Separate ‘Inherently Unequal’: NorCal Bar Marks 70 Years Of Brown

The Federal Bar Association and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Historical Society held a 70th anniversary commemoration for Brown v. Board of Education at San Francisco’s federal courthouse on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (Bonnie Eslinger | Outlaw360)

To members of the San Francisco press, Abraham Simmons is the friendly Department of Justice media contact when trying to get information about a Northern District of California criminal court case. 

But standing in the Thelton Henderson Ceremonial Courtroom on Sept. 12, Simmons became Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights attorney who argued in Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court, which subsequently ruled in 1953 against racial segregation in public schools.

“It makes no difference whether we say that the Negro is wronged because he is segregated, or that he is wronged because he received unequal treatment,” Simmons said with the dramatic flair of a man fighting to right a historical wrong.

He concluded with equal conviction.

“The only thing can be is an inherent determination that the people who were formerly in slavery, regardless of anything else, shall be kept as near that stage as is possible, and now is the time, we submit, that this Court should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for,” he announced to those assembled.

The case’s 70th anniversary commemoration, held at San Francisco’s federal courthouse, was presented by the Federal Bar Association and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Historical Society. The presentation, which included courtroom reenactments, also put a spotlight on several segregation cases brought together before the high court with Brown: Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County, Bolling v. Sharpe and Bulah v Gebhart. Together, they challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine set in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Among those participating in the 70th anniversary commemoration were U.S. District Judges Haywood Gilliam, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, Rita F. Lin, Araceli Martinez-Olguin, P. Casey Pitts and Trina L. Thompson; Assistant United States Attorney Jonathan Lee; Assistant Federal Defender Tamara Crepet; and California Deputy Attorney General Arvon Perteet. The cast also included three local high school students who had won a Federal Bar Association civics contest about the Brown decision.

Kicking off the evening event, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee told the audience of FBA members, students and others that the presentation aimed to honor “the sheer courage it took the litigants to pursue these five cases.”

The 1952 Briggs v. Elliott case challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina, and was the first of the five cases that were combined into the Brown v. Board of Education decision. 

In that case, there was no school bus for African American students, some of whom walked great distances each way to school, as many as 5 or 6 miles each, Lee said.

Plaintiffs Harry and Eliza Briggs, a service station attendant and a hotel maid, respectively, were both fired from their jobs due to their participation in the litigation.

A three-judge district panel ruled against the plaintiffs in the Briggs case, with U.S. District Judge Julius Warren dissenting.

U.S. District Judge Martínez-Olguín, one of the 70th anniversary participants, read from Judge Warren’s opinion.

“To me the situation is clear and important, particularly at this time when our national leaders are called upon to show to the world that our democracy means what it says and that it is a true democracy and there is no under-cover suppression of the rights of any of our citizens because of the pigmentation of their skins,” he wrote.

The concerns brought by the second case, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County, came to the attention of the NAACP after Black students at Robert Russa Moton High School in Virginia began protesting that they were stuck in an old, crowded campus while white students attended classes at a new high school with proper facilities.

Led by 16-year-old Barbara Johns, Black students at Morton decided to strike over the unequal school conditions. After a burning cross was found in her family's yard. Johns left the area and her family to live in Alabama with her uncle, where she finished high school. Her uncle, the Rev. Vernon Johns, was an early civil rights pioneer and pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, preceding Martin Luther King Jr. in the pulpit.

The three-judge panel in that case unanimously rejected the students’ request for integrated schools, stating in their ruling that “we have found no hurt or harm to either race” and the “separation of white and colored children in the public schools of Virginia has for generations been a part of the mores of her people.”

The third case, Bolling v. Sharpe, was filed by a group of Black students who sued a Washington, D.C., school board after it refused to allow them to attend a newly constructed middle school for white children, John Philip Sousa Junior High School.

The new school had ample capacity, Lee said, while the schools for Black students were so overcrowded that they held classes in shifts. The case, which didn’t challenge the unequal conditions but segregation itself, was dismissed by the district court.

In Delaware, Bulah v. Gebhart and Belton v. Gebhart were both filed by parents and subsequently combined. Francis Gebhart was among the State Board of Education members named as defendants in the litigation.

Sarah Bulah testified that her daughter and other Black children were not allowed to board the school bus that passed in front of her house. Instead, Bulah said, she drove her daughter 2 miles to a one-room schoolhouse that served Black students.

The Court of Chancery decided for the plaintiffs, ruling that the students were denied equal protection of the law and were entitled to admission to white schools in their communities. The Board of Education appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The last of the cases was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 

The lead plaintiff, Oliver Brown, 32, was a welder for the Santa Fe Railroad and an assistant Methodist pastor. His daughter, Linda, a third-grader, walked six blocks to catch the school bus to ride to her school located 1 mile from their Topeka home, while a white school was just seven blocks from her home. Twelve other families were also represented in the suit brought by the NAACP.

Attorney Marshall and the other lawyers for plaintiffs argued that the system of segregation in Topeka made Black children feel inferior, and that psychological research showed that feeling made them less motivated to learn.

During the Sept. 12 event in San Francisco, excerpts of the testimony heard in the district court case were reenacted.

An expert witness for the plaintiffs was Michigan State College social science professor Wilbur B. Brookover, portrayed by Assistant Federal Defender Crepet. Under direct examination, Brookover said a Black child attending a racially segregated school receives less benefit than if he or she attended a racially integrated school.

“In American society we consistently present to the child a model of democratic equality of opportunity,” Brookover had told the court. “At the same time, in a segregated school situation, he is presented a contradictory or inharmonious model. He is presented a school situation in which it is obvious that he is a subordinate, inferior kind of a citizen.”

In 1951, a three-judge panel ruled in favor of the board, finding that there was no violation of Plessy v. Ferguson, but Judge Walter A. Huxman, in writing the court's opinion, included the findings of fact that adopted the plaintiff's claim of psychological injury to Black students.

When the consolidated cases came before the Supreme Court in 1952, Marshall argued the case for the plaintiffs. The central argument was that separate school systems for Black students and white students were inherently unequal and a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution. He also presented the results of sociological tests, including one performed by social scientists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who used dolls to study children's attitudes about race. The majority of the children who participated in the studies preferred a white doll, leading to the Clarks’ conclusion that discrimination and segregation damaged the self-esteem of African American children.

In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision, declaring the concept of separate but equal in public schools to be unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judges Lin, Thompson, Gonzalez Rogers and Gilliam each read from the decision, penned by then-Chief Justice Earl Warren.  

“In these days,” Judge Thompson read, “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

“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?” she continued. “We believe that it does.”

Judge Gonzalez Rogers took it from there.

To separate children in grade and high schools “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,” the judge read from the ruling.

Then it was Judge Gilliam’s turn.

“Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority,” Judge Gilliam read, later adding, “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 

The program from the Federal Bar Association’s Northern District of California Chapter concluded with a statement from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund saying that the legal fight and the decision striking down segregation was an important catalyst for the civil rights movement. It also noted that the legal victory in Brown didn’t transform the country overnight, “and much work remains.”

—Editing by Michael Watanabe and Emily Kokoll.