Tag: segregation

Justice Denied: The Murder of Emmett Till, August 28, 1955

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On August 28, 1955,  a fourteen year old African-American boy from Chicago, Emmett Till, was kidnapped, brutally murdered and tossed into the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling or making inappropriate advances at a white woman while visiting his relatives in Mississippi. Till’s murder would spark a wave of righteous indignation across the nation because of the sheer brutality of the lynching and the young age of the victim. Although Till’s murder would go unpunished, it would prove to be a watershed moment for race relations in the United States serving as a spring board for the Civil Rights movement and the eventual demise of the Jim Crowe South.

The summer of 1955 was a hot one in the United States. Racial tensions were at a pitch in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education which declared race-based segregation unconstitutional. Embittered Southern whites regarded the Court’s decision as a threat to the established racial hierarchy and white supremacist power structure and vowed a campaign of “massive resistance.” In the months before Till’s murder, Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith were separately shot and killed in Mississippi after organizing black voter-registration drives. In both cases, investigations identified credible white suspects but potential witnesses were afraid to talk and no charges were ever brought. Seeking to escape the boredom of another Chicago summer, Mamie Till Mobley sent her only child to visit her relatives in Money, Mississippi. Before leaving, Mrs. Till Mobley urged her son to be careful and to watch how he behaved in front of white people, warning that Chicago and Mississippi were completely different. “Even though you think you’re perfectly within your right, for goodness sake take low,” she said, according to subsequently published accounts. “If necessary, get on your knees and beg apologies,” she told him. This was the cauldron of hate fourteen year old Emmett Till was about to enter.

Till arrived at the home of his uncle Mose Wright in the Mississippi Delta town of Money on August 21. Three days later he and his two cousins headed to the local grocery store to buy some candy. The store mostly served the local sharecropper population and was owned by a poor white couple, 24-year-old Roy Bryant and his 21-year-old wife Carolyn. Carolyn Bryant was working the front of the store alone that day; her sister-in-law was in the rear of the store watching the Bryant children. What actually happened next is subject to multiple conflicting accounts but most claim that Till had whistled at Bryant or had engaged in some other unacceptable advance that violated the mores of Jim Crowe Mississippi. Bryant stormed out of the store and warned she was going to get a pistol.

Till and his cousins immediately understood the gravity of the situation. They quickly fled the scene at the urging of some of the older men around town hoping to avoid any unwanted violence. Till refrained from telling his uncle what had happened, fearful of what reprimand might happen and pleaded to return home to Chicago immediately. A few days later, Roy Bryant and his half brother , J.W. Millam went to Mose Wright’s home, in the dead of night, and abducted the terrified 14-year old at gun point. They marched Till to the back of their pick up truck and tied him up before driving off to an isolated barn where they proceeded to teach the young boy a deadly lesson. There they beat Till mercilessly as the boy begged for his mother. They poked out his eye and finally shot him in the head. Once dead, they  tied a 75-pound cotton-gin fan around his neck with barbed wire and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River demonstrating absolutely no remorse for what they had done.

The barn where Emmett Till was tortured and killed

When Till’s body was pulled from the river, his mother could barely identify her son. Mississippi officials pressured Mamie Till Mobley to quickly burry her son in a closed casket ceremony seeking to downplay the murder and move on. Mamie Till Mobley was a strong black woman and she was determined that her only son would not die in vain. Instead, she returned the badly disfigured body to Chicago, where she held an open casket funeral intending to capture the nation’s attention and shine a spotlight on the rampant racism and white supremacist violence directed at African-Americans in the South. The train carrying Till’s body was greeted by large crowds and over 200,000 people paid their respects during the four days of public viewings. Jet Magazine published an expose of photos of Till’s mangled body and his grieving mother at the funeral and the photos reverberated across the nation and around the world. These images would galvanize a movement and inspire African-American Americans to put life and limb at risk in pursuit of the rights, racial equality and justice promised to them as American citizens under the constitution. Less than six months later, an African-American woman in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. When asked why she refused to move Parks explained that she thought about going to the back of the bus but then she thought about Emmett Till and she couldn’t do it.

