I devised a project for myself...I am going back
into archives (what did we do before the internet?) and reading op-ed pieces
from papers from May of 1954...the immediate aftermath of Brown v. Board of
Education. By the by, did you know that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court just happened to time it so their ruling on gay marriage becomes law on
the fiftieth anniversary of Brown? Isn't that cool!
This is from The Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News,
May 18, 1954:
. . . Human blood may stain Southern soil in many
places because of this decision but the dark red stains of that blood will be on
the marble steps of the United States Supreme Court building.
White and
Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation
leads to mixed marriages and mixed marriages lead to mongrelization of the human
race.
Interesting, huh?
The Boston Herald on the same day defended judicial
activism in the case:
The Supreme Court's history-making decision against
racial segregation in the public schools proves more than anything else that the
Constitution is still a live and growing document.
. . . The segregation
ruling is frankly expedient. It recognizes the growing national feeling that the
separation of Negro (or other minority) children from the majority race at
school age is an abuse of the democratic process and the democratic principle.
But it is also the culmination of a series of judicial opinions which
circumspectly prepared the way for change.
This is what the University of Virginia's Cavalier
Daily had to say on that day:
It is too early to tell what effect the Supreme
Court decision to abolish segregated schools will have on the South. . . .
Although it is hard from a strict legal point of view to justify any action
contrary to law, we feel that the people of the South are justified in their
bitterness concerning this decision. To many people this decision is contrary to
a way of life and violates the way in which they have thought since
1619.
OK...just one more from that
date:
New York Times (in a piece it called 'All God's
Chillun'):
. . . It is true, of course, that the court is not
talking of that sort of "equality" which produces interracial marriages. It is
not talking of a social system at all. It is talking of a system of human rights
which is foreshadowed in the second paragraph of the Declaration of
Independence, which stated "that all men are created equal." Mr. Jefferson and
the others who were responsible for the Declaration did not intend to say that
all men are equally intelligent, equally good or equal in height or weight. They
meant to say that all men were, and ought to be, equal before the law. If men
are equal, children are equal, too. There is an even greater necessity in the
case of children, whose opportunities to advance themselves and to be useful to
the community may be lost if they do not have the right to be educated.
No one can
deny that the mingling of the races in the schools of the seventeen states which
have required segregation and the three states which have permitted it will
create problems. The folkways in southern communities will have to be adapted to
new conditions if white and Negro children, together with white and Negro
teachers, are to enjoy not only equal facilities but the same facilities in the
same schools.
. . . The
highest court in the land, the guardian of our national conscience, has
reaffirmed its faith-and the undying American faith-in the equality of all men
and all children before the law.
We are seeing arguments about tradition, fear of mongrelization (I think
that's the fifties' version of the end of society as we know it), and about
justice and a brighter future...the same agruments we are hearing today.
We must learn from the past, else we are doomed to repeat it. Speaking
of which, what do I hear of a plan for a 300 foot Dredge Thompson and
an adjacent structure apparently wth skways jutting out to it in Levee
Park? See winonaradio.com for the latest we have on the proposal. I
am concerned that such an installation might block the river from downtown,
as we have been working to avoid...but I have few details and I have no personal
opinion one way or the other right now. So many issues, so little
time! :-)
Bob Sebo
Winona
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