial gap in academic achievement, the old inequalities will persist. We will be a nation with a racially identifiable group of educational have-nots.

We expected to see true racial equality half a century after Brown; the end of Jim Crow raised our hopes. We must not abandon that optimism. But we must work harder at realizing the American dream -- for all children. The racial gap in learning is morally unacceptable. Hard educational work lies ahead. Let's get started -- and not with "all deliberate speed." We can't afford to let another minute pass.


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Abigail Thernstrom is the coauthor of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, a member of the Massachusetts state board of education, and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. © 2004 Abigail Thernstrom.



There are events in the life of mankind that so impact history that time is marked in relation to those occurrences. Brown v. Board of Education is one such event. This historic 1954 Supreme Court decision ended the legal segregation of African-American students. The unanimous Supreme Court decision that segregation violated the 14th Amendment also helped lead to the end of racial segregation in dining facilities, rest rooms, transportation systems, and almost every other area of American life.

In 1967, only 13 years later, Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court justice and served as a member of the powerful body against which he had waged legal warfare in 1954. In 2004, African Americans can sit in almost any seat we can afford to buy and go anywhere we can afford to travel. We head the same school systems that only five decades ago relegated us to rundown facilities and cast-off books.

Yet, 50 years after Brown, those of us who are committed to educational excellence and equity are still fighting for poor children and children of color to be educated according to Justice Marshall's profoundly simple definition of equal. When Justice Felix Frankfurter asked Marshall to define the word, he replied, "Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time, and in the same place." This is still a powerful operational definition of equality today.

The difference is that in the 21st century, the fight for equality is a fight for high standards and high-quality teachers; for eliminating the gap in achievement and closing the digital divide; for an excellent education that prepares all students to live productively and well in an information-based global economy; for full participation in all that American society has to offer.

One of the age-old questions asked by those who view the fight for equality from positions of comfort and privilege is, "We let them in the door; isn't that enough?" And the age-old answer is now, as it has always been, a resounding No! Enough will only be achieved when, in every classroom, in every school, in every system, in every state, the assessment data -- no matter how they are disaggregated -- prove that every child has received an excellent and equitable education.

Many Americans may not be aware that the battle to end segregated schools actually began in 1849 in the first documented school case, Roberts v. City of Boston. It took 105 years, until 1954, to win the fight against segregated educational facilities. Let us all hope that the struggle against intellectual segregation does not take nearly as long. The price for further delay is far higher than this nation can afford to pay.


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Gerry House is president and CEO of the Institute for Student Achievement in Lake Success, N.Y., and the former superintendent in Memphis, Tenn., and Chapel Hill, N.C.



Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court reached back to the constitutional origins of the republic and declared that separate could never be equal and that every child is entitled to a comprehensive, free, and high-quality education. In a society that is a mosaic of racial and cultural diversity and divided by economic inequality, education is our last great hope for a just society. There are those who wish to do away with universal public education and substitute a system of private schools that will divide us rather than unite us.

Brown was the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s. It provided the context in which genuine leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., could arise and claim legitimacy. It is sometimes forgotten that King followed the precepts of the Indian social revolutionary, Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi believed that service to the people is impossible without taking part in politics. He believed that social justice requires selflessness through sacrifice. At the heart of the Brown decision is the faith that social action can peacefully lead to social justice.

As we look to the future, we should have solidarity with the values expressed in Brown and reconfirm our faith in people and public education as the best and only way to create an equal and just society.


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Peter W. Cookson Jr. is dean of the graduate school and professor of educational administration at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He was formerly president of Teachers College Innovations and the Doris Dillon Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he founded the Center for Educational Outreach and Innovation.