Brown decision, however, legislation to curb busing for school desegregation was initiated by Congressmen from the North as well as the South. If President Nixon's statement seemed to reflect withdrawal from a national commitment to civil rights progress, congressional support also appeared to be declining. While civil rights leaders increasingly argued that support for racial equality as a national goal had waned, the administration contended that progress was continuing while rhetoric was fading and that the Nation's conscience was now catching up with its laws. TOWARD RACIAL EQUALITY In 1974, the American public and those who interpret contemporary social affairs are accustomed to pointing to the 1954 Brown decision as the beginning of the civil rights movement. Indeed, it was a watershed in American race relations. But, to black Americans, the struggle for civil rights began with their history of slavery--with racial prejudice, with racial segregation, and with racial discrimination. The court decisions that preceded Brown were steps toward equality. The final recognition by Brown that black Americans were full citizens, as a principle of constitutional law, was the end of a movement whose roots are over 300 years old. To blacks, 1954 was the "Year of Jubilee," 58 years overdue since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, 91 years overdue since the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and 293 years overdue since blacks were reduced to slavery in America in 1661. The quickening pace with which black Americans attended to the testing of their rights after the Brown pronouncement resulted in an acceleration of civil rights activity which the public and social observers misunderstood as the genesis of a movement. But from the perspective of blacks, the 20-year period was "catch up time" as they attempted to reap the benefits of first class citizenship. The question today is to what extent these benefits have been achieved, to what extent racial equality has been made real. THE BROWN DECISION (OLIVER BROWN ET AL. V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, SHAWNEE COUNTY, KANSAS, ET AL.) May 17, 1954 These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South They are premised on different Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion. In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they have been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called "separate-but-equal" doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256. Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these 108 facilities be separate. In the Delaware case, the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plain tiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools. The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not "equal" and cannot be made "equal," and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court. Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment's history, with respect to segregated schools, is was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern states was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states; and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education. In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth |