Greensboro News & Record!
Robert D. Benson, President and Publisher
Ben Bowers, Executive Editor
Ned Cline, Managing Editc
John Alexander, Editorial Page Editor I
Wednesday, May 16,1984
A10
Editorials
The legacy of Brown
Some of the most far-reaching docu-
| ments in American history — the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of
| Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation
- are also among the most plain-spo-
I ken. Thirty years ago tomorrow, anoth-
I er of these ringing statements shocked
I and changed this nation. On May 17,
] 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court
I struck down the pernicious separate-
I but-equal doctrine that had officially
I governed race relations since the
I court's 1896 Plessy V. Furguson deci-
I sion.
This week, from the vantage point of
I history, the Brown v. Topeka Board of
] Education decision seems obvious and
I right. One may even wonder what took
I the court so long to send Jim Crow
I packing.
But at the time the task was not so
I simple, not even to those justices who
1 knew segregation was wrong. For seg-
I regation was not merely a collection of
re; it was a way of life deeply embed-
I ded in the nation's psyche. Especially in
I the South, whites had kidded them-
I selves for so long that blacks were bet-
I ter off in separate enclaves, and that
I facilities set aside for them were
that facts were irrelevant to
I their world view. Fortunately, nine justices were willing to look at those facts
I and arrive at a painful, but different,
| conclusion.
Chief Justice Earl Warren's famous
I opinion striking down school segregation was neither long nor profound. But
it had profound consequences. Because
the court never set a specific timetable
for the dismantling of segregation,
many Southern states either ignored or
defied the court's ruling.
To its credit, North Carolina avoided
the outright resistance that swept some
other Southern states, including Vir
ginia, where public schools were closed. I
The day after the court's ruling, the I
Greensboro Board of Education led the I
way by declaring its intention to uphold I
the law. It was in Greensboro on Sept. I
3, 1957, that the first black children |
entered formerly all-white schools.
But progress toward desegregation I
was agonizingly slow. It took the sit-ins I
of the early 1960s to apply the logic of I
the Brown decision to public accommo- T
dations and transportation. And it took I
a series of further Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Swann v. Char- I
lotte-Mecklenburg in 1971, to achieve I
real mixing of the races in public
schools.
' . But even today, a check of statistics I
for the 1983-84 school year shows that I
59 of the state's public schools are ei- [
ther all-white or all-black. That is only I
3 percent of the total number of I
schools, but many other schools ;
proach de facto segregation in their I
enrollments.
In Guilford County's three school sys- j
terns, much progress has been made. I
But racial considerations were still at I
the core of this year's realignment of I
school district boundaries in Greensboro, and they are a major factor in the I
debate over whether the county's three I
systems should be merged.
There is mounting evidence that both I
black and white parents today are less I
concerned about racial balance in the I
schools than the quality of education at |
the end of the bus ride. There is renewed interest in "neighborhood I
schools," once a battle cry of segregation.
But no matter which way the pendulum swings, it cannot return to the I
maze of laws and customs demolished |
by the Brown decision. We have come a
long way in 30 years.
