![]() | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(October 2019) |
Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 87 A.2d 862 (Del. Ch. 1952), aff'd, 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 1952), was a case decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1952 and affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. Gebhart was one of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education , the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court which found unconstitutional racial segregation in United States public schools.
Gebhart is unique among the five Brown cases in that the state trial court ordered that black children be admitted to the state's segregated whites-only schools, and the state Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision. In the remaining Brown cases, all of which were filed in federal rather than state court, federal district courts all found continued segregation constitutional, though some judges questioned its effects on black students, and instead ordered some lesser remedy.
The unusual status of Gebhart arose in large part because of Delaware's unique legal and historical position. At the time of the litigation, Delaware was one of 17 states with a segregated school system. Delaware is considered a Southern state by the US Census Bureau yet was a border state that remained part of the Union during the Civil War. It nonetheless was both de facto and de jure segregated; Jim Crow laws persisted in the state well into the 1960s, and its educational system was segregated by operation of law.[ citation needed ] In fact, Delaware's segregation was written into the state constitution, which, while providing at Article X, Section 2, that "no distinction shall be made on account of race or color", nonetheless required that "separate schools for white and colored children shall be maintained." Furthermore, a 1935 state education law required:
The schools provided shall be of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children. The schools for white children shall be free for all white children between the ages of six and twenty-one years, inclusive; and the schools for colored children shall be free to all colored children between the ages of six and twenty-one years, inclusive. ... The State Board of Education shall establish schools for children of people called Moors or Indians.
Despite this optimistic language, black schools in Delaware were generally decrepit, with poor facilities, substandard curricula, and shoddy construction. Without substantial financial support provided by Wilmington's Du Pont family of chemical fame, segregated schools would likely have been in even worse shape.
At the same time, as a remnant of its days as one of the original thirteen former British colonies, Delaware had developed a judicial system which included a separate Court of Chancery, hearing matters arising in equity rather than in law. As opposed to legal remedies, which usually involve awarding money as damages, equity— as expressed in the maxims of equity, "regards as done that which ought to be done." As a result, cases brought in equity generally seek relief which cannot be awarded as a sum of money, but rather "that which ought to be done".
Gebhart involved two separate actions which were consolidated for the purposes of trial.
Belton v. Gebhart was brought by Ethel Louise Belton and six other parents of eight black high school students who lived in Claymont, Delaware. Despite the existence of a well-maintained, spacious high school in Claymont, segregation forced the parents to send their children on a public bus to attend the run-down Howard High School in downtown Wilmington. Howard High School was Delaware's sole business and college-preparatory school for black students and served the entire state of Delaware. Related concerns involved class size, teacher qualifications, and curriculum; indeed, Howard students interested in vocational training were required to walk several blocks to a nearby annex to attend classes offered only after the conclusion of the normal school day.
Bulah v. Gebhart was brought by Sarah Bulah, a resident of the rural town of Hockessin, Delaware. Mrs. Bulah's daughter, Shirley, had been denied admission to the modern, whites-only Hockessin School No. 29, and instead was compelled to attend a one-room "colored" school, Hockessin School No. 107, which, though very near School No. 29, had vastly inferior facilities and construction. Moreover, Shirley Bulah was required to walk to school every day, even though a school bus serving the nearby whites-only school passed by her house every day. Mrs. Bulah had attempted to obtain transportation for Shirley on that bus, but she was told they would never transport a black student.
Gebhart was filed in 1951 in the Delaware Court of Chancery by lawyers Jack Greenberg and Louis L. Redding under a strategy formulated by Robert L. Carter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Redding was the first black attorney in the history of Delaware and had developed a notable civil-rights practice in his years before the bar. Frequently, he would be sought out by families unable to afford his services, offering his assistance anyway. Over the years, Redding had developed a reputation as a skilled advocate for racial equality, most notably in Parker v. University of Delaware, 75 A.2d 225 (Del. Ch. 1950), which resulted in a ruling from the Court of Chancery that segregation at the University of Delaware was unconstitutional. The prospect of Southern-style segregation being adjudicated by a court of equity which had previously expressed an opinion prohibiting racial segregation was clearly attractive to Greenberg and Redding.
