Briggs v. Elliott | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Decided January 28, 1952 | |
Full case name | Harry Briggs, Jr. et al. v. R.W. Elliott, chairman, et al. |
Citations | 342 U.S. 350 ( more ) 72 S. Ct. 327; 96 L. Ed. 2d 392; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2486 |
Case history | |
Prior | |
Subsequent |
|
Holding | |
In order that the Supreme Court may have the benefit of the views of the district court upon the additional facts brought out in the appellees report on the implementation of district court's mandate to equalize segregated South Carolina schools, and that the district court may have the opportunity to take whatever action it may deem appropriate in light of that report, the judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Per curiam | |
Dissent | Black, joined by Douglas |
Laws applied | |
28 U.S.C. (Supp. IV) § 1253, S.C. Const., Art. XI, § 7; S.C. Code § 5377 (1942) |
Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. [1] It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), [2] the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003. [3]
The case began in 1947 when Levi Pearson wrote a letter to the Clarendon County School District requesting that black children be provided with the same bus transportation that white children in the district received: [4]
"A Petition on behalf of my children and all other school children in School District #26, Clarendon County, South Carolina, was mailed to you, since that date I have had no communication from you with regard to this petition nor has any efforts been made to furnish bus transportation to Negroes in this School District. Please advise me if efforts are being made to furnish school bus transportation."
— Levi Pearson, October 1, 1947
Prior to Pearson's letter, the school board reserved all of its 30 buses for white children which meant that Pearson's children had a 9-mile journey, one-way, to attend the nearest black school. [5] The black children of Clarendon County had harsh conditions to traverse to attend school, including rowing paddle boats to cross bodies of water. [6] In the neighboring Jordan community, some children walked a total of up to 16 miles to and from school each day, [7] and children had to frequently gather wood for heaters within schools. [8] Levi, his brother, Hammett Pearson, and neighbor Joseph Lemon raised $700 to buy the local children a used school bus to use ($8,336 in today dollars), [9] but frequent maintenance led them to ask the local school superintendent, Roderick M. Elliott, for their own bus. [10] Elliott refused by saying black citizens did not pay enough taxes to warrant a bus and that asking white taxpayers to fund that burden would be unfair. [10] [11]
In the 1940s in Clarendon County white children attended schools with a teacher for every grade, class sizes no higher than 30 students, brick schools with heat, indoor toilets that flushed, water fountains, textbooks, gyms and auditoriums and libraries. [12] Black children attended school in abandoned hunting or Masonic lodges and drafty cabins adjacent to churches. Their parents paid tuition and book rent for textbooks that were discarded from white schools. The black children brought coal or wood to burn in oil drums. They dug and used privies. They toted water from wells. One first grade teacher in Summerton handled 67 students; a second grade teacher dealt with 79. [12]
To advance his efforts for safe transportation for black children, Pearson retained South Carolina attorney Harold Boulware and rising NAACP star Thurgood Marshall. [13] Thurgood Marshall came down to South Carolina from New York. Marshall argued that, since the local school board already provided bus transportation for white students, the county was in violation of the United States Supreme Court's “separate but equal” decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. [14] The case, which was brought against Clarendon County District 26 on behalf of Pearson's son James, met with immediate resistance. As a result of his lawsuit, Pearson v. Clarendon County, Levi Pearson suffered from acts of domestic terror, such as gun shots fired into his home, as well as economic consequences: local banks refused to provide him with credit to purchase farming materials and area farmers refused to lend him equipment. [15]
In 1948, Pearson v. Clarendon County was dismissed on a technicality when the superintendent noted that Pearson's property straddled district lines. [16] When Levi Pearson's brother, Hammett Pearson, learned of the issue, he offered to replace his brother in the lawsuit. [17]
The rejection of Pearson v. ClarendonCounty caused the NAACP attorneys to pivot and raise their target to complete desegregation. [12] In 1949, the NAACP agreed to provide funding and sponsor a case that would go beyond transportation and ask for equal educational opportunities in Clarendon County. The first step was to craft a local petition for educational equality. This was done by Rev. Joseph Armstrong DeLaine and Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the noted South Carolina civil rights worker. Simkins organized a national charitable effort for the relief of the oppressed African Americans of Clarendon County. Eventually, more than 100 Clarendon residents signed the petition.
Others agreed to join the suit of Levi Pearson. Named first in the suit, Harry Briggs, a service station attendant, and Eliza Briggs, a maid, became the main named plaintiffs. Elliott was named the defendant.
