Hocutt v. Wilson

Last updated

Hocutt v. Wilson, N.C. Super. Ct. (1933) (unreported), was the first attempt to desegregate higher education in the United States. [1] It was initiated by two African American lawyers from Durham, North Carolina, Conrad O. Pearson and Cecil McCoy, with the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). [2] The case was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing, but it served as a test case for challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine in education and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education , 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (holding that segregated public schools were unconstitutional). [3]

Contents

Background

Students at the North Carolina College for Negroes, which is now North Carolina Central University in Durham, were plaintiffs in desegregation suits against the all-white University of North Carolina system. [4] : 21  North Carolina was an ideal place for civil rights work because Durham had a generally non-violent racial status quo, the state was slightly more progressive than other Deep South states, and it was close to Washington D.C., where Charles Hamilton Houston taught the most prominent civil rights lawyers. [4] : 31 

The plaintiff was Thomas Hocutt, a 24-year-old student at the North Carolina College for Negroes and graduate of Hillside High School. Hocutt wanted to become a pharmacist, having worked for many years at a local drugstore, [5] : 2  and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had the only pharmacy program in the area. [6] : 1, 34  Attorneys Conrad Odell Pearson and Cecil McCoy and journalist Louis Austin had been seeking out potential litigants to test racial segregation in higher education. Hocutt agreed to be the plaintiff, a decision historian Jerry Gershenhorn describes as courageous, due to the potential for white backlash. [6] : 1, 34  Six years later, as Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP were looking for just such a plaintiff in Virginia, they were "unable to get a qualified applicant with courage to apply". [6] : 34 

Pearson graduated from Howard University's law school under Charles Hamilton Houston and began practicing in Durham in 1932. McCoy graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1931 and also practiced in Durham. [4] : 30 

Beginning the suit

Pearson and McCoy brought the case in February 1933. [5] In March 1933, Hocutt sought admission to the program. [4] : 30  [7] Initially, they wrote to NAACP General Secretary Walter Francis White for financial support. White ratified the case and sent a copy of the Margold Report [8] on discrimination in public schools to support the attorneys. [4] : 30  On Charles Hamilton Houston's recommendation, [1] the NAACP also sent Harvard-educated William Hastie to assist Pearson and McCoy on the case. [4] : 32  At the trial, Hastie became the lead lawyer.

The suit did not have the support of many black leaders in Durham. But it was supported by Austin, the editor of the city's major black-owned newspaper, The Carolina Times . James E. Shepard, president and founder of North Carolina College for Negroes did not support the lawsuit, because he wanted the state to fund graduate programs for black students at his university. Shepard refused to release Hocutt's transcript. [1] The white-owned newspaper, Durham Morning Herald warned, "[t]o our way of thinking, [Pearson and McCoy] will find in the end that they have won not a victory but a costly defeat." [9]

When Hastie, Pearson and McCoy failed to present an official transcript, Hocutt no longer satisfied the admission requirements for the Pharmacy School and the case was dismissed. [4] : 33  Despite defeat, the Hocutt case laid the groundwork for subsequent civil rights cases that challenged racial segregation in public education, leading to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, which ruled that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional. [6] : 1 

Related Research Articles

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 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Separate but equal</span> Legal doctrine used for racial segregation in the United States

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation busing</span> Effort to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States

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.

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".

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund</span> Organization in New York, United States

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.

The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.

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.

Murray v. Pearson was a Maryland Court of Appeals decision which found "the state has undertaken the function of education in the law, but has omitted students of one race from the only adequate provision made for it, and omitted them solely because of their color." On January 15, 1936, the court affirmed the lower court ruling which ordered the university to immediately integrate its student population, and therefore created a legal precedent making segregation in Maryland illegal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floyd McKissick</span> American civil rights activist

Floyd Bixler McKissick was an American lawyer and civil rights activist. He became the first African-American student at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In 1966 he became leader of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, taking over from James Farmer. A supporter of Black Power, he turned CORE into a more radical movement. In 1968, McKissick left CORE to found Soul City in Warren County, North Carolina. He endorsed Richard Nixon for president that year, and the federal government, under President Nixon, supported Soul City. He became a state district court judge in 1990 and died on April 28, 1991. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conrad Lynn</span> American activist and lawyer

Conrad Joseph Lynn was an African-American civil rights lawyer and activist known for providing legal representation for activists, including many unpopular defendants. Among the causes he supported as a lawyer were civil rights, Puerto Rican nationalism, and opposition to the draft during both World War II and the Vietnam War. The controversial defendants he represented included civil rights activist Robert F. Williams and Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown.

Morgan v. Hennigan was the case that defined the school busing controversy in Boston, Massachusetts during the 1970s. On March 14, 1972, the Boston chapter of the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against the Boston School Committee on behalf of 14 black parents and 44 children. Tallulah Morgan headed the list of plaintiffs and James Hennigan then chair of the School Committee, was listed as the main defendant.

