By the early 50s, segregation was frayed by the war, and torn in spots where the court had acted. The white primary was outlawed. Housing covenants outlawed. Some graduate and law schools were forced to admit blacks. But the court was aware that the big fight was still to come.
The schools. K through 12. White children and black in the same classroom. Southerners assumed that if grade school kids were in a desegregated setting, they'd get to know each other, and they'd get to date each other, and then they'd marry each other. And that was the strongest taboo that the South held.
Led by Thurgood Marshall and other young lawyers like Robert Carter, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was running or aiding cases all over the country. The court picked five and consolidated them into one set of arguments, forever known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. As oral arguments approached, people camped outside the building to assure themselves a seat in the courtroom.
NAACP lawyers Marshall and Carter were up against a formidable adversary, John W. Davis, a former presidential candidate making the last of his 140 appearances at the Supreme Court. But his arguments had a familiar ring. Separate wasn't necessarily unequal. Blacks should be happy with the way things were. Didn't states have the right to educate their children as they saw fit?
When the three days of arguments were over, Davis was heard to remark, I think we've got it won, five to four, or maybe six to three. The justices scheduled another hearing on the case. But before that could happen, Chief Justice Vincent died of a heart attack.
President Eisenhower chose to nominate Earl Warren, formerly the governor of California. On May 17th, 1954, there were signs. Some of the justices'wives showed up. Some clerks were tipped off.
Then reporters rushed to court. Warren starts off in a bland manner, and you can't tell for a while, as he's delivering the opinion, what the outcome is going to be. And then... He comes to the key line and he says, and we unanimously hold that separate but equal has no place in the Constitution.
And it was just electric in the courtroom when he said unanimous. We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Therefore, we unanimously hold that the plaintiffs... are deprived of the equal protection of the laws, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Plessy v. Ferguson in education is no more, and in practice, Plessy v. Ferguson itself is no more.
The era of Jim Crow, constitutionally speaking, is over. This was precisely what we urged them, almost in that language. So it was gratifying to... Have the opinion come down almost in the language of the argument that we made. In 1951 I'd used a plain geometry book that had been used by white student in 1935. Brown said that that was over.
The hand-me-down tubas that I played in the high school band from the white high schools, it said to me that That was ended. And it said to me that at some point, I would not have to travel from Atlanta to Greencastle in Indiana to get an undergraduate degree. That my family, my cousins, my neighbors could go to Georgia Tech and to the University of Georgia.
The Supreme Court decision of 1954 was for me to Magna Carta. It was the second emancipation. It was a great moment.