Reasons for the End of Segregation: Briggs vs. Elliott Research Paper

Overview

In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) was established to pursue equal rights for African Americans. The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund actually sponsored court cases related to segregation in the field of education. The NAACP’s strategy was to initially get some attention and focus on the inequalities in the segregated school system through minor cases. After a number of victories in this area, they wanted to file a case that would allow them to challenge school segregation outright. The school board in Clarendon County, SC provided 34 buses for white students and none for African Americans. The Reverend Joseph DeLaine, principal of a school for African American students asked R. W. Elliott, county school board chairman, for buses in 1947. The request was denied and a lawsuit was filed. On June 8, 1948, the case was thrown out of court on a technicality. As a measure of protest, Rev. and Mrs. DeLaine lost their jobs and their house was burned to the ground (Richard, 2004). Thurgood Marshall decided to intervene when he became aware of the situation in South Carolina. In March of 1949, he met with a group of black citizens from Clarendon County and wanted them to file another lawsuit based on the unequal educational facilities and conditions for their children. Marshall convinced 20 black citizens to sign a petition file the lawsuit. The case was named after Harry Briggs, the first name on the petition and R. W. Elliott, Clarendon County School Board Chairman. Briggs vs. Elliott began on May 28, 1951 in US district court in Charleston, SC (Richard, 2004).

With the help of the NAACP, 20 black parents sought to secure better schools, equal to those provided for white children. Thurgood Marshall argued for the NAACP that regardless of what had been spent, “the significant point was that segregation took African Americans out of the mainstream of American life,” and that the Constitution did not place minority rights on an alter to be sacrificed to majority opinion (Botsch and Botsch, 1997). The U.S. District Court found the black schools were clearly inferior compared to white schools. Buildings were no more than wooden shacks, transportation and educational provisions did not meet basic needs, and teachers’ salaries were less than those received in white schools (Orientation Handbook, 2007). The lower court “ordered the defendants to immediately equalize the facilities… [but the children were] denied admission to the white schools during the equalization program.” The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Background

This case is a stark example of the failures of “separate but equal.” Some of the circumstances that lead to the filing of the case were as follows:

• Thirty school buses were available to transport white students to their schools in the largely rural county; none were available to black students (Kluger, 1977).
• Per pupil spending for black students in the county was less than one-fourth the spending for white students. And white teachers in the county received, on average, two-thirds more in salary than their black peers.
• In 1951 the Clarendon County, South Carolina, government spent, on average, $44.32 annually to educate a black child and $166.45 per white child. Black children paid for their school materials (i.e., in addition to the taxes they paid) while white children did not incur this expense (Botsch and Botsch, 1997).
• In Clarendon County, $103,000 was spent in construction on white schools and more than eight times of that – $894,000 was spent on black school construction (Edgar, 1992).
• When an initial attempt by farmer Levi Pearson to obtain the same free school-bus transportation for his children that white children enjoyed was defeated in 1948, Pearson found himself cut off from credit at all white-owned businesses in Clarendon County as punishment for bringing his suit.

The Case

A legal attack was mounted on the many inequalities that persisted between white and black schools in Clarendon County through the Briggs vs. Elliott case. Harry Briggs, whose name appeared first on the list of plaintiffs, was fired from his job, as were his wife and several of their co-plaintiffs after the lawsuit was filed (Kluger, 1977). The Briggs trial was remarkable in several ways, including the NAACP legal team’s introduction of the expert testimony of social scientists on the detrimental effects legally enforced segregation had on black children. Most famous was the testimony of Dr. Kenneth Clark, who used tests involving white and black-skinned dolls to evaluate the extent to which segregation bred feelings of inferiority in black children (Kluger, 1977). The use of doll test as testimony proved to be highly controversial in the analysis of this case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the Briggs plaintiffs’ request to order desegregation of the Clarendon County schools and instead ordered the equalization of black schools. The case was also notable for the dissent of Judge Julius Waties Waring. His two colleagues on the three-judge panel held that the state must equalize the segregated black facilities in Clarendon County, but found nothing invalid in segregation itself. The only person to agree with the need to do away with segregation, Judge Waring wrote: “I am of the opinion that all of the legal guideposts, expert testimony, common sense and reason point unerringly to the conclusion that the system of segregation in education adopted and practiced in the state of South Carolina must go and must go now. Segregation is per se inequality” (Kluger, 1977). Further, commenting directly on the case, he wrote, “From their testimony, it was clearly apparent, as it should be to any thoughtful person, irrespective of having such expert testimony, that segregation in education can never produce equality and that it is an evil that must be eradicated” (Anderson and Byrne, 2004).

Once the Briggs case gained national publicity, tensions began to run high in Summerton. Most of the parents who signed on to the case lost their jobs or were threatened with firings, and some were evicted from their tenant homes or sharecropper land. As DeLaine was instrumental in getting this case to the Supreme Court, a warrant was issued for his arrest after he defended himself against shots fired into his home by white protesters. His church and his home were burned to the ground, and he was eventually run out of town by tremendous threats to his family. He was never able to return to South Carolina because the state refused to cancel the warrant for his arrest until several years after his death.

At the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court decided to hear the Briggs vs. Elliott case along with four other similar cases under the name of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Botsch and Botsch, 1997). It took two sets of arguments and two Supreme Court terms before the nine justices issued their unanimous opinion that, in the field of public education, segregation had no place. However, before arriving at that decision there were numerous controversies: the courts had a general resistance to overruling an earlier decision; many of the school districts had been ordered by the trial courts to equalize educational facilities for white and black students, and there seemed to be a sentiment among some of the justices to allow this remedy time to work; another obstacle was the clear support of over twenty state legislatures, the District of Columbia and the United States Congress, for segregated school facilities.

On May 17, 1954, the opinions in Brown and Bolling were made public. In Brown, the Court declared that segregated schools are inherently unequal, violating the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment (Anderson and Byrne, 2004).

Bibliography

Anderson, James and Byrne, N. Dara (2004). The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education. Wiley Publishers. Hoboken, NJ. 2004. Page Number: 18

Richard, Alan (2004). The Heat of Summerton: Racial Tensions Still Simmer in the Rural County Where Brown Was Born. The Nation. Volume: 278. Issue: 17. Publication Date: 2004. Page Number: 32

Kluger, Richard (1976). Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York. 976

Botsch, Carol Sears and Botsch E. Robert (1997). Briggs v. Elliot (1954).

Edgar, Walter. South Carolina in the Modern Age. Columbia, S.C.: The University of South Carolina Press, 1992

Orientation Handbook (2007). Brown vs. Board of Education – Background Overview and Summary. Web.