Roy Bryant and J.W. Millam were arrested for murder within days after Till’s body was discovered but the likelihood of two white men being convicted of murdering an African-American boy in 1950s Mississippi was somewhere between slim and none. The two men were quickly put on trial in September and battle lines were immediately drawn. Northern outrage at the murder prompted many Southerners to resent what they derisively called outside interference and rally in support of the suspects. When Bryant and Millam could not afford an attorney, every lawyer in the county donated their services and $10,000 was collected from local businessmen in support of Bryant and Millam’s defense. Moreover, many whites showed up to watch the trial, bringing their children, picnic baskets and ice cream cones. Meanwhile, African American spectators were relegated to the back and looked on in fear and anger. This was the reality of the Jim Crow South for African Americans. A black man could be killed by a white man without any care or consequence. Neither Bryant nor Millam would be called to the stand to testify and they would eventually be acquitted by an all white male jury after only 67 minutes of deliberations. Jurors later admitted in interviews that although they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty of Till’s murder, they did not think imprisonment or the death penalty were appropriate punishments for white men who had killed a black man. After the verdict was read, Bryant and Millam defiantly walked out of the courtroom lit up cigars and kissed their wives in celebration.

Left to Right: J.W. Millam, Juanita Millam, Carolyn Bryant, Roy Bryant.

Months later, the two men confessed to killing Till in an interview with Look magazine in exchange for $4,000, however, because of the precedent of double jeopardy in U.S. law, they were never tried again for the murder. In 2017, Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony, that Till had grabbed her wrist and used sexual obscenities admitting that he had never touched, threatened or harassed her. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said. 

Emmett Till’s story would be a historical footnote if it were the exception but it wasn’t. Lynchings were a way of life in the Jim Crow South. They were a tool of extralegal terror intended to intimidate and control African-Americans and maintain a white supremacist power structure by denying them their constitutional rights as American citizens. From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Most of these acts of racial terror went unpunished and many occurred with the active participation of law enforcement. Because most African-Americans in the South were denied their right to vote, they could neither elect judges, sheriffs and other officials more representative and protective of their interests or serve on juries. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law, making lynching a federal hate crime after more than a century of failed efforts in Congress to pass similar legislation.

The Little Rock Nine, September 24, 1957

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On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered 1,200 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to forcibly integrate Little Rock Central High School in the face of strong public opposition and determined resistance from Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. These troops would escort nine African-American teens—Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls—into the school, forcing a high profile showdown between state and Federal authorities. Although federal troops would clear the way for their entrance that day, “the Little Rock Nine,” would be subject to constant threat, abuse, and harassment the remainder of the year while the state and the rest of the South developed new strategies to avoid desegregation.

Brown v. Board of Education: The Battle Begins

The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Eduction, which declared segregation unconstitutional, sent shockwaves through out Arkansas and the rest of the South prompting vows of “massive resistance.” Many Southern states initial impulse was to simply ignore the ruling for as long as possible and slow roll the court-ordered desegregation. However, this strategy became increasingly untenable. Foot dragging on the issue had become so prevalent in the South, the court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate “with all deliberate speed.” At the same time, the National Association for he Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also pressed the issue by registering black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Arkansas, the local chapter of the NAACP carefully selected these nine students who it believed had the intelligence, determination, and fortitude to succeed in breaking the color barrier.

In response to these dual pressures, the Little Rock school board voluntarily came up with a plan for gradually integrating the school system. The first schools to be integrated would be the high schools beginning in September 1957. Among these was Little Rock Central High School where this drama would play out. The school board’s plan was deeply divisive prompting a wave of bitterness and resentment amongst a large swathe of the white community in Arkansas. Two pro-segregation groups formed to oppose the plan: The Capital Citizens Council and the Mother’s League of Central High School.

