May 18, 1896 – I’ll almost bet that virtually no one knows without looking it up what happened on this date. One of the worst travesties of justice ever handed down by the US Supreme Court, Plessy v Ferguson, was decided. It enshrined the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’.
May 17, 1954 – Almost fifty-eight years to the day later, the US Supreme Court corrected its mistake in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It threw ‘separate but equal’ on the garbage heap of history where it had belonged all along.
Hey, they fixed it, right? Sure it took… almost… sixty… years. Sheesh!
Fifty-eight years of Jim Crow. Don’t kid yourself – Jim Crow type laws and practices were not isolated to the South. Red lining was common in Southern California. Detroit and Chicago were so segregated by neighborhood that it impacted how people speak – and is still common in those towns and New York to this day (hence different accents in different boroughs). Fifty-eight years of laws and practices that the Court claimed were constitutional and which separated Black Americans from their constitutional rights and a lot of economic opportunity.
The first sit ins were actually in the 1920’s – to little effect. The first effective use of sit ins was in 1960 in Greensboro, SC. We tend to date the Civil Rights Movement from this latter date (or to 1954 – for obvious reasons) – but a whole heck of a lot happened before then – all over the country.
It took nearly SIX DECADES of hard work before the US Supreme Court reversed the ridiculous decision in Plessy.
That’s one of a number of examples of just how very long it can take to win a political fight in the US. And yes, it was a political fight. Every one of the justices on the Court in 1896 knew darn well that separate but equal didn’t really make good legal sense – and they also knew that there was considerable political support nationwide for separating the races. Do the right thing, or do the popular thing – we have the benefit of hindsight to see what the Court chose in 1896.
Because court decisions don’t happen in the rarified objective world we want them to – they happen in the real, very political world. That isn’t an excuse – nor does it mean in any way that the courts should not strive for objectivity – quite the opposite. Any court that is biased is an unjust court – whether it has City or Supreme, or any other name, before the word ‘court’. But the reality is, if WE don’t insist on high judicial standards, courts will bow to whatever political winds DO blow their way.
But on May 19, 1896, it must have come as a horrible blow to those who were fighting for the Constitution to be upheld for all Americans. No doubt some gave up – the Supreme Court had just turned its back on justice.
What else was there to do?
But the reason that the Court had a case before it to decide on May 17, 1954 is because the majority of those folks didn’t give up. They got back up and kept fighting. They built schools and universities – some among the finest in the nation – to train the people who the Supreme Court had let down. To give them both better economic opportunities and to make sure that they could keep up the fight. Doctors and lawyers, farmers and tradesmen – a host of young black men and women came out of those schools – and refused to accept that they were not entitled to anything less than equal under the law.
They invented two schools of music (blues and jazz). They produced two of America’s greatest athletes just when she needed them most (Joe Louis and Jessie Owens). They made significant contributions in medicine, arts, industry and science – all under the weight of the injustice of Jim Crow.
Then they got a new case before the Supreme Court – this time after decades of black people proving over and over again that they were just as deserving as anyone else. That was something that should never have needed proving. But instead of whining about the injustice, they fought back against that injustice – and ultimately won.
This is just a short blog post – I haven’t covered a fraction of the history involved in those nearly sixty years. And I don’t think I can convey how utterly hopeless things must have looked in 1896. Or in all the subsequent losses – because no one wins every fight. How many times when they were confronted with yet another setback – or some soul rending tragedy derived from those injustices – must they have wanted to just quit? How many times did they wonder whether moving someplace else – Europe or Africa or ANYWHERE else – might not be the best idea? How many times did they feel like they couldn’t fight another minute – that it was all hopeless and all much too much?
Many, many times. Never think less of someone because they have thoughts of giving up – we all do at some point. But always have the utmost respect for those who pick themselves back up and keep going anyway. Quitting is easy – fighting for decades just so a stupid Court will acknowledge the truth – that’s hard.
And that’s exactly what three generations of black Americans did.
Sometimes the political landscape just looks so hopeless. The deck is stacked against us. The country is going insane. The Court we rely on won’t do the right thing. Yeah, things can BE bleak.
And they can be CHANGED. If we just won’t quit.
