How far has equality come since Brown? Fifty years after a schoolgirl's bid for equal education launched the Civil Rights struggle in the US, Hannibal B Johnson takes stock

For A Change, Dec, 2004 by Hannibal B. Johnson

Words often beguile. Witness the United States' Declaration of Independence and its assertion that 'all men are created equal'. Its 'all' did not mean all; its 'men' did not mean 'humanity' or 'people' in the inclusive, universal sense. 'All men' meant all white men.

The US has since attempted, in fits and starts, to bring her behaviour into sync with her lofty ideals. Nowhere is the dissonance between principle and practice more pronounced than among those in the breach, particularly African-Americans.

In 2004, the US marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education. In this Oliver L Brown sued the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, over a white school's refusal to admit his daughter, Linda. The decision in his favour crystallized the fight against racial segregation.

Brown was part of a legal strategy crafted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and lawyers affiliated to the Howard University Law School in Washington, DC. It involved appeals in public (state) school desegregation cases in Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Oliver L Brown's case provided the marquee for all the others.

At the time, the infamous 1896 prosegregation ruling, Plessy v Ferguson, reigned supreme. Public schools, public transportation, theatres, restaurants, toilets and even drinking fountains bore either 'White' or 'Coloured' signs. Coloured facilities proved universally inferior.

On 17 May 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously overruled Plessy, declaring segregation unconstitutional in public education. Chief Justice Earl Warren decreed: 'We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.'

Brown became a watershed case. Mountains of hope rested on its bold, principled conclusion. Waves of dreams crested around its frontal assault on American apartheid. Yet, with the passage of time, vast valleys of reality still loom between Brown's soaring rhetorical peaks.

Brown's sound exceeded its fury. Instantaneously repudiated by some and only grudgingly implemented by others, it precipitated a firestorm of consternation and controversy. The Supreme Court's near-paradoxical exhortation to act 'with all deliberate speed' unwittingly sanctioned a halting implementation of its edict. It also fomented deep-seated racial polarization.

Many whites, out of ignorance and fear, fled the cities for the suburbs and created 'segregation academies'. Remnants of that backlash remain visible, most notably in the form of decaying, disproportionately minority inner cities and public school systems.

The steely idealism implicit in Brown no longer seems unalloyed. Few American schools lay claim to true racial integration. Even among desegregated schools, racial isolationism too often occurs. Integration remains illusory.

Some disillusioned African-Americans still harbour ambivalence about Brown. They complain that desegregation dismantled an important community institution, the black school, and replaced critical African-American role models, black teachers and administrators.

Today, disparities in wealth and living patterns coalesce to create a kind of 'neo-segregation'. Schools with predominantly minority populations exhibit higher incidences of poverty, garner fewer governmental resources, and produce less favourable results in standardized, theoretically objective, tests.

Brown, though, stepped beyond the schoolyard gates. It trampled upon white supremacist notions deeply embedded in the American psyche and reasserted a core belief in the ideals embodied in the United States Constitution.

The legacy of Brown remains prodigious, if not wholly pristine. Brown marked a sea change in American society and altered the socio-political landscape for ever. It signalled the beginning of the end of legalized, formalistic inequality. It heralded a host of hard-fought advances for African-Americans. Change came quickly after 1954, as a series of protests, conflicts and martyrs spurred advances in law (see box p6). Martin Luther King Jr stands as the quintessential icon of the civil rights era--a true patriot who challenged America to practise what she preached. King gave voice to those long muzzled by oppression. He and a chorus of disciples challenged the US on moral grounds. They commanded respect, captured the world stage, and changed a nation.

King's meteoric rise to prominence ended in martyrdom, aged 39, on 4 April 1968, when he was gunned down as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His death stunned the world. Urban riots ensued as outraged and distraught African-Americans let loose long-suppressed frustrations and hostilities. Congress eventually honoured Dr King with a federal holiday in 1983. We celebrate the movement behind the man.

Brown and subsequent advances in civil rights spurred a still-evolving journey toward freedom, justice, and equality. In the apocryphal words of an African-American elder: 'Things ain't like they oughta be. Things ain't like they gonna be. But thank God things ain't like they was!'