Blockades and Protests

On September 2, 1957 the night prior to what was to be the Nine’s first day in Central High classrooms, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the state’s National Guard to block their entrance. Faubus said it was for the safety of the nine students warning that violence and bloodshed might break out if black students were allowed to enter the school. On the advice of the school board, the nine African-American students delayed their arrival till the second day, where they encountered a large angry white mob in front of the school, spewing racial epithets, threatening violence and engaging in acts of denigrating behavior. One of the most iconic images of that day was of Elizabeth Eckford, who arrived alone that morning to confront the mob. Eckford, whose family was too poor to afford a telephone, did not get word ahead of time of plans to coordinate their arrival. Eckford was greeted with chants of “two,four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate.” Eckford would recount her experience that day in very stark terms, “They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me. They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, “Drag her over this tree! Let’s take care of that nigger!”

Elizabeth Eckford approaching Little Rock Central High School on her own


All nine students were prohibited from entering the school that day in what would prove to be the opening salvo in a much larger battle. Sixteen days later a federal judge ordered the National Guard removed and on September 23, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter the school again. Though escorted by Little Rock police into a side door, another angry crowd gathered and tried to rush into Central High. Fearing for the lives of the nine students, school officials sent the teens home. They did, however, manage to attend classes for about three hours.

The next day, following a plea from Little Rock’s mayor, Woodrow Mann, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene. On September 25, the nine African-American teens entered Little Rock Central High School, personally guarded by soldiers from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and began regular class attendance. The Federal government forcibly imposed its authority but the struggle to integrate was far from over. Over the course of the school year, the nine African-American teens were subjected to daily harassment, jeers, and violence at the hands of many white students. For example, Melba Patillo was kicked, beaten and had acid thrown in her face while Gloria Ray was kicked down a flight of steps. At the same time, state authorities regrouped and changed tactics. In September of the following year, Governor Faubus closed all of Little Rock’s high schools for the entire year pending a public vote, to prevent African American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed for an entire year.

Aftermath

The showdown to integrate Little Rock Central High School was a precursor of things to come through out the entire South over the next decade as white supremacists and segregationists maneuvered to resist integration. Faubus’ use of the national guard and his decision to closed down Little Rock’s public high schools would be replicated by segregationist governors in Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, and elsewhere. In September 1962, the small university town of Oxford Mississippi was turned into a war zone as Federal Marshals battled with violent white supremacists mobs seeking to prevent African-American James Meredith from attending the University of Mississippi, in what would become known as the “Battle of Oxford.” A year later Alabama Governor George Wallace personally stood in the doorway to the registrar at the University of Alabama to stop African-American Vivian Malone Jones from attending. In Virginia, Prince Edward County would close down its public school system from 1959-1964 rather than comply with court-ordered integration.


Justice Not Served: The Death of Emmett Till, August 28, 1955

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On August 28, 1955,  a fourteen year old African-American boy from Chicago, Emmett Till, was kidnapped, brutally murdered and tossed into the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white women in a lewd manner while visiting his relatives in Mississippi. Till’s murder would spark a wave of righteous indignation across the nation because of sheer brutality of the lynching and the young age of the victim and become the catalyst for what would become known as the Civil Rights movement.

The summer of 1955 was a hot one in the United States. Racial tensions were on the rise in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education which declared race-based segregation unconstitutional. Bitter and angry Southern whites vowed a campaign of “massive resistance” to counter the court’s orders to desegregate and other threats to what they perceived as their way of life. In the months before Till’s murder, Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith were separately shot and killed in Mississippi after helping organize black voter-registration drives. It was against this backdrop that Mamie Till sent her only child to visit her relatives in Money, Mississippi, hoping to escape the boredom of another Chicago summer. Before he left for Mississippi, Mrs. Till urged her son to be careful and to watch how he behaved in front of white people there because Chicago and Mississippi were completely different. “Even though you think you’re perfectly within your right, for goodness sake take low,” she said, according to subsequently published accounts. “If necessary, get on your knees and beg apologies.”

