Raymond C. Pierce
When I reflect on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine of our nation’s educational system, I can’t help but consider the historic context in which this landmark case evolved and how it reflects the long struggle for educational opportunity.
We know that during the years prior to the U.S. Civil War, strict policies against educating enslaved Black people existed with particular focus against teaching them to read. Nonetheless, Black people had a strong thirst for learning, and despite ever-present danger, they persisted in efforts to learn. It should be noted that society meted out punishment for whites seeking to educate Blacks, and severe punishment for Blacks seeking to learn. This enforced practice of denying education to Black people was a tool of the institution of slavery in the United States.
As the Union Army increased its campaign to defeat the Confederate states and destroy the system of slavery, military leaders sought solutions with increasing attention to aid the plight of freed slaves. It was during this time that Army leaders pressed for the formation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. The Freedmen’s Bureau, as it was known, had as one of its initial tasks to organize formal education for the growing population of freed Black people. Bureau leaders quickly became allies for education and beseeched white philanthropists to supply books and teachers desired by newly emancipated people.
Schools began to emerge in places like the coastal Carolinas as the Union Army marched. At the end of the war and for the first decade of the Reconstruction era, philanthropists launched a strategy to scale efforts creating new taxes to pay for increased education for African Americans and poor whites in the South. Black elected state representatives during Reconstruction led the charge to sustain the philanthropic effort by legislating new tax structures to pay for what would become public education in the South.
Public education as we know it in the North can largely be defined by the leadership and efforts of educational reformer and abolitionist Horace Mann. In the early 1800s, Mann led a long and successful movement advocating for a publicly funded common system of education. The distinction here is that public-funded education did not come to the South until after the Civil War. By 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed and intended to provide equal rights for all citizens. For the next 60 years, efforts continued to advance the goal of educational opportunities across the country. However, the road to equal educational opportunity was not without resistance. Long after the Fourteenth Amendment passed, many Southern states rescinded education tax structures and created separate schools for whites and Blacks.
Schools were supposed to be for everybody, but segregation still emerged. In response, white philanthropists in the North sought to push back on growing segregation by threatening to withhold funding and grants for public colleges and universities in the South as a way of dissuading separate tax systems. Regardless, the force of segregation persisted and ultimately settled into the fabric of public education in the South.
Grassroots movements in the Black community to grow educational opportunities for African Americans continued to spring up across the country, partnering with organized philanthropy such as The Peabody Fund, The Jeanes Fund, The John F. Slater Fund, and the Virginia Randolph Fund. Leaders such as Jewish American philanthropist Julius Rosenwald aligned with this mission. The Rosenwald Fund was ultimately responsible for funding the construction of thousands of rural schools in the South, largely partnering with Black community development organizations. In the 1930s, an association of Black women teachers in the South raised $300K to support the training of Black teachers. By 1934, the majority of these foundations were consolidated to form what is now the Southern Education Foundation (SEF). (If you want to learn more about SEF’s history, see www.southerneducation.org/who-we-are/timeline).
In the years following consolidation, SEF continued to battle segregation and discriminatory policies that limited educational opportunities for students of color. It was during those years that the foundation began its alliance with leaders like Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, Mary McLeod Bethune, Benjamin Mays, Jeanne Fairfax, and Julius Chambers. Through that alliance, SEF and others elevated the academic use of research and data in the growing legal arguments against ‘separate but equal’ as defined by the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The discussions and deliberations among this community of thought leaders eventually began to clarify legal concepts challenging the constitutionality of segregated school systems. Also, during that era, when no other southern university or hotel would house them, SEF acted as both a research facility and living quarters for the research on the state of Black education in the South for the Brown v. Board of Education case.
Oliver Brown was a Black father in Topeka, Kansas who sought a legal remedy for his daughter’s denial of educational opportunity because of the then-lawful system of racial segregation in public schools. Mr. Brown’s lawsuit was joined by similar lawsuits that resulted in the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision and civil rights victory known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that finally overturned the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine.
Despite decades of court battles to secure equal opportunities in education, vestiges of the once lawful ‘separate but equal’ doctrine continue to exist in our nation’s schools. Brown may have won the case, but challenges and resistance remain. Now, 70 years after that monumental decision, Black children and students of color in this nation are still impeded by systems of education with a long history of segregation policies.
How do we address this reality within our current political and legal climate? How do we make sure that all children, regardless of race or national origin, are provided equal access to trained teachers and quality educational resources?
It is imperative that together we continue to reinforce the foundational principles of the Brown decision that stated, “To separate [Black children] from others of similar age and qualifications 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 to ever be undone.” The ruling continued, “We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.”
I am encouraged by recent conversations and collaborations around this very issue. I am moved and impressed by the depth of thoughtfulness and analysis around what are now multi-faceted educational challenges. Brown’s Promise (www.brownspromise.org), housed at the Southern Education Foundation, is one example of an initiative that uses an analytical and community approach at addressing lingering issues of segregation.
These emerging conversations must continue, and the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education must be kept alive.
References
The Jeanes Story, A Chapter in the History of American Education, 1908-1968, Copyright © 1979 by the Southern Education Foundation, Inc.
Henry Allen Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South, 1967, Harvard University Press
Raymond C. Pierce (rpierce@southerneducation.org) is President and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation.