When Brown reached the U.S. Supreme Court, South Carolina was one of seventeen states that required school segregation. State law required complete segregation; Article 11, Section 7 of the 1896 Constitution of South Carolina read as follows: "Separate schools shall be provided for children of the white and colored races, and no child of either race shall ever be permitted to attend a school provided for children of the other race." Section 5377 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina of 1942 read: "It shall be unlawful for pupils of one race to attend the schools provided by boards of trustees for persons of another race."
There was little debate about if the Clarendon County schools were unequal. At the beginning of the hearings in U.S. District Court, the defendants shared on the record that "the educational facilities, equipment, curricula and opportunities afforded in School District No. 22 for colored pupils are not substantially equal to those afforded for white pupils."
The case would ordinarily have come up before Judge Julius Waring of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina. However, Judge Waring recommended[ citation needed ] to Thurgood Marshall for the case to be expanded from an equalization case into a desegregation case. Instead of asking for enforcement of the separate but equal doctrine by bringing the African American schools up to equality with the white schools, the plaintiffs asked for school segregation to be declared unconstitutional.
By expanding the case, both Waring and Marshall expected the plaintiffs to lose the case 2—1 and for the case to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. [18] As predicted, a three-judge panel found segregation lawful by a vote of 2–1, with Judge Waring writing a dissent in which he stated that "segregation is per se inequality." [19] [20] The other two judges were John J. Parker and George Timmerman. The panel also granted an injunction to equalize the uncontested inferiority of the schools used by African American students.
Originally litigated by NAACP lawyer Robert L. Carter, the Briggs case was notable for introducing into evidence the experiments of Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who used dolls to study children's attitudes about race. Under tests performed by Clark, African American students in segregated schools were shown a white doll and an African American doll and asked which one they preferred. When most African American students indicated their preference for the white doll, Clark concluded that segregated schooling decreased African American self-esteem.
In 1952, the Supreme Court heard the case and returned it to the district court for rehearing after Clarendon County school officials had sent a report on progress in making facilities equal. In March, the district court again heard the case. The Court found that progress had been made towards equality. Thurgood Marshall argued that it may be true, but the real issue was that as long as separation existed, the schools would be unequal. The case was appealed back to the Supreme Court in May. The case was then consolidated with several other school desegregation cases into Brown v. Board of Education . [2]
Briggs was the first of the five Brown cases to be argued before the Supreme Court. Spottswood Robinson and Thurgood Marshall argued the case for the plaintiffs, and former Solicitor General and presidential candidate John W. Davis led the argument for the defense.
Following the Brown decision, the lower court complied with the mandate issued by the Supreme Court and declared the South Carolina school segregation law to be unconstitutional. [21]
Although Brown resulted in a legal victory against segregation, it was a costly victory for those associated with Briggs. Reverend Joseph DeLaine, the generally acknowledged leader of Summerton's African-Americans, was fired from his post at a local school in Silver. His wife, Mattie, was also fired from her position at Scott's Branch, as were all of the other signatories. De Laine's church was burned, and he moved to Buffalo, New York in 1955 after he had survived an attempted drive-by shooting. Both Harry and Eliza Briggs, on behalf of whose children the suit was filed, lost their jobs. Harry spent more than a decade working in Florida to support the family. Eliza eventually joined her children in New York.
Judge Waring had already been shunned by the white community in Charleston and subjected to attacks for previous decisions favorable to equal rights. [22] After his dissent in the three-judge panel, he retired in 1952 and moved to New York. [23] [24]
Eventually, the state of South Carolina awarded Eliza Briggs its highest civilian honor, the Order of the Palmetto. Reverend Joseph A. De Laine, Harry and Eliza Briggs, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003. [3]
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The Court's decision partially overruled its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities. It paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.
Clarendon County is a county located below the fall line in the Coastal Plain region of U.S. state of South Carolina. As of 2010, its population was 34,971. Its county seat is Manning.
Summerton is a town in Clarendon County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 1,000 at the 2010 census.
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), was a significant United States Supreme Court case dealing with the planned desegregation busing of public school students across district lines among 53 school districts in metropolitan Detroit. It concerned the plans to integrate public schools in the United States following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision.