Till arrived at his uncle Mose Wright’s home on August 21. Three days later, he and his two cousins, had skipped church where their uncle was preaching and instead headed to the local grocery store to buy some candy. The grocery store mostly served the local sharecropper population and was owned by a poor white couple, 24-year-old Roy Bryant and his 21-year-old wife Carolyn. Carolyn Bryant was alone in the front of the store that day; her sister-in-law was in the rear of the store watching children. What actually happened on August 21 is subject to multiple conflicting accounts but most claim that Till had whistled at Bryant or had engaged in some other lewd advance, something that was a serious taboo in the Jim Crowe South. Bryant stormed out of the store and warned she was going to get a pistol.

Till and his cousins immediately understood the gravity of the situation. They quickly fled the scene at the urging of some of the older men around town hoping to avoid any unwanted violence. Till refrained from telling his uncle what had happened, fearful that he might incur a reprimand and pleaded to return home to Chicago. A few days later, Roy Bryant and his half brother , J.W. Millam went to Mose Wright’s home, in the dead, of night, and abducted the terrified 14-year old at gun point. They marched Till to the back of their pick up truck and tied him up before driving off to an isolated barn where they proceeded to teach the young boy a deadly lesson. There they viciously beat Till as the boy begged for his mother. They poked out his eye, shot him in the head, and tied a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to his neck with barbed wire before tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River with no remorse for what they had done.

The barn where Emmett Till was beaten and killed

When Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie river, his mother could barely identify her son. Nevertheless, Mamie Till was determined that her only son would not die in vain. Mississippi officials pressured her to burry Emmett in Mississippi in a closed casket ceremony hoping to avoid a spectacle. Mamie Till ignored the pressure and brought Emmett Till’s badly disfigured body back to Chicago where she held an open casket funeral hoping to capture the nation’s attention and shine a spotlight on the deep racism and white supremacist violence directed at African-Americans in the South. The train carrying Till’s body was greeted by large crowds while over 200,000 people paid their respects during the four days of public viewings. Jet Magazine published an expose of photos of Till’s mangled body and his grieving mother at the funeral that went reverberated across the nation and around the world. These images would accelerate the civil rights movement and inspire African-American Americans to put life and limb at risk in pursuit of racial equality and justice. Less than six months later, an African-American woman in Montgomery Alabama named Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give her bus seat to a white passenger. When asked why she refused to move Parks explained that she thought about going to the back of the bus but then she thought about Emmett Till and she couldn’t do it.

Left: Emmett Till’s disfigured corpse, Right: Mamie Till at the funeral

Within a day after Till’s disappearance, both Bryant and Millam were arrested but the chances of two white men being convicted of murdering an African-American boy in 1950s Mississippi were somewhere between slim and none. The two men were put on trial in September and battle lines were quickly drawn. Every lawyer in the county donated their services and $10,000 was collected from local businessmen in support of Bryant and Millam’s defense. Moreover, many whites showed up to watch the trial, bringing their children, picnic baskets and ice cream cones. Meanwhile, African American spectators were relegated to the back and looked on in fear. Neither Bryant nor Millam would be called to the stand to testify and they would eventually be acquitted by an all white male jury after only 67 minutes of deliberations. Jurors later admitted in interviews that although they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty of Till’s murder, they did not think imprisonment or the death penalty were appropriate punishments for white men who had killed a black man. After the verdict was read, Bryant and Millam defiantly walked out of the courtroom lit up cigars and kissed their wives in celebration.

Left: J.W. Milam and his wife Right: Roy Bryant and Carolyn Bryant

Months later, the two men confessed to killing Till in an interview with Look magazine in exchange for $4,000, however, because of the precedent of double jeopardy in U.S. law, they were never tried again for the murder. In 2017, Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony, admitting that Till had never touched, threatened or harassed her. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said.