Presiding over the Gebhart trial was Chancellor Collins J. Seitz, who had issued the Parker opinion the prior year. In 1946, at the age of 35, Seitz had been appointed to the Court of Chancery, making him the youngest judge in the history of Delaware. Just prior to the Gebhart litigation, Seitz had given a graduation speech at a local Catholic boys' high school, in which he discussed the courage that would be required to address "a subject that was one of Delaware's great taboos -- the subjugated state of its Negroes. How can we say that we deeply revere the principles of our Declaration [of Independence] and our Constitution and yet refuse to recognize these principles when they are applied to the American Negro in a down-to-earth fashion?"
The plaintiffs presented evidence throughout the course of the trial demonstrating the patently inferior conditions of the Wilmington and Hockessin schools, consisting of testimony and documentary evidence of the schools' infrastructures. In addition, the plaintiffs offered expert testimony from psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and sociologists—none of which was rebutted by the defense—demonstrating that the inadequate educational facilities and curricula found in segregated schools were harmful to the mental health of black children.
Dramatically illustrating the disparate conditions in the schools were fire insurance valuations prepared by the State of Delaware in 1941, which featured photographs of all Delaware public schools as well as their assessed value. For example, the "colored" school in Hockessin was valued at only $6,250.00, while the whites-only Hockessin school was valued almost seven times higher. The most powerful evidence, however, probably came from the plaintiffs themselves, who described the conditions in their segregated schools and the hardship they were forced to endure to attend those schools in lieu of the much nicer, and more convenient, whites-only schools.
In summary, the plaintiffs argued that:
Initially, Chancellor Seitz noted that the separate but equal law had already been adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson and that he did not feel able, as a judge of an inferior court, to "reject a principle of United States constitutional law which has been adopted by fair implication by the highest court of the land." For this reason, the Court refused to find that the segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but not by any means on the merits of the system; as the Court observed, "I believe the 'separate but equal' doctrine in education should be rejected, but I also believe its rejection must come from [the U.S. Supreme] [C]ourt."
That, however, did not end the Court's analysis. The Court found that the separate "colored" facilities were in no way equal to the whites-only facilities, and, exercising the broad powers of a court of equity, ordered that black students be immediately integrated.
Chancellor Seitz decried the inequal conditions of the plaintiffs' schools in strong terms:
I now consider whether the facilities of the [Claymont and Howard] institutions are separate but equal, within the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Are the separate facilities and educational opportunities offered to these Negro plaintiffs, and those similarly situated, "equal" in the constitutional sense, to those available at Claymont High to white children, similarly situated? The answer to this question is often much more difficult than appears, because many of the factors to be compared are just not susceptible of mathematical evaluation, e. g., aesthetic considerations. Moreover, and of real importance, the United States Supreme Court has not decided what should be done if a Negro school being compared with a white school is inferior in some respects and superior in others. It is easy, as some courts do, to talk about the necessity for finding substantial equality. But, under this approach, how is one to deal with a situation where, as here, the mental and physical health services at the Negro school are superior to those offered at the white school while the teacher load at the Negro school is not only substantially heavier than that at the white school, but often exceeds the State announced educationally desirable maximum teacher-pupil ratio. The answer, it seems to me is this: Where the facilities or educational opportunities available to the Negro are, as to any substantial factor, inferior to those available to white children similarly situated, the constitutional principle of "separate but equal" is violated, even though the State may point to other factors as to which the Negro school is superior. I reach this conclusion because I do not believe a court can say that the substantial factor as to which the Negro school is inferior will not adversely affect the educational progress of at least some of those concerned. Moreover, evaluating unlike factors is unrealistic. If this be a harsh test, then I answer that a State which divides its citizens should pay the price.
With regard to the Hockessin schools at issue in Bulah, the Court noted similar disparities demonstrating a lack of equal treatment:
Another factor connected with these two schools demands separate attention, because it is a consequence of segregation so outlandish that the Attorney General, with commendable candor, has in effect refused to defend it. I refer to the fact that school bus transportation is provided those attending No. 29 who, except for color, are in the same situation as this infant plaintiff. Yet neither school bus transportation, nor its equivalent is provided this plaintiff even to attend No. 107. In fact, the State Board of Education refused to authorize the transportation of this then seven-year-old plaintiff to the Negro school, even though the bus for white children went right past her home, and even though the two schools are no more than a mile apart. Moreover, there is no public transportation available from or near plaintiff's home to or near the Negro school. The State Board ruled that because of the State constitutional provision for separate schools, a Negro child may not ride in a bus serving a white school. If we assume that this is so, then this practice in and of itself, is another reason why the facilities offered this plaintiff at No. 107 are inferior to those provided at No. 29. To suggest, under the facts here presented, that there are not enough Negroes to warrant the cost of a school bus for them is only another way of saying that they are not entitled to equal services because they are Negroes. Such an excuse will not do here. I conclude that the facilities and educational opportunities at No. 107 are substantially inferior in a constitutional sense, to those at No. 29. For the reasons stated in connection with Claymont I do not believe the relief should merely be an order to make equal. An injunction will issue preventing the defendants and their agents from refusing these plaintiffs, and those similarly situated, admission to School No. 29 because of their color.
