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IN THIS ISSUE

Table of Contents

Letter from the President: The Answers, My Friend, Are Blowin' in the Wind

How Do We Carry on the Legacy of Brown?

Notes on the Right — Winds of Change: Is Conservatism Dead?

Will Civil Rights be High on the Agenda of the New Congress?

New Tactic: Placing Right-Wing Loyalists in US Attorney Posts

Between the Lines - The State of Black California: 'Three-Fifths Compromise'

"Achingly Beautiful" - EJS' 2006 Annual Gala

EJS Student Art Show Honors Little Rock Nine

Staff News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldón

Email Feedback

How Do We Carry On
the Legacy of Brown?

By Charles Ogletree
Chair, EJS Board of Directors

On December 4, I attended the United States Supreme Court oral arguments in  Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.

I felt it was important to be in the courtroom that day because I am deeply concerned that for more than a half century after the glorious Brown v. Board of Education, the court is bringing us  to a rather inglorious moment in history. It seems unreal, after the laudable legal progress of the past 53 years, that we must gird ourselves for losing Brown, at least in spirit.

The justices will decide as early as this spring, whether or not school districts may employ policies specifically designed to achieve racial diversity in K-12 school campuses.

Specifically, the educators in Louisville and Seattle sought to achieve racially mixed classrooms by allowing parents choices about where to send their children to school. In some rare cases, a child’s first choice of school might be denied if his or her enrollment upset a school’s racial balance. Conservative advocates took on the cause of a handful of parents whose children had been denied their first choice. They sued in federal court. Lower federal courts consistently decided in favor of the school districts' efforts to achieve desegregation.

Walking into the Supreme Court building, I was heartened by the chants along First Street Northeast, emanating from a crowd of young people, parents, teachers and activists. They’d gathered below the Supreme Court steps in cold, windy weather to voice their support for desegregation. High school and college students from across the country  had ridden buses to march from the Supreme Court to the Lincoln Memorial, where they listened  to speeches, holding signs reading “Save Brown v. Board of Education,” and “Integrate Don’t Segregate.”

About two hours later, in the packed courtroom, I listened to the justices ask the lawyers in the cases some telling questions. It was no surprise that the conservative members of the High Court expressed skepticism about the school districts’ attempts to achieve diversity. But most dispiriting was that the potential swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, also revealed his distaste for the school districts’ policies. To hear Justice Kennedy question not the goal of racial diversity per se, but the particular means by which it’s being achieved - that is by taking race into account in school assignments – seemed to seal Brown’s fate.

Where do we go next? With our guiding light Brown all but snuffed out, how will we shape the sort of society – one with equal life chances – to which Americans still aspire? It’s at moments like these that the lessons and life of one of the nation’s most important and often overlooked civil rights heroes, Charles Hamilton Houston, can offer guidance and hope.

In 2005, I founded an institute at Harvard, Houston’s alma mater, that bears Houston’s name in an effort to carry on his important work. Civil rights historians often refer to Houston as the “Moses” of the struggle.  Houston used the law and scholarship as tools in creating a more equal and just society. It was Houston’s legal scholarship, his meticulously developed strategies and dignified ferocity that paved the long road to Brown in 1954, decided four years after Houston’s untimely death from heart failure in 1950. As vice-dean at Howard Law School, Houston trained legal luminaries of the civil rights movement, including Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley.

In the pursuit of securing a more just democracy, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice has four goals:  improving educational opportunities for racial minority children, reducing the numbers of children entering the juvenile justice system, improving opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, and eliminating the death penalty.

Houston’s legacy is also evident in the work of the Equal Justice Society, which I am proud to serve as Chair of the Board.  EJS also believes that the legal profession should be guided by service to a society where racial justice is paramount. That is why we at EJS, as part of the Caucus for Structural Equity, filed an amicus brief supporting the Seattle and Louisville local school districts’ efforts.   Our amicus brief, relying on the legal scholarship that Houston was noted for, urges the Court to uphold the constitutionality of the efforts of local districts to eradicate segregation. We argue that Brown and a long line of Supreme Court precedents recognize the need for school districts to “use limited race-conscious means to achieve and preserve integration… [because] [w]here the goal [i]s integration, color conscious means [a]re not only constitutional but necessary…”  

Seventy years ago, Houston viewed legalized segregation as a roadblock to full citizenship for African Americans. In the 21^st century, legalized, state-sponsored segregation might be off the books, but huge inequalities and roadblocks still stand in the way. The nation’s persistent racial inequalities, borne in large part through racial discrimination, show up particularly clearly in schools and are a reflection of inequality in other sectors of society. Sadly, racial disparities within the criminal justice system parallel those found in schools. This is no coincidence.

“At a moment when ... (African-Americans), scarcely the beneficiary of America’s bounty even in good times, were viewed as more expendable than ever," writes journalist Richard Kluger, in his book, Simple Justice, “only a fool or a man of extraordinary determination would have undertaken the battle for racial justice. Charles Houston was no fool.”

History reminds us, then, that even in the face of defeat, Houston and his students would have kept working, thinking, acting and looking for that new road to equality. Houston wouldn’t have given up until he found an entrance, no matter how small. Neither then, should we. 

Editors’ note:  This article is adapted from a piece published in Crisis magazine.

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