Washington - For the first time in a decade, the Supreme Court will revisit the legacy of a landmark: the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 that declared unconstitutional the racial segregation of public schools.
Separate schools for black and white children are "inherently unequal," Chief Justice Earl Warren said in an opinion that helped launch the civil rights movement.
State-enforced segregation laws are long gone, but for school officials today, a key question remains: Did the historic decision commit them to a policy of seeking integrated schools, or did it tell them not to assi'n students to a school based on their race?
Today, lawyers in a pair of integration cases will debate whether school boards may use racial guidelines to assign students. And both sides will rely on the Brown decision to make their case.
The outcome could affect hundreds of school systems across the nation, including the Los Angeles Unified School District.
With the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., civil rights lawyers believe there may be a five-member majority determined to strike down race-based integration programs.
In Seattle, the school board adopted a policy - now suspended - that gave "nonwhite" students an edge if they sought to enroll in a popular, mostly white high school. In Jefferson County, Ky., which includes Louisville, the school district said the black student body at each elementary school should range from 15% to 50%.
In both cities, several white parents sued to have the plans declared unconstitutional after their children were barred from enrolling in the school of their choice because of their race. Though they lost in the lower courts, the Supreme Court voted in June to hear their appeals, leading many to predict the justices are poised to outlaw "racial balancing" in the public schools.
"At its core, the issue here is the promise made 52 years ago in Brown vs. Board of Education," said Theodore Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which won the ruling that struck down racial segregation in the South. "Mandatory desegregation is now a thing of the past. All that's left is voluntary desegregation, and now that is being challenged."
Shaw said school officials should be lauded for their efforts to achieve integration. He said he was particularly troubled by "the ideology that equates any race consciousness with racial discrimination."
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1 comment:
This is where I started out. I remember to well the divisions of race. I was lucky I lived in a town that didn't do that. But I remember coming home and seeing on TV George Wallace stand in the school doorway saying to the National Guards " Over my dead body will you get in this school". Then President Kennedy was called and said " Shoot him". Some things in history you never forget. I remember asking my Father is they were going to kill the man he said yes the President ordered it. All this because Wallace wouldn't let the black students in the school.
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