Ghosts of Mississippi: The Assassination of Medgar Evers, June 12, 1963

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On June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was gunned down in his driveway outside his home in Jackson Mississippi by white supremacist and segregationist Byron De La Beckwith. Emerging from his automobile after a late night NAACP meeting, Evers was shot in the back by Beckwith who had been positioned across the street waiting to ambush him. The bullet pierced through his heart but he managed to stagger to his door. Evers’ wife, Myrlie, and his three children—who were still awake after watching an important civil rights speech by President John F. Kennedy—heard the gun shot and hurried outside. They were soon joined by neighbors and police. Evers was rushed to the hospital where he was initially denied admission because of his race. He died less than 50 minutes later at the age of 37. Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. 

Medgar Evers, the NAACP Field Director for Mississippi

Evers was a decorated World War II veteran who had fought at Normandy in 1944. However, like many other African-American veterans, he returned to a nation that denied him his citizenship rights at the polls. In 1946, Evers attempted to cast a ballot but twenty armed white men, some of whom had been his childhood friends, had learned of his plans to vote and turned up to threaten him. Evers feared for his life. “I made up my mind that it would not be like that again,” he vowed.

Shortly after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Evers volunteered to challenge segregation in higher education and applied to the University of Mississippi School of Law. He was rejected on a technicality, but his willingness to risk harassment and threats for racial justice caught the eye of national NAACP leadership; he was soon hired as the organization’s first field secretary in Mississippi.

Evers was one of Mississippi’s leading civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms from segregation to how the state and local legal systems handled crimes against African Americans. Evers’ work put him squarely in the crosshairs of the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist group formed in the aftermath of the Brown ruling devoted to preserving segregation. He garnered national attention for organizing demonstrations and boycotts to help integrate Jackson’s privately owned buses, the public parks, Mississippi’s Gulf Coast beaches as well as the Mississippi State Fair. He led voter registration drives, and helped secure legal assistance for James Meredith, a black man whose 1962 attempt to enroll in the University of Mississippi was met with riots and state resistance.

Beckwith was arrested on June 21, 1963 for the murder of Evers but would escape conviction for most of his life, largely due to the racist system of justice that dominated the deep South in the 1960s. He was tried twice in February and April 1964 but in each trial the two all white juries failed to reach a verdict resulting in two mistrials. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi’s most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith’s first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. After his release Beckwith bragged about his skill with a rifle and hinting to segregationist friends that, indeed, he had killed Evers.

That Beckwith would not be held accountable, while reprehensible, was hardly surprising and consistent with what was increasingly the norm across the South. African-Americans and civil rights activists could expect little legal protection from the courts and law enforcement in the 1960s South which operated largely to preserve segregation and often ignored the facts when white defendants were accused of harming African-Americans. Moreover, most African-Americans were still disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws and therefore ineligible for jury duty. The two white men who murdered fourteen year old Emmet Till eight years earlier for allegedly whistling at a white woman were acquitted . The Ku Klux Klan members that perpetrated the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama later that year also escaped justice. The same for the murderers of three civil rights workers in Mississippi the following year.

Mylie Evers and son Daniel Kenyatta Evers at Medgar Evers’ funeral

Evers’ assassin, the unrepentant Byron De La Beckwith

Evers was one of Mississippi’s leading civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms from segregation to how the state and local legal systems handled crimes against African Americans. Evers’ work put him squarely in the crosshairs of the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist group formed in the aftermath of the Brown ruling devoted to preserving segregation. He garnered national attention for organizing demonstrations and boycotts to help integrate Jackson’s privately owned buses, the public parks, Mississippi’s Gulf Coast beaches as well as the Mississippi State Fair. He led voter registration drives, and helped secure legal assistance for James Meredith, a black man whose 1962 attempt to enroll in the University of Mississippi was met with riots and state resistance.

