Today, May 17, marks the 50th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's announcement, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and related cases, that the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional in public schools. This marked the beginning of a long process in which legal racial segregation was attacked in more and more realms - one part of the continuing journey towards racial equality and racial justice.
Though the opinion in Brown is not what one might wish it to be, I have deep sympathy for what it took to get to the decision at all - much less a unanimous one. To those who challenge the lack of implementation (which was left to the lower federal courts), I ask you to consider whether immediate remedy orders from the Supreme Court itself would have resulted in less, rather than more, violence than the Court's chosen path.
Some required reading for this day:
34 US 483 (1954)
The opinion itself
"A Lackluster Golden Anniversary"
by Danielle S. Allen, The University of Chicago
"Brown at 50"
by Eric Foner (Columbia) and Randall Kennedy (Harvard), The Nation
"Black, White, and Brown"
Conversation between Cornel West (Princeton) and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Harvard),
moderated by Sam Tanenhaus, NYT
[UPDATE (May 23): Read Jeremy's sermon on Brown.]
[UPDATE (June 1): More thoughts on Brown.]
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