Warriors+Don't+Cry_Context

The Context of the Story Melba Pattillo was born at a time in history when in the words of historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., “America was two nations—one white, one black, separate and unequal.” He likens the segregation that marked that era to “a wall, a system, a way of separating people from people.” That wall did not go up in a single day. It was built—“brick by brick, bill by bill, fear by fear.” In the 1940s and early 1950s, when Melba Pattillo was growing up in Arkansas, that wall seemed almost impenetrable. Yet during those years, a few Americans, both black and white, were chipping away at segregation—little by little, step by step. A major victory came on Monday, May 17, 1954. On that day, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in a case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The ruling overturned nearly 60 years of forced segregation in many of the nation’s schools. The justices argued that separating some children from others solely on account of their race “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the com- munity that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” They declared 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. . . are. . . deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, three years after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect the rights of formerly enslaved African Americans. For the first time in American history, they were regarded as cit- izens of the United States equal to any other citizen. The amendment defines a U.S. citizen as a person “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the juris- diction thereof.” It declares that no state may pass laws that “abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” deprive “any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” or deny “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Growth of Segregation Despite the Fourteenth Amendment, the rights of African Americans in the late 1800s were constantly under attack almost everywhere in the nation, but most par- ticularly in the South. For example, in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed discrimination, was unconstitutional because it violated the right of businesses, institutions, and civic organizations to choose their customers, employees, and/or members. The justices claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to state governments. A few years later, an African American named Homer Plessy challenged segrega- tion on streetcars in Louisiana, his home state. He claimed that they violated his rights as a citizen of the United States. In 1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. Eight of the nine justices main- tained that separate facilities for blacks do not violate the rights of black Americans as long as their facilities are equal to those provided for whites. Only one justice dis- agreed. In his dissent, John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky, wrote: “In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” Nearly 60 years would pass before the Supreme Court heeded Harlan’s words. The decision in Plessy v. Ferguson permitted the growth of a system of state and local laws, known as “Jim Crow” laws. They established racial barriers in almost every aspect of life. In many places, black and white Americans could not publicly eat, travel, or sit side by side. Churches, schools, movie theaters, even cemeteries were segregated.

Challenging Segregation Over the years, Americans formed a number of organizations to oppose segregation. Among them was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP). Its founders included both black and white Americans. In 1935, the group set into motion a plan to systematically challenge Jim Crow in court by invit- ing Professor Charles Houston of Howard University Law School to become its chief council. Soon after, Thurgood Marshall, a former student, joined him. The two lawyers along with other civil rights attorneys initially focused their efforts on segre- gation in higher education, because they knew that few states could afford “separate but equal” legal, medical, and other professional training for their black and white students. Slowly, the NAACP’s legal team made progress. In 1949, the Supreme Court ruled that a Texas law school set up only for African American students did not meet the standard of equality because of “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for the greatness in a law school” [Sweatt v. Painter]. In a 1950 decision [McLaurin v. Oklahoma], the justices concluded that an African American student at the University of Oklahoma was not receiving an education equal to that of white students as long as he was segregated in the classroom, cafete- ria, and library. The court ruled that “such restrictions impair and inhibit his ability to study, engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and in gen- eral, to learn his profession.” Little by little, ruling by ruling, the wall that separated Americans was coming down. After chipping away at segregation in higher education, NAACP lawyers turned their attention to segregation in the nation’s public schools. This time they supported cases filed in four states and the District of Columbia. Each challenged the constitutionality of separating children by race. In late 1952, the justices decided that the cases were so similar that they should be heard together. So they combined them into a single case which came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. The Supreme Court’s decision came in May of 1954. The following September, the first African American students enrolled in formerly all-white schools in Washington, D.C., and 150 school districts in eight states, including Arkansas. At the same time, a number of people in the South organized groups opposing integra- tion. When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Brown case, the justices did not provide guidelines for ending segregation in the nation’s public schools. They waited until May 31, 1955, to rule that the federal courts were to decide whether a school district was acting in “good faith” by desegregating its schools “with all delib- erate speed.” Among the few Southern governors to applaud the decision was Orval Faubus of Arkansas. Some school boards in Arkansas issued plans for desegregation even before the Supreme Court issued its second decision. Others, like the Little Rock School Board, drew up its plan in response to the ruling. As required by the Supreme Court, a fed- eral district court reviewed the Little Rock plan and approved it as a “good faith” effort. Between 1955 and 1957, the year it was to go into effect, Virgil Blossom, the superintendent of schools, presented the plan to dozens of civic groups, PTAs, and other organizations in the white community. Voters had a say in the plan as well. In the spring of 1957, it was an issue in the election of the Little Rock School Board. For the most part, the winners in that election supported the plan. Despite the pro- tests of a few noisy segregationists, many people in Little Rock and elsewhere were confident that the plan would be implemented peacefully, with little or no conflict.