Evers’ home and the driveway where he was shot

Evers’ assassination was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement, a bloody milestone in the fight for racial equality that began with the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till eight years earlier. It would also prove to be a harbinger of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by James Earl Ray five years later. 

Brown vs. the Board of Education: May 17, 1954

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On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, that overturned the principle of “separate but equal” that served as the legal cornerstone for the system of racial segregation in the Jim Crow American South. The ruling would inspire and encourage African-Americans to challenge official segregation across the board, giving birth to what would become known as the Civil Rights Movement. It also provoked a violent and determined backlash from white supremacists power structures in the South who vowed a campaign of “massive resistance” to stymie implementation of the ruling.

Origins of Jim Crow

The origins of legally sanctioned racial segregation in the United States, or what would come to be known as Jim Crow, is usually traced back to the infamous 1896 Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson. However, the beginnings of segregation in the South began a decade earlier with a collapse in agriculture prices. This agricultural depression decimated poor white farmers throughout the South and gave rise to a wave of radical populist politicians demanding a more equitable economic system. Wealthy conservative white Southern Democrats who held power in antebellum period and reclaimed their lofty perch after the collapse of Reconstruction, were put on the defensive. With few cards to play and facing a growing threat to their power from an unlikely partnership of poor white farmers and African-Americans, the Democrats turned to the race card and white supremacy to distract, deflect, and divide claiming white civilization was at risk. These Southern, white, Democratic  governments passed various laws disenfranchising African-Americans and officially segregating black people from the white population by mandating separate schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. “Whites Only” and “Colored” signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order. It was authoritarian rule by one race directed at another.

Homer Plessy


As African-Americans witnessed the pernicious impact of the imposition of racially segregated public facilities, the Black community of New Orleans opted to mount a resistance. In 1890, Louisiana passed a new law that required railroads to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and colored races. Homer Plessy, who was only one-eighth African American but under Louisiana law was considered Colored, decided to test the constitutionality of that law. On June 7, 1892, Plessy agreed to be arrested for refusing to move from a seat reserved for whites. Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Ferguson upheld the law and the case slowly made its way up to the Supreme Court.

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-1 against Plessy, with the dissenting vote coming from Chief Justice John Harlan. The Court argued that equal but separate accommodations for whites and blacks imposed by Louisiana did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because plaintiff failed to prove that the separate accommodations were indeed inferior and that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights not “social rights.” In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky, argued that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution,” he wrote. “It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.”

Separate but Not Equal

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson gave an imprimatur of constitutionality to racial segregation but it also carried the seeds of its demise. By the late 1930s, racial segregation in the American South began to come under increased scrutiny. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was determined to dismantle the legal theory of “separate but equal” by demonstrating that separate facilities, especially in the field of education, were in fact inferior and of a substandard quality. Attorney Charles Houston, head of the NAACP legal defense fund and his young protege Thurgood Marshall argued several cases in front of the Supreme Court on a number of cases that they believed would collectively erode segregation. In one case after the next, from 1935-1950, the NAACP repeatedly demonstrated that Southern state government were incapable of meeting the standard of separate but equal. For example, In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1939) Houston argued that it was unconstitutional for Missouri to exclude blacks from the state’s university law school when, under the “separate but equal” provision, no comparable facility for blacks existed within the state. In Sweat v. Painter (1949), Marshall argued that a hastily established law school for African-Americans in Texas did not meet the standard of equality. The Court agreed unanimously arguing that a separate school would be inferior in a number of areas, including faculty, course variety, library facilities, legal writing opportunities, and overall prestige. The Court also found that the mere separation from the majority of law students harmed students’ abilities to compete in the legal arena.

Left: Charles Houston, Right: Thurgood Marshall. Houston would die from a heart attack in 1950 before he could see his work come to fruition.