On August 28, 1952, the Supreme Court of Delaware unanimously affirmed the Chancery Court's ruling. Despite this, the two schools of Hockessin Elementary and Claymont High School did not integrate in 1952 because the State Board of Education did not give these schools an official mandate to do so. The Claymont High Board of Education met on September 3, 1952, and decided they would enroll the black students even without a mandate. At the last minute the State Board of Education called and gave a verbal mandate for the children to attend. On the morning of September 4, 1952, eleven black students got on their bus and came to Claymont High School and there were no incidents. The next day, Delaware Attorney Young called and told Claymont Superintendent Stahl to "send the children home" because the cases were being appealed and eventually became part of the Brown v. Board case. Superintendent Stahl and the School Board refused to send the children home, because they wanted the school to be integrated and had worked hard to have integration occur through the court systems. Even the high school teachers signed a letter stating that they wanted the students to remain. Claymont administrators were willing to defy the state. After many meetings, the State School Board agreed to allow the students remain in Claymont, Hockessin and Arden. Arden had an elementary school which fed into the Claymont High School. Recently moved into Ardencroft was a family that had three students which were now attending Claymont High School and three children that were elementary school aged. Arden had voted to allow these younger children to attend their school. The State Board of Education decided to allow these children to remain in Arden.
The State Board of Education declared that no other public schools in Delaware were permitted to integrate until after the Brown v. Board decision was decided.
The State Attorney General appealed Chancellor Seitz' decision in Gebhart to the Delaware Supreme Court. The plaintiffs, believing the Court of Chancery had not gone far enough in overturning the concept of "separate but equal", cross-appealed. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision in a relatively short opinion, relying on Plessy to reject arguments that segregation per se was unconstitutional, while ordering integration and leaving open the possibility of resegregation in the future. From there, the school-district defendants appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where the consolidation with Brown occurred.
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown affirmed the Supreme Court of Delaware's order to allow black students to enrolled in previously all-white schools. This was the only case the Supreme Court affirmed in part. The Supreme Court then reversed the Delaware Supreme Court on the constitutional issues and remanded the cases for further proceedings. After the Brown ruling, a sea change occurred in American and Delaware politics and society. The result of this ruling was that Delaware became fully integrated, albeit with time and much effort. The state Department of Public Instruction agreed to integrate all Delaware schools in light of the Supreme Court's order. In Northern and Central Delaware, most were willing to accept the Brown ruling, but there was much opposition from white residents in the southern portion of the state.
The white supremacist Bryant Bowles raised $6,000 and founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) to oppose the ruling. Bowles briefly attracted nationwide attention for leading a pro-segregation boycott of previously all-white Milford High School. On September 27, 1954, as eleven black students were preparing to enroll at the school, unrest from angry townspeople was feared to be imminent. In response, Louis Redding issued an urgent telegram to Delaware Governor J. Caleb Boggs requesting the presence of state police officers "adequate to assure personal safety of eleven children whose admittance to that school last night was confirmed by state board of education." Redding closed his telegram with an optimistic line: "Hope also no occasion for powers of the police will arise." A mass meeting in Milford held in October of that year attracted a crowd of 3,000 people. [1] [2] Bowles encouraged a boycott to protest the integration of Delaware schools. [3] [1] Only 456 out of 1562 Milford High School students attended the next day, and the movement gained traction in the nearby town of Lincoln, where 116 of the 146 pupils in the local elementary school boycotted in solidarity. [1] Mass protests continued in Milford; the school board eventually ceded to the protestors, expelling the black students. [1] [3] Several weeks later, Bowles was arrested for "conspiring to violate the state education law by leading a boycott at Milford’s integrated high school". The Attorney General later took action to revoke the NAAWP's corporate charter in September 1955. [3] [2] However, the ensuing unrest, which included cross burnings, rallies, and pro-segregation demonstrations, contributed to desegregation in most of Southern Delaware being delayed for another ten years. School segregation in the state would not end until 1967. [4]
Some[ who? ] argue that while the state of race relations was dramatically improving post-Brown, any progress was destroyed in the wake of the rioting that broke out in Wilmington in April 1968 in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis [ citation needed ]. Delaware's response to the Wilmington riots was heavy-handed in the opinion of some[ who? ], involving the virtual occupation[ opinion ] of the city for over one year by the Delaware National Guard.