The Royal Ice Cream sit-in was a nonviolent protest in Durham, North Carolina, that led to a court case on the legality of segregated facilities. The demonstration took place on June 23, 1957 when a group of African American protesters, led by Reverend Douglas E. Moore, entered the Royal Ice Cream Parlor and sat in the section reserved for white patrons. When asked to move, the protesters refused and were arrested for trespassing. The case was appealed unsuccessfully to the County and State Superior Courts.

Desegregation of theaters in Durham, North Carolina, United States, followed a series of protests between 1961 and 1963, as well as petitions to local government officials and eventually legal action. The protests eventually came to focus on the Carolina Theater. In March 1962, the theater's manager rejected a proposal from the local NAACP chapter to negotiate its desegregation and later refused the city council's request that it reconsider the decision. In response, the protesters began "round-robin" demonstrations. After a court order ended those demonstrations, activists took their case to the courts. Eventually, in July 1963, after mass demonstrations and support from new mayor Wense Grabarek, Durham's segregated movie theaters began to open to all the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Simkins Jr.</span> Dentist, community leader, and civil rights activist (1924–2001)

Dr. George Simkins Jr. was a dentist, community leader in Greensboro, North Carolina, and civil rights activist. During the 1950s, he won several significant desegregation lawsuits and was, for a quarter of a century, the president of the Greensboro branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Louis Austin (1898-1971) was an African-American journalist, civic leader and social activist. Austin purchased The Carolina Times in 1927 and transformed it into an institution that aided African Americans in their fight for freedom and equality in North Carolina. He used a new approach to civil rights issues in Durham, incorporating lower and middle class blacks, unlike the moderate, accommodationist approach of the black elite in Durham during this time. Austin's unusual strategy of advocating for the majority of blacks to have a voice in society succeeded in galvanizing a broader segment of the African American community in Durham to act for social change. Austin's approach to black activism helped lay the groundwork for the modern Civil Rights Movement in Durham in the late 1950s and 1960s, which also encouraged lower-income blacks to become politically active. His strategies—which were once considered too radical by his peers—allowed Austin to maintain his influence in Durham well into the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, Austin created a lasting impact for Durham.

This is a timeline of the 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 institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.

The Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN) was an American civil rights organization in Chester, Pennsylvania, that worked to end de facto segregation and improve the conditions at predominantly black schools in Chester. CFFN was founded in 1963 by Stanley Branche along with the Swarthmore College chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and Chester parents. From November 1963 to April 1964, CFFN and the Chester chapter of the NAACP, led by George Raymond, initiated the Chester school protests which made Chester a key battleground in the civil rights movement.

The New Year's Day March in Greenville, South Carolina was a 1,000-man march that protested the segregated facilities at the Greenville Municipal Airport, now renamed the Greenville Downtown Airport. The march occurred after Richard Henry and Jackie Robinson were prohibited from using a white-only waiting room at the airport. The march was the first large-scale movement of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and Greenville. The march brought state-wide attention to segregation, and the case Henry v. Greenville Airport Commission (1961) ultimately required the airport's integration of its facilities.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand": A Century of Racial Segregation, 1849–1950". Library of Congress. November 13, 2004.
  2. ↑ The Center For Urban Affairs, North Carolina State University, Paths Toward Freedom: A Bibliographical History of Blacks and Indians in North Carolina by Blacks and Indians 172 (1976).
  3. ↑ "Durham Civil Rights Leader and Lawyer, Pearson, Dies". Durham Morning Herald. June 27, 1984. p. 1A – via Newspapers.com. Article continues on page 2A.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Samuel R. Diamont, Local Civil Rights Litigators: Durham's African American Attorneys 1933-1954,(2008) (published Ph.D. dissertation, North Carolina Central University) (on file with North Carolina Central University Archives Department).
  5. 1 2 University of North Carolina, Documenting the American South, Oral History Interview with Conrad Odell Pearson, April 18, 1979. Interview H-0218. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/H-0218/menu.html.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Gershenhorn, Jerry (2018). Louis Austin and The Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN   978-1-4696-3876-8.
  7. ↑ Jerry Gershenhorn (July 2001). "Hocutt v. Wilson and Race Relations in Durham, North Carolina, during the 1930s". The North Carolina Historical Review. State Archives of North Carolina. 78 (3): 275–308. JSTOR   23522330.
  8. ↑ Nathan R. Margold, Preliminary Report to the Joint Committee Supervising the Expenditure of the 1930 Appropriation by the American Fund for Public Service (1931).
  9. ↑ Leslie Brown, Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South 310 (2008) quoting Editorial, Durham Morning Herald, Feb. 1933, at 21, 24.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.