Houston and Marshall’s effort benefited enormously from a Supreme Court had become more progressive since the Plessy ruling, especially after Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed eight out of nine justices during his 12 years in office. Since the end of the Civil War, the court had played a restraining role in the advancement of civil rights, limiting the Federal Government’s ability to protect African-Americans 14th Amendment rights. That trend would begin to reverse by the end of World War II and gather steam by the mid-1950s.

American society was also changing, albeit at a more gradual pace. African-American men volunteered en masse to serve their country in World War I and fought bravely on the frontlines only to return home to a wave of racially motivated violence. African-American men would again unquestioningly heed the call to service in World War II. And when they returned home, they again met a similar fate. This time the beatings and murders of recently returned African American veterans in the South captured national attention, as well as the anger of President Truman, “My stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten,” Truman said. “Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as president I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this.” In a dramatic step, Truman would begin by desegregating the military in 1948.

The arrest, beating and blinding of African American veteran Isaac Woodard by Batesburg, South Carolina police on February 12, 1946—hours after he was honorably discharged from the United States Army, and while still in uniform—caused a national furor and helped inspire Harry Truman’s move to desegregate the military.


Truman’s decision to integrate the U.S. military would fracture the Democratic Party and many Southern conservative white politicians who objected to this course organized themselves as a breakaway faction called the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats opposed racial integration and sought to maintain Jim Crow laws and white supremacist rule. They even ran an alternative candidate, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond in the 1948 presidential election, almost costing Truman the contest. Nonetheless, there were clear signs emerging that legalized racial segregation for the first time was now approaching a fatal rendezvous.

The Decline of Jim Crow

By 1950, the NAACP had amassed cases from Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, Washington DC, and Kansas challenging the separate but equal standard that were bundled into one case Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. The plaintiff, Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas after his daughter, Linda was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools. Brown, represented by NAACP Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall, claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment.

Wrapping up his presentation to the Court, Marshall emphasized that segregation was rooted in the desire to keep “the people who were formerly in slavery as near to that stage as is possible.”   Even with such powerful arguments from Marshall the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation. While most wanted to reverse Plessy and declare segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, they had various reasons for doing so. Unable to come to a solution by June 1953 (the end of the Court’s 1952-1953 term), the Court decided to rehear the case in December 1953. During the intervening months, however, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died and was replaced by Gov. Earl Warren of California. After the case was reheard in 1953, Chief Justice Warren was able to do something that his predecessor had not—i.e. bring all of the Justices to agree to support a unanimous decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. On May 14, 1954, he delivered the opinion of the Court, stating that “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . .” By overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities.

Massive Resistance Begins

The Brown decision held that school segregation was unconstitutional, but the decision did not explain how quickly nor in what manner desegregation was to be achieved. In May 1955, the Supreme Court issued its implementation guidelines in a decision generally referred to as Brown II. In this ruling the Supreme Court chose not to set a deadline for the completion of desegregation and ordered the lower federal courts to oversee and manage the pace of desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” an ambiguous phrase that left room for a variety of interpretations of the meaning of “deliberate speed.” While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it hoping to drag out implementation as long as possible.

For many Southerners, the Brown decision was tantamount to a declaration of war. In Mississippie Jackson Daily News called the decision “the worst thing that has happened to the South since carpetbaggers and scalawags took charge of our civil government in reconstruction days,” and said it would lead to “racial strife of the bitterest sort.” Mississippi’s powerful Senator James Eastland, declared that “the South will not abide by nor obey this legislative decision by a political body.” In Virginia, Senator Harry Byrd denounced the opinion as “the most serious blow that has yet been struck against the rights of the states in a matter vitally affecting their authority and welfare.” In 1956, 82 representatives and 19 senators endorsed a so-called “Southern Manifesto” in Congress, urging Southerners to use all “lawful means” at their disposal to resist the “chaos and confusion” that school desegregation would cause. In many parts of the South, white citizens’ councils organized to prevent compliance. Some of these groups relied on political action; others used intimidation and violence. In Mississippi, fourteen year-old Emmett Till would become one of the first victims of the supercharged racial tensions following the Brown decision. J.W. Milan, who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Till only to be found “not guilty” by an all-white jury declared, “Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids.”

