Behind the Veil: Behind Brown

Author(s): Leslie Brown and Anne Valk

Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 2, Jim Crow (Jan., 2004), pp. 38-42
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163660
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 Lesson Plan Leslie Brown and Anne Valk

Behind the Veil:

Behind Brown

"T^ rown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas is arguably the 8. Students will study the legacy of Brown?desegregation to
r^ most significant ruling made by the United States Supreme resegregation and the role of neighborhoods and schools in Ameri
j-J Court in the twentieth century. By overturning the 1896 can society.
Plessyv. Ferguson decision that legalized segregation, Brown consti
tutionally undermined an ideology of white supremacy instituted by Background: Brown and Plessy, The Constitutional Issue
economic, political, and social means. Brown also reflected early and Importantly, the 1954 Brown decision marked the culmination of a
persistent civil rights activism. Theoretically, the decision expanded decades-long attack, fought by civil rights lawyers and local activists to
Americans' definition of freedom by opening the door to other overturn an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that counte
applications, to individual citizens and not just groups. Finally, nanced racial segregation. In the 1896 case that established the legal
Brown v. Board of Education represented the culmination of a long precedent for segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy of Louisi
assault on Jim Crow and segregation, built from the daily struggles ana, backed by a committee of New Orleans's prominent African
of ordinary people. American residents, lost his challenge to a state law that required
The fiftieth anniversary of the May 17,1954 decision compels us to railroad companies to provide separate but equivalent accommodations
engage students in an examination of several important themes. for black and white passengers. Plessy's suit charged that the state's
discriminatory law violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Consti
National Standards tution. The court's ruling upheld the constitutional basis for state
This lesson plan will fulfill the following National Standards: supported "separate but equal" arrangements and Plessy subsequently
Era 9: Postwar United States (1945-1970S) functioned for sixty years as the legal sanction for racial segregation.
Standard 4A: Demonstrate understanding of the "Second Recon After the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of
struction" and analyze its advancement of civil rights. Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, the organization's illustrious attor
neys, most notably Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall,
Objectives pioneered a legal strategy of indirect attacks on segregation. Their
1. Students will understand the intractability of Jim Crow, racial strategy exposed the gross inequities that existed and sharply revealed
oppression and violence, learning to define black's experiences of Jim the economic costs of maintaining separate school systems.
Crow as a daily battle as well as a legal one, enforced by violence. The NAACP lawyers' work also reflected local demands. The
2. Students will view the black community not only as a site of Plessy case originated from Louisianans' collective protest against
affirmation and renewal, but also a place where African Americans state laws. The challenges to school segregation were similarly
planned their assault on segregation and understand the role of school rooted in local activism and constituted an expression of African
ing, albeit segregated, teachers, Historically Black Colleges and Univer American citizens' political and social desires. Black parents stipu
sities (HBCUs), and other related institutions. lated that race should not determine children's access to quality
3. Students will sketch out the chronology of Brown v. the Board of education. The NAACP's attorneys complicated Americans' defini
Education as a series of decisions tactically designed to weaken the Plessy tion of equality by asserting the importance of intangible factors of
v. Ferguson biracial structure. oppression inherent to Jim Crow combined with the unequal condi
4. Students will examine the Brown decision and the Fourteenth tions in separate schools that impeded academic excellence. The cost
Amendment's "equal protection" guarantee. of Jim Crow, they argued, must be figured in psychic and social as
5. Students will discuss black agency and the persistent agitation well as material terms.
required to elicit the decision and to compel implementation.
6. Students will understand the extent of white resistance to the Briggs and Brown: The Clarendon County Situation
decision and implementation of integration. Momentous as it was, the case entitled Brown v. Board of Educa
7. Students will discuss divergent opinions on the part of whites tion, Topeka, Kansas, subsumed several local struggles, such as the
and blacks. legal challenge to segregation in Clarendon County, South Carolina,

