1954

Brown v Board of Education (May)
Massive Resistance" to integration
White Citizens Council Formed (July)
Murder Trial of Ruby McCollom (Oct)
Citizenship Schools (1954-196?)

Brown v Board of Education Decision (May)

Back in 1951, the NAACP and local parents and community groups began filing lawsuits against school segregation in various parts of the country as described in (NAACP Builds the Case). In December of 1952, the United States Supreme Court consolidates 5 of the school desegregation cases under the name Brown v Board of Education (see Students and Parents Challenge School Segregation).

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren reads the decision of the unanimous Court:

"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

By ruling in favor of the plaintiffs the Supreme Court strikes down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v Ferguson in regards to public education and mandates the desegregation of schools across America. But the decision does not explicitly overturn segregation in other areas such as public accomodations, "private" schools, housing, employment, government contracts, college admissions, and so on. Nor does it require immediate desegregation of public schools, or even desegregation by a certain date.

For more information:
Books: Schools and School Desegregation
Web: Brown v. Board of Education 1950-1954

"Massive Resistance" to Integration

In the South and elsewhere, reaction to the Brown decision is swift and negative (in some cases violently so). Virginia is ruled by Senator Harry Byrd's political machine, and he issues a "Southern Manifesto" calling for "Massive Resistance" to school integration. Byrd's "Massive Resistance" strategy to maintain school segregation is widely adopted by school boards and state governments throughout the South, and by 1956 more than 100 southern officeholders have signed the manifesto. In Virginia, for example, the 1954 the Democratic Party gubernatorial campaign platform resolves that, "The state [will] oppose it [integration] with every facility at our command, and with every ounce of our energy."

The details of "Massive resistance" vary from state to state and county to county. In Virginia, for example, it includes:

Enactment of state laws eliminating funding — or closing — integrated public schools, and allowing the state to seize and close any school that dares to integrate.
The power to assign students to specific schools is removed from local school boards and placed in a state-wide board of appointees who, of course, refuse to assign any Black child to a previously all-white school.
When schools are closed to prevent integration, white students are issued grants (today they call them "vouchers") that can be used to pay tuition for segregated private schooling (segregation in private schools was not prohibited by the Brown decision).
Tax credits are also granted to parents who send their children to segregated private schools.
Laws are enacted allowing local school boards to use public funds to pay for transporting white students to segregated private schools.
Teachers who attended college on state scholoarships that require them to teach in Virginia's public schools are allowed to fulfill their obligation by teaching in segregated private schools, and to continue participating in the state teacher retirement system while doing so.
When the Court of Appeals overturns the law allowing the state to close integrated schools, the legislature repeals the state-wide compulsory school-attendance law. In effect, this means that counties are no longer required to provide public schools, and they can choose to close their schools if they wish to do so. Counties are permitted to pass local compulsory attendence laws if they so desire, but county-level compulsory attendance laws have to allow parents to withdraw their children from integrated schools, even if no other schooling is available.

Virginia's Prince Edward County (site of the Student Strike at Moton High that helped initiate the desegregation movement) becomes a model for "Massive Resistance" on the part of the white authorities.

A new and larger Moton High School is built in 1954 in an effort to show that the school board is providing "separate but equal" facilities to Blacks. The old Moton High buildings are converted to a Black elementary school. This ploy, the new state laws, and the Supreme Court's 1955 "All Deliberate Speed" decision, allow Prince Edward county to maintain segregation for more than a decade.

For more information:
Books: Schools and School Desegregation
Web: Brown v. Board of Education 1950-1954

White Citizens Council Formed (July)

In response to Brown v Board of Education white business leaders and politicians organize the White Citizens Council to defend white supremacy, resist integration, and supress all efforts on the part of Blacks to improve their lives. Quickly spreading across the South, the councils use economic retaliation, public condemnation, legislative lobbying, and legal strategems to preserve the "Southern way of life." While Blacks are the main focus of council attacks, any whites who accept integration or refuse to retailiate against Blacks are also targeted.

In 1985, former leaders of the White Citizens Council found the "Council of Conservative Citizens," an organization that today still follows the reactionary, white-supremecy tradition of the White Citizens Councils.

For more information:
Web: White Citizens Council

Murder Trial of Ruby McCollum

Back in 1952, Ruby McCollum, a Black woman, shot her white doctor who was also a prominent politician. At her 1954 trial in Live Oak FL — a small town half way between Jacksonville and Tallahassee — she testifies that he raped her and forced her to bear his child. And that he continued to force sex on her, and that she was pregnant with his second child at the time of the murder. She also testifies that her husband had threatened to kill her if she bore another child by the doctor, and the doctor had threatened to kill her if she had an abortion. Her trial is covered by Zora Neal Hurston for the Pittsburgh Courier and William Bradford Huie later writes a book about the case. Through her testimony, McCollum publicly exposes the southern practice of what Hurston calls "Paramour Rights."

"Paramour Rights" refers to the assumption that white men have a "right" to use Black women for sex regardless of whether or not they are willing, or married to someone else. Back in slavery times, Black women were the sexual property of white slave owners. After the Civil War, that attitude continued. At the time of Ruby's trial, many white men who have some position of economic, social, or judicial power over a Black woman assume their power includes "Paramour Rights." This practice is known in southern white communities who, through their silence, condone it. When McCollum testifies in her 1954 trial that her doctor had forced her to bear his child, and then threatened to kill her if she refused to bear him a second child, she exposes the practice and forces the community to admit what they have known all along.

The judge in the 1954 murder trial is a close friend and pall-bearer of the white doctor. Ruby McCollum is convicted and sentenced to death. The conviction is later overturned by the Florida Supreme Court. Rather than retry her — which would raise the "Paramour Rights" issue again — a court declares her "insane" and incarcerates her for for many years in a mental institution.

For more information:
Books: Ruby McCollum Murder Trial
Web: Ruby McCollum Murder Trial for web links.

Citizenship Schools (1954-196?)
Photos

Started by Esau Jenkins in the South Carolina Sea Islands in 1954, Citizenship Schools initially focus on teaching adults to read so they can pass the voter-registration "literacy tests."

Under the auspices of first the Highlander Center and later the Southern Christian Leadership Conferance (SCLC), Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and Septima Clark, expand the program across the South.

Under the innocuous cover of adult-literacy classes, the schools secretly teach democracy and civil rights, community leadership and organizing, practical politics, and the strategies and tactics of resistance and struggle. Many of the Movement's adult leaders such as Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and hundreds of unsung local leaders in Black communities across the South attend and teach Citizenship Schools, and in so doing lay the secret foundation of the mass community struggles to come.

For more information:
Books:
Ready From Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement
Echo in My Soul
Web: Citizenship Schools

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