Brown v. Board at 70: We need ‘extraordinary courage’ to maintain our progress

I still remember where I used to be on May 17, 1954, after I first heard that the United States Supreme Court had issued this decision. Walking home from segregated Lincoln High School in Sumter, South Carolina, I and my classmates rejoiced that the Supreme Court recognized that “separate but equal” is “inherently unequal.”

We were ninth and tenth grade students and our youthful naivety convinced us that in September we might now not learn from old textbooks and used exercise books. We envisioned having more modern classrooms and well-equipped science laboratories. We had no concept that by the point we made any serious effort to implement this decision, most of us would graduate from highschool, college, and grow to be everlasting employees. The road to , one of the significant legal decisions of the twentieth century, began in little-known Clarendon County, South Carolina.

When the lawsuit was filed, Clarendon County was spending the cash $179 for a white student compared to just $42 for a black student. While white students attended schools with running water, modern libraries, state-of-the-art classrooms, and over 30 buses, black schools had much less. Black students were also forced to walk to school, a few of them as much as seven miles. The parents asked for a bus for his or her children and were refused. This denial sparked an unprecedented movement that gave rise to extraordinary courage in some bizarre people. With the assistance of non secular leaders, the local NAACP chapter, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 23 brave men signed a petition that led to a lawsuit filed on May 16, 1950.

The case, named for Harry Briggs, the unique signatory of the petition, and R.W. Elliott, president of the Clarendon County School Board, was tried in federal court before a three-judge panel that issued a 2-to-1 ruling against the petitioners. The officiating judge was J. Waites Waring, a native of Charleston and grandson of a Confederate soldier. Judge Waring was awarded a federal judgeship for his successful management of the campaign of Democratic senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith, a white supremacist.

Judge Waring’s role was to preside over the case of the blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard. Sgt. Woodard – a black, decorated World War II veteran traveling on a Greyhound bus to Winnsboro, South Carolina, still in uniform after his honorable discharge – was blinded when a neighborhood police officer forcibly pulled him from the bus and punched him. nightstick. Instead of receiving treatment, Woodard was thrown in prison. Charges were ultimately brought against the police chief, but he was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Education

Woodard’s case caught the eye of President Harry Truman, who showed “extraordinary courage” and issued Executive Order 9981 integrating the armed forces. Presiding over this case proved instructive for Judge Waring and prompted him to show “extraordinary courage” in his dissent from Briggs. He wrote: “They have shown beyond any doubt that the evils of segregation and color prejudice result from early training… and it is an evil that must be eradicated.”

Twenty years ago, I wrote somewhat desk book titled “Extraordinary Courage: The Story of Briggs V. Elliott, South Carolina’s Civil Rights Battle” to commemorate the courage of the Briggs plaintiffs. If I were writing this book today, I can be far more expansive in recognizing the “extraordinary courage” he displayed at the time. It took “extraordinary courage” for President Truman to issue the chief order and for Judge Waring to dissent. Their extraordinary courage has led to significant progress towards a “more perfect Union”.

We have made enormous progress during the last 70 years. But our progress is at risk, and as we mark the seventieth anniversary of that call, our nation finds itself at one other crossroads. We must ask ourselves: what form of country do you wish to leave to your kids and our kid’s children? This query motivated the Briggs petitioners, President Truman, and Judge Waring.

There seems to have been some backlash to the election of our first African-American president, our first African-American female vp, and our first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Perhaps now greater than ever, our country desperately needs “extraordinary courage” to protect the freedoms we hold dear and proceed our quest for a “more perfect Union.”