38 OAH Magazine of History January 2004

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 into the larger national moment that occurred
in 1954. Other cases originated in Virginia,
Washington, D.C., and Delaware. Each repre
sented community-based direct action, in which
black individuals and families attempted to chal Supreme Court of tfje WLnitzb States
lenge inequality.
Afe. i-, October Term, 19 5k
TheQarendon County, South Carolina, case went
forward under the name Briggs v. Elliott, with Harry Oliver Brown, Mrs. Richard Lawton, Mrs. Sadie Emmanuel ot al.,
Briggs as the lead plaintiff, in alphabetical order, Appellants,
among the parents who charged that R. W. Elliott, a vs.
saw mill owner and chair of the Board of Trustees of
Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee Coun
School District No. 22 in the county, and his associates
failed to provide adequate school facilities for the black
children vxrithin their jurisdiction (1). If Briggs had
been the lead case rather than Brown, it would have
provided a worst case scenario of segregation and
white violence. Both NAACP attorneys and sympa
thetiqudges thought a case originating in Kansas, as Appeal from the United Stoics District Court for the
Brown did, where some desegregation had begun, District of Kansas
would lead to a less violent beginning. As a result, the
Briggs case is often pushed into a secondary position t?f)t& CSUIife came on to be heard on the transcript of the re

in the annals of Jim Crow history, even though it

illustrates the critical link between local and national
District Court for the -District of Kansas
and Was argued by counsel.
civil rights initiatives. An examination of Briggs or
>l\ COttgtbetratiOIt UltjCtCOf. It is ordered and adjudged by th
other Brown cases deepens our insight into the com
of the said District - Court in this cause be. and the same is
plexity of desegregation and leads to a keener under
hereby, reversed with costs; and that this cause be, and the same
standing of resegregation post- Brown.
is hereby, remanded to the 3aid District Court to take such
Clarendon County's racial history provides
proceedings and enter such orders and decrees consistent with
painful examples of how Jim Crow intertwined
economic, political, and social oppression, cre the opinions of this Court as are necessary and proper to adroit
ating slavish conditions for African American to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all
southerners two generations after slavery's end. deliberate speed the parties to this case*
Richard Kluger wrote in his rich history of Per Kr. Chief Justice Warren,
Brown that what the courts said about the legal May 31, 19f;5.
ity of segregation in Clarendon County "af
fected the fate of all 11.5 million school aged
children in the segregated states" and "every
other form of segregation as well" (2). In 1947,
courageous parents of African American stu
dents in that rural county sued the school dis
trict. They protested the board's refusal to
provide buses to carry black students to school,
although it provided buses for white students.
Transportation represented only a small
part of a pattern of inequality, was the least of For this and other important documents in American history, visit Our Documents at
the parents' concerns, and a mere start to a <http://www.ourdocuments.gov/>.
local movement to create regional and na
tional change. During the summer of 1995,
graduate student interviewers from the Behind the Veil project Butler's school received books "that had gotten old and would be
spoke with elderly Clarendon County residents about education boxed and sent to the black school for our use." The lack of public
during segregation. Seventy-year-old Mr. B. O. Butler recalled transportation to school served as a barrier that tested children's
that he attended school from "first grade through eleventh grade." commitment to attend, and taxed their physical stamina. Butler
We didn't have twelfth grade. And about the teachers, yes I "walked four and a half miles one way everyday from the time I was six
remember them, especially the principal and his family. We years old until I graduated" (3).
were very close . . . they were segregated schools. The white B. O. Butler was fortunate to be able to stay in school through
school was on one side of town and this one [the black one] was eleventh grade. For those who did, black schools offered African
on the other side of town. That particular school was all black, American students valuable lessons in education, race pride, and
and we had to kind of do for ourselves mostly, because the community life. As Butler's reflections demonstrate, however, the
schools were not supported completely by states. We had to rally problem of educational segregation ran more deeply than separate
sometimes and raise money and build little tables and little facilities where the buildings, books, and even the school year were far
chairs for children in the first grade. Mostly we would receive inferior to those available to white students. White authorities out
what was outdated or not needed at the white high school. right refused to provide adequate facilities of any kind for black