Resistance to the Brown ruling varied from state to state as traditional respect for the rule of law had been overwritten by the misinformed conviction of millions that the Brown decision was not the law of the land but the product of a federal government taken over by conspiratorial and foreign subversives. In Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in September 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the Little Rock Nine entered under armed guard. Troops remained in Little Rock for the 1957-1958 school year. After the troops were withdrawn, however, Governor Faubus closed Little Rock’s public schools for the 1958-1959 school year. 

Left: Opposition to desegregation in Arkansas, Right: Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine


In Virginia, officials passed legislation closing public schools, diverting tax dollars into private academies to pay tuition for white students, while ensuring there was nothing in place for African-American children to receive an education. In Prince Edward County, the public school system would remain closed for five years in which African-American students were educated in activity centers that the African-American community cobbled together.

In Mississippi, the state would resist federal orders to integrate the University of Mississippi and in September 1962, 320 U.S. Marshall’s protected African-American James Meredith as registered at the University. Meredith’s registration would prompt what would become known as the “Battle of Oxford,” in which mobs armed with gasoline bombs, iron bars, rocks, and firearms attacked the marshals and federalize National Guardsmen. The battle raged all night and by dawn, when the mob had been dispersed, two people were killed and 375 injured, 166 of them marshals, 29 by gunshot.

The next year the drama continued in Alabama, where Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the Registrar’s office at the University of Alabama to prevent African-Americans Vivian Malone and James Hood tried to register. When Wallace refused to budge, President John F. Kennedy called for 100 troops from the Alabama National Guard to assist federal officials. Wallace chose to step down rather than incite violence.

Beginning of the End

The Brown decision annihilated the separate but equal standard but it fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation’s public schools. Nevertheless, Brown still remains one of thee most important Supreme Court rulings in the 200 plus year story of our country. By focusing the nation’s attention on subjugation of African-Americans, it helped fuel a wave of freedom rides, sit-ins, voter registration efforts, and other actions leading ultimately to civil rights legislation in the late 1950s and 1960s.




Redemption, May 15, 1972

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On May 15, 1972, the controversial  Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was shot five times by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland while campaigning for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.  One of those bullets would lodge itself in Wallace’ spinal chord cutting short his campaign and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down the rest of his life. Known for having coined the words “Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever,” was a central figure in the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. He also was a charismatic figure and a talented politician with a natural ability to commune with the common man using a mix of race and rage.

Wallace’s paralysis would prompt a great deal of soul searching within him and place him squarely on the road to racial redemption and reconciliation. In 1979, he went to a church in Montgomery, Ala., where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had once been pastor. There, he spoke of having learned the meaning of suffering, “I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure,” he said. “I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

In 1982, Wallace ran for Governor a fourth time and won. In that race, he carried all 10 of the state’s counties with a majority black population, nine of them by a better than two-to-one margin. Wallace would go on to hire a black press secretary, appoint more than 160 blacks to state governing boards and double the number of black voter registrars in Alabama’s 67 counties. In part, it was the politics of patronage but on a deeper level it was using his waning political power to make amends with those he once scorned. In 1998, civil rights icon John Lewis, who suffered at the hands of Wallace’s state troopers on the Edmund Pettis bridge in 1965 would write that George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change, not his racism. Lewis would write, “I can never forget what George Wallace said and did as Governor, as a national leader and as a political opportunist. But our ability to forgive serves a higher moral purpose in our society. Through genuine repentance and forgiveness, the soul of our nation is redeemed. George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his effort to redeem his soul and in so doing to mend the fabric of American society.”