For his efforts in defeating segregation, Louis Redding was honored with a life-size bronze statue of him embracing a young black schoolboy and a young white schoolgirl outside the City-County government complex in downtown Wilmington, which is also named for him. Redding was also honored by the naming of Louis Redding Middle School in Middletown, New Castle County.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which 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 decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the south lasted into the 1960s.
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.
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each "race" were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by "race", which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".
Race-integration busing in the United States was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in an effort to diversify the racial make-up of schools. While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely uni-racial due to housing inequality. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later.
Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution prohibits segregated public schools in the District of Columbia. Originally argued on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling was reargued on December 8–9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May 17, 1954, the same day as Brown. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, which ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed". In Bolling, the Court did not address school desegregation in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which applies only to the states, but rather held that school segregation was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause, as in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, the Court held that the concepts of equal protection and due process are not mutually exclusive, establishing the reverse incorporation doctrine.
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. It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 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.
Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the exclusion on account of race of a child of Chinese ancestry from a public school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision effectively approved the exclusion of any minority children from schools reserved for whites.
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."
The McDonogh Three is a nickname for the three members of The New Orleans Four who desegregated McDonogh 19 Elementary School, in New Orleans. Even though segregated schools had been illegal since the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, no states in the American Deep South had taken action to integrate their schools. Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost had all attended the black-only schools in their neighborhood, until November 14, 1960, when they arrived at McDonogh No. 19, a previously all-white segregated school. On that fateful morning, the girls were escorted by United States Federal Marshals wearing yellow armbands to execute the mission of school integration. Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne lived in the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, a neighborhood where black and white people lived separately by block.
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), was an important United States Supreme Court case involving school desegregation. Specifically, the Court dealt with the freedom of choice plans created to avoid compliance with the Supreme Court's mandate in Brown II in 1955. The Court held unanimously that New Kent County's freedom of choice plan did not adequately comply with the school board's responsibility to determine a system of admission to public schools on a non-racial basis. The Supreme Court mandated that the school board must formulate new plans and steps towards realistically converting to a desegregated system. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County was a follow-up of Brown v. Board of Education.
Collins Jacques Seitz was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Louis Lorenzo Redding was a prominent lawyer and civil rights advocate from Wilmington, Delaware. Redding, the first African American to be admitted to the Delaware bar, was part of the NAACP legal team that challenged school segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was 96 when he died at a hospital in Lima, Pa.
Desegregation of the Baltimore City Public Schools took place in 1956 after the United States Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation in schools went against constitutional law. Desegregation of U.S. schools was part of the civil rights movement. The events that followed desegregation in Baltimore, were important to the civil rights movement across America. Recent scholarship has identified Baltimore's desegregation as an important precursor to the Greensboro sit-ins.
Zelma Henderson was the last surviving plaintiff in the 1954 landmark federal school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. The case outlawed segregation nationwide in all of the United States' public schools. The ruling served as a harbinger of the American Civil Rights Movement and paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in all public facilities.
George W. McLaurin was an American professor, and the first African-American to attend the University of Oklahoma. He was the successful plaintiff in an important civil rights case against the university, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950).
Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education, Trenton, NJ, 131 N.J.L. 153, 35 A.2d 622 (1944), also known as the Hedgepeth–Williams case, was a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court decision decided in 1944. The Court ruled that since racial segregation was outlawed by the New Jersey State Constitution, it was unlawful for schools to segregate or refuse admission to students on the basis of race. The case led to the formal desegregation of New Jersey public schools and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.
Ward v. Flood 48 Cal. 49–52 (1874) was the first school segregation case before the California Supreme Court, which established the principle of "separate but equal" schools in California law, 22 years before the United States Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. Following Ward v. Flood, litigation over racial segregation in schools in California continued for over a century.