OAH Magazine of History January 2004 39

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students. They interfered with black students' desire to attend school made sure that we had that protection especially [when] we had
with economic reprisals. Most families were bound to the landlord as to be home sometimes alone. We had a couple of suspicious fires.
sharecroppers. The weight of debt, carried by children as well as A barn burned down, you know, some things like that. All of the
adults, required their labor and prevented many county children from crops from the previous year was in the barn so my father had no
attending school. Eighty-one-year-old Mrs. Ida Belle Allen of Clarendon corn or hay or anything to feed his livestock [after the fire] (6).
County, South Carolina, recalled:
Timeline
Yes, I'd go to school at Pine Hill, used to go four months. That's Between the 1930s and 1954, the NAACP lawyers established a
all because we were farmers. Because we'd start planting and then string of rulings that began to dismantle Plessy. These included:
we didn't go to school until it was about the last part of October or Hocutt v. Wilson (1933): the NAACP's initial legal attack on segre
November until the crops were just about gathered, especially the gated education at the graduate and professional levels. Hocutt sought
cotton. Then we'd go to school on through there until time to plant. admission to the University of North Carolina School of Pharmacy, the
Well, in March you had to start for the farm (4). only public school of pharmacy in the
state. The NAACP suit was lost on a
The constraints of the agricultural cal technicality.
endar and the impoverishment pervading Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada
rural black communities deprived many (1938): Lloyd Gaines sought admission
children of opportunities to acquire even to the University of Missouri's law
basic academic skills. Samuel Young of school. Although leaving open the pos
Clarendon County, "didn't even get to
fourth [grade]. I stopped [at the] third. El^^^^Ef Hr'^Hti^PI sibility of the legality of separate educa
tional facilities, the Supreme Court for
That's the time [they] said I had to plow. the first time cast doubt on the legality
When I was a boy, minding twelve head of of Plessy and upheld black students'
cow, little boy something like from ten right to an equal education.
years old to thirteen I was minding, no McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
twelve. That's the time I started plowing (1950) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950): The
and I ain't never stopped" (5). NAACP's strategy in these cases, which
Those children who could get to was related to hastily established law
school used second-hand books and schools for black students in Oklahoma
had few supplies. They sat on broken and Texas, directly attacked the possi
furniture in cold rooms in dilapidated bility that equal education could be at
buildings. Too few teachers taught too tained under separate circumstances.
many students for a lower salary than Although the Supreme Court failed to
white teachers earned. At the urging of overturn Plessy, in these decisions it
discontented parents, NAACP chief acknowledged that the school's segre
counsel Charles Hamilton Houston gated facilities not only failed to provide
captured the dreadful state of Clarendon equal educational access but, even more
County's black schools on film, and his significantly, was detrimental, consti
assistant Thurgood Marshall convinced tuting a form of handicap.
parents to bring the suit that comple Brown v. Board of Education (1954):
George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit,
mented and enhanced the plans the congratulating each other following the Supreme Court decision
The Supreme Court declared separate
black and white schools illegal and de
attorneys were laying: to make a direct declaring segregation unconstitutional, 1954. (Image courtesy
constitutional assault on segregated New York World-Telegram cf the Sun Newspaper Photograph
clared that in the area of education, sepa
public education. Collection, Library of Congress.) ration could never result in equality.
In response to the parents' and teach Brown II (1955): instructed school
ers' challenges, local whites launched a campaign of retaliation. The districts to desegregate schools "with all deliberate speed."
school board fired Rev. J. A. Delaine, the minister and teacher who had
originally asked the county to provide black children with school buses. Brown: Response
His house and his church burned to the ground, Delaine was forced to The 1954 Brown decision signaled the crumbling of the statutory
leave town. But intimidation did not end with Delaine; it extended to his and constitutional apparatus on which Jim Crow stood. Brown II, the
kin. Marguerite Delaine, the Reverend's niece recalled: implementation decision of 1955 signaled that apartheid could still be
sustained. The court's order that school districts begin to desegregate
There were some things that happened to my father as a result of "with all deliberate speed" licensed a white response of footdragging,
my uncle being involved. Even though we were not living in equivocation, and resistance.
Summerton school district there were some things that hap Thus, Brown also ushered in a period of protest by both black and
pened to my father. There were a number of people who showed white southerners. While some communities responded swiftly to the
up to the house and did things, you know, to our property and order to desegregate, sometimes in anticipation of the Supreme
stuff .... There was a period in which my father didn't go Court's ruling, the decision also prompted massive white resistance
anywhere without a gun. My mother would open my door and my across the South. Some communities closed public schools. In others,
father would, if someone came to the house after dark, my father school boards delayed implementation through bureaucratic maneu
would be behind her with his gun. We always had a lot of dogs and vering and outright opposition. White residents established private
my father made sure that those dogs were vicious. My father "academies," usually supported by public funding, to circumvent