Irene Amos Morgan, later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was an African-American woman from Baltimore, Maryland, who was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1944 under a state law imposing racial segregation in public facilities and transportation. She was traveling on an interstate bus that operated under federal law and regulations. She refused to give up her seat in what the driver said was the "white section". At the time she worked for a defense contractor on the production line for B-26 Marauders.
Charles Hamilton Houston was a prominent African-American lawyer, Dean of Howard University Law School, and NAACP first special counsel, or Litigation Director. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Houston played a significant role in dismantling Jim Crow laws, especially attacking segregation in schools and racial housing covenants. He earned the title "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow".
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park was established in Topeka, Kansas, on October 26, 1992, by the United States Congress to commemorate the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board of Education aimed at ending racial segregation in public schools. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and, as such, violated the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens "equal protection of the laws."
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an important leader of African-American public health reform, social reform and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.
Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956), was a case heard before a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on Montgomery and Alabama state bus segregation laws. The panel consisted of Middle District of Alabama Judge Frank Minis Johnson, Northern District of Alabama Judge Seybourn Harris Lynne, and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Rives. The main plaintiffs in the case were Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith. Jeanetta Reese had originally been a plaintiff in the case, but intimidation by segregationists caused her to withdraw in February. She falsely claimed she had not agreed to the lawsuit, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to disbar Fred Gray for supposedly improperly representing her.
Fred David Gray is a civil rights attorney, preacher, and activist in Alabama. He litigated several major civil rights cases in Alabama, including some, such as Browder v. Gayle, that reached the United States Supreme Court. He served as the President of the National Bar Association in 1985, and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine was a Methodist minister and civil rights leader from Clarendon County, South Carolina. He received a B.A. from Allen University in 1931, working as a laborer and running a dry cleaning business to pay for his education. DeLaine worked with Modjeska Simkins and the South Carolina NAACP on the case Briggs v. Elliott, which challenged segregation in Summerton, South Carolina.
Separate But Equal is a 1991 American two-part television miniseries depicting the landmark Supreme Court desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, based on the phrase "Separate but equal". The film stars Sidney Poitier as lead NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, Richard Kiley as Chief Justice Earl Warren, Burt Lancaster as lawyer John W. Davis, Cleavon Little as lawyer and judge Robert L. Carter, and Lynne Thigpen as Ruth Alice Stovall.
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 MCC 769 (1955) is a landmark civil rights case in the United States in which the Interstate Commerce Commission, in response to a bus segregation complaint filed in 1953 by a Women's Army Corps (WAC) private named Sarah Louise Keys, broke with its historic adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal doctrine and interpreted the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act as banning the segregation of black passengers in buses traveling across state lines.
Julius Waties Waring was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. His dissent in Briggs v. Elliott was foundational to Brown v. Board of Education.
Sarah Mae Flemming Brown was an African-American woman who was expelled from a bus in Columbia, South Carolina, seventeen months before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on an Alabama bus in 1955. Flemming's lawsuit against the bus company played an important role later in the Parks case.
Summerton High School, also known as Summerton Middle School, is a historic school building located at Summerton, Clarendon County, South Carolina. It was built in 1936, and is a one-story hip roofed, rectangular brick building. It has a central pavilion featuring a pedimented gable, supported by four cast stone plasters. Summerton High School is the only school still standing of the five schools in Clarendon County School District #22 that were associated with Briggs v. Elliott, the South Carolina case which was one of the cases consolidated with Brown v. Board of Education. As of 2022 the building is used as administrative offices for Clarendon County School District #1.
School integration in the United States is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.
This is a timeline of the 1947 to 1968 civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for People of Color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally-established racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.
{{cite web}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(help)He said the judge said, 'Yes, you are. You're going to lose in the three-judge court. You'll get two votes against one in the three-judge court. Then you're automatically in the Supreme Court, and he said, 'That's where you want to be.'
That decision was the catalyst for attacks on Judge Waring so intense that he required 24-hour security. Crosses were burned in his yard. Rocks were thrown through his windows. Waring was alienated from most white Charleston. A local magazine described him as the most lonesome man in town.
Waring’s challenges to the racially discriminatory practices of that era came at great personal expense, as he and his family were vilified and received constant death threats. Waring retired from the bench in 1952 and moved to New York City, where he died on January 11, 1968, at age 87.
Waring retired from the bench after the Briggs case and moved to New York with his wife. On the night of the Brown decision, Walter White, the president of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders in New York headed not for the NAACP headquarters, but Judge Waring's apartment on Fifth Avenue.