40 OAH Magazine of History January 2004

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mixed race schools. White mobs attacked black children who tried to ences? To what extent have these attitudes and beliefs changed or
enter previously white schools as well as adult African American stayed the same?
supporters of civil rights. Conversely, African American communities Conduct oral history interviews with community elders as a way to
often welcomed the Brown ruling as a sign of the federal government's generate cross-generational dialogue around education as an experi
support for the defeat of Jim Crow and a step toward enacting ence that all Americans share, albeit differently. Develop questions
America's liberal democratic creed. In waves of nonviolent, direct about schools, teachers, materials, lessons. Interviews might also
action that emerged from Montgomery to Little Rock to Boston, black examine elders' memories of civil rights activism.
activists sought to force compliance with Brown and to extend its Examine contemporary factors that determine educational access
impact beyond the realm of education. and opportunity by collecting demographic information from your
By the 1960s, civil rights activists' assaults on segregation own surveys, research in census, and other public records to deter
throughout the South had eradicated numerous local segregation mine racial and economic composition of your hometown and school.
laws and practices and pressured the federal government's interven Consider the relationship between efforts at democratic social
tion. The 1964 Civil Rights Act finally articulated that race, sex, change on the local level and the national level in order to understand
religion, or ethnic origin could not be the basis for discrimination in how Brown combined the efforts of thousands of ordinary people in
public accommodations addition to the NAACP
and other institutions. But lawyers. Identify and fol
the practices and customs low a local or state issue,
wllHllffWilKnHl^ff^^M^M^-f^*^*^-,. *'"*"- '** ~:;'f *~f ^ #?-* i?*^^ *-4w^ - ,iMsfe^# ^i-^fl
of Jim Crow proved diffi an initiative to pass or
cult to eliminate, even with iiiiiiil^^ v. ?. ' \: ji f. ILyj 1 change a law. Research the
the support of federal law. initiative's origins. Iden
By 1964, only 423 out of tify its advocates and op
the South's 2,256 school ponents. What tactics are
districts had nominally de used by each? What argu
segregated and fewer than ments do they make ?
35,000 of nearly 3 million
African American south Resources for Teachers
ern school children at and Students
tended school with white Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow
of Little Rock: A Memoir.
pupils (7). The slow pace
Fayetteville: University of
of change and the bureau Arkansas Press, 1987.
cratic and statutory at Beals, Melba Pettillo. War
tempts to subvert the riors Don't Cry: A Searing
court's intention in Brown Memoir of the Battle to Inte
prompted further action grate Little Rock's Central High.
from the NAACP and free New York: Simon and
dom activists. Additional Schuster, 1994.
Curry, Constance. Silver
legal challenges sought to
force more extensive ef Rights. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace, 1996.
forts at desegregation and Irons, Peter H. Jim Crow's
to establish the appropri Children: The Broken Promise
Singing class in an African American school in Siloam, Greene County, Georgia, ca. 1944.
ate means to enact the op of the Brown Decision. New
(Image from Office of War Information, Overseas Picture Division, courtesy of Library of
portunity for educational Congress.) York: Viking, 2002.
equality. Klarman, Michael J. From Jim
Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality.
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) addressed
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
the "freedom of choice" or open enrollment plans through which
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and
many school districts evaded desegregation. Objecting to the persis Black America's Struggle for Equality. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.
tence of separate schools, the court ordered school boards to develop Martin, Waldo E., Jr., ed., Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with
plans that would remove segregation "root and branch." Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971): chal McNeil, Genna Rae. Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle
lenged school desegregation plans that, while "race neutral in for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
design," would perpetuate segregation by relying on existing resi Orfield, Gary. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board
dential patterns. Instead, the court approved busing as a way to of Education. New York: The New Press, 1996.
promote greater desegregation. Electronic Resources
Class Activities National Park Service, Racial Desegregation in Public Education in the
United States (1998) <http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/nhl/
Although the background given above will inform a class discus school.htm> is a National Historic Landmarks theme study produced jointly
sion, the following are other assignments that will spur discussions: with the Organization of American Historians to identify historic places that
Find and analyze local responses to Brown by researching in illustrate the history of the movement to end segregation in education. Please
newspapers editorials and coverage of the May 17,1954 decision. What also note that the OAH Magazine of History's Desegregation issue is currently
do these sources tell us about community attitudes and beliefs about available online at <http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/>.
the Brown decision? About equality and the meaning of racial differ

OAH Magazine of History January 2004 41

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 Films 4. Johnny and Ida Belle Allen, interview by Blair Murphy, June 20, 1995,
Hampton, Henry and Michael Ambrosino. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Clarendon County, South Carolina, Behind the Veil Collection, Special
Rights Years: Fighting Back, ici^y-ig62. Alexandria, VA: PBS Video, 1987. Collections Library, Duke University.
Especially look at Part I, volume 2, which examines the Brown decision and 5. Samuel Young, interview by Mary Herbert, n.d. ca. June 1995, Clarendon
the school desegregation crisis in Little Rock. County, South Carolina, CDS/BTV Collection.
Kulish, Mykola and Gary Weinberg. The Road to Brown: The Man Who Killed 6. Marguirite DeLaine, interview by Kisha Turner, July 8, 1995, Clarendon
Jim Crow. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1990. This film covers the County, South Carolina, CDS/BTV Collection.
history of the NAACP legal attack, highlighting lawyer Charles Hamilton 7. "Decade of Desegregation," New York Times May 17, 1964, reprinted in
Houston. WaldoE. Martin Jr., ed., Brown v. the Board of Education; A Brief History
Pollard, Sam and Bill Jersey. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. San Francisco: with Documents, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 224.
California Newsreel, 2002. This is a multi-part series that examines
segregated education and, in volume 4, the Brown case.
Prince, Chea and Constance Curry. The Intolerable Burden. Brooklyn, NY: Leslie Brown and Anne Valk are former research coordinators of the Behind
First Run/Icarus Films, 2002. This film tells the story of the Carter the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
family's efforts to desegregate the schools of Drew, Mississippi, project, based at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke
through the state's "freedom of choice" plan, and the legacy of University. Brown is currently an assistant professor at Washington Univer
desegregation in Mississippi. sity in St. Louis, with a joint appointment in history and African and
African American studies. She has written several articles about African
Endnotes
American women in Durham and is completing a hook about the intersec
1. Richard Kluger, Simple Justice, (NY: Vintage, 1975), 302. tion of gender and class in black community development in Durham from
2. Ibid., 327-28.
1865-1945. Valk is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University
3. B. O. Butler, interview by Kisha Turner and Blair Murhpy, June 29, 1995,
Edwardsville, where she teaches oral history and public history. Her re
Clarendon County, South Carolina, Behind the Veil Collection, Special
Collections Library, Duke University. search on women's activism in Washington, D.C., has resulted in several
articles on welfare rights and the women's movement. She is currently
writing a hook about second-wave feminism.

Travel Assistance Awards

for Teachers to Attend the 2004 OAH Annual Meeting
Thanks to the generous support of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of Look for the online application
on the OAH web site:
American History, the Organization of American Historians is pleased
<http://www.oah.org/
to announce a second year of travel fellowships for precollegiate meetings/2004 >
history teachers to attend the 2004 OAH Annual Meeting in Boston,
March 25-28. The annual meeting affords a unique opportunity Application Deadline is
February 6, 2004.
for teachers to enhance their professional development by attending
sessions specifically geared to classroom teaching, as well as scholarly
research and public history, in the form of workshops, roundtables,
panels, and other presentations. More than forty fellowships of $200
each will be awarded for travel-related expenses.

The award is for American history teachers who have not yet had an ORGANIZATION OF
AMERICAN HISTORIANS
opportunity to attend an OAH annual meeting.

42 OAH Magazine of History January 2004

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