Congressman Elijah E. Cummings Proudly Representing Maryland's 7th District

Before Brown/Beyond Boundaries:
Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

April 13, 2004

Celebration of Diversity Week Address
Northern Virginia Community College
Alexandria, Virginia

Thank you, Mr. [Bruce] Carroll, for your kind words of introduction B and for all the work that you, Keith Wynn and everyone else on the organizing committee have done to make this celebration of our diversity a success.

Good afternoon, everyone.  Please join me in thanking the Celebration of Diversity Committee, the NVCC Affirmative Action Office, and the Alexandria Honors and Tutorials Programs for all of their support.

I am honored to join you here at Northern Virginia Community College as we celebrate the strength and shared humanity of our diversity.

Chancellor [Dr. Barbara A.] Wyles B On behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus that I lead, allow me to express our appreciation to you and your colleagues for your strong and visionary leadership of this important academic institution.

Working hand-in-hand with President [Robert] Templin, you are opening the door to excellence and understanding for a large and diverse student body.

The importance of your work cannot be overstated.  To paraphrase former Chief Justice [Earl] Warren=s observation in Brown v. Board of Education:

In these days, it is doubtful that anyone may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he or she is denied the opportunity of an education.

And to all of the faculty, students and community leaders who have joined us this afternoon:

Thank you.

Thank you for taking these few moments from your busy lives to consider, once again, where we have been in our long struggle to become a society that, truly, offers "liberty and justice to all."

Thank you for your intense interest in where our nation is headed during these difficult and dangerous times when national unity is more important than ever before.

Next month B on May 17^th to be precise B America will reach the 50^th anniversary of the Supreme Court=s Brown decision.

And as an American of color, who has lived through those fifty years in America, I have been asked to share my perspective on your very ambitious, but important, Diversity Week theme:

        "Before Brown B Beyond Boundaries."

There are those B and I am among them B who view the impact of Brown v. Board of Education as a work in progress.

Yet, your Diversity Week theme is a good one.

The theme that you have chosen reflects this undeniable truth:

Our continuing challenge as Americans is to move beyond the self-imposed boundaries that divide us as a people B to move beyond the divisions that continue to limit our strength and threaten our national survival.

I. REMEMBERING OUR PAST

As we consider this proposition, I will begin this afternoon with a personal reflection of what life throughout much of this nation was like for Americans of color before Brown vs. Board of Education.

Recalling and honoring our history is important.

I am a lawyer B not a professional historian.

Nevertheless, I will always remember my mother=s admonition:

"We cannot know where we should be going unless we remember from whence we come."

And for my own family, struggling to survive as sharecroppers near Manning, South Carolina, on the same land that our ancestors once worked as slaves, life before the Brown decision was grim.

• Father and mother worked in those fields for pennies a day B with no hope of ever bettering themselves.
  
• Because of the color of their skin, they were barred from the most basic public amenities B like "whites only" water fountains and rest rooms.
  
• Despite the pious legal fiction of the times B the doctrine "separate but equal" B they were denied any formal education beyond the first grade.
  
• And the "Negro schools" in their county were so inadequate that it probably would not have made any great difference in their lives if they had been able to attend.
  
• Finally, it is no overstatement to recall that even attempting to register and to vote as citizens would have subjected my parents to very real danger.
  

This, my friends, was my family's life before Brown.

And, but for the determination and courage of my parents= generation, this would have been my life as well.

That is why I thank God B and heroes like Thurgood Marshall B that our "greatest generation" never lost hope.

This 50^th anniversary of the Brown decision is a time when America will be remembering and honoring Thurgood Marshall -- one of the great lawyers for civil rights and Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

It is right that we do so.

And by "we." I include all Americans, not simply African Americans.

Marshall, above all else, was the prophet of hope and national integrity that America needed in those times -- and in our own time as well.

So, as we take a moment to remember the struggles of our past, allow me to take you back to Marshall's beginnings as a lawyer.  Those beginnings brought about the first cracks in segregation, exclusion and Jim Crow.

I do so, in part, because I want our young people to know how long and how hard this struggle for our dignity and inclusion in America has been.

And I take you back to the very beginnings of Marshall's career because I have a very personal debt of gratitude to pay to this great American.

Marshall grew up in Baltimore, living on Druid Hill Avenue not far from where I live today.  And, when he decided to go to law school, he wanted to study at the University of Maryland School of Law, less than two miles away.

But the University of Maryland denied entrance to all African Americans at that time.

And, to his dying day, Thurgood Marshall bitterly remembered the aggravation and expense of daily train rides to Washington, D.C., and his classes at Howard University Law School.

In 1933, Marshall received his law degree from Howard (magna cum laude); and began his law practice in Baltimore.

And, almost immediately, he began work for the Baltimore branch of the NAACP.

Two years later, in 1935, William Gosnell, another brilliant Baltimore lawyer, brought a young, African American Amherst College graduate named Donald Murray to see Marshall.  Like Marshall, himself, Donald Murray had been rejected by the University of Maryland Law School.

On Murray's behalf, Marshall, Gosnell & the NAACP=s Legal Director, Charles Hamilton Houston, challenged Maryland's exclusionary policy in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

All the way back in 1935, they argued that the equal protection mandate of the 14th Amendment must be satisfied within Maryland - not by sending law students out of state.

And, to their enormous surprise, Circuit Court Judge Eugene O'Dunne agreed.

Nearly forty years later, because of this 1935 Marshall victory, I was able to reach my dream and become a lawyer at the University of Maryland School of Law.

I thank Thurgood Marshall every day of my life for making certain that I would have this opportunity.

But the broader impact of Marshall's legal victories goes far beyond this personal opportunity that I received.

The broader impact for America arises from their psychological and social impact of that progress toward full affirmation of our fundamental human rights.

As far as African Americans are concerned, it is impossible to overestimate the impact of Marshall's victory in that first, 1935 case on the Black people of Baltimore.

Juan Williams, in his 1990 Washington Post article on Marshall, reported the recollection of one of my own mentors, Ms. Juanita Jackson Mitchell:

"The colored people in Baltimore were on fire when Thurgood did that . . . . They were euphoric with victory," Ms. Mitchell declared.

"We didn't know about the Constitution," she recalled. "Thurgood Marshall brought us the Constitution as a document like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments."

Ladies and gentlemen, as we think about the impact and implications of Brown v. Board of Education -- both today and in the months to come -- I hope that you will not forget the lasting truth in Juanita Jackson Mitchell's words.

Thurgood Marshall brought America -- all of America -- the Constitution like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments.

Even more important, I believe that Marshall's vision of a Constitution that respects and uplifts ALL Americans is the blueprint for our continued survival and prosperity as a unified nation.

Returning to our brief history summary, during the next two decades after that first Maryland case, Thurgood Marshall led America out of the wilderness of legally sanctioned apartheid.

• His vision for America prevailed in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright - overthrowing the South's "white primary."
  
• In 1948, he convinced the Supreme Court to strike down racially restrictive covenants in Shelley v. Kraemer.
  
• And during the next few years leading up to the Brown decision, Marshal continued his mission of forming a more inclusive America, challenging "separate but equal" in the 1950 graduate-school integration cases (Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents).

In these and hundreds of other cases - less renowned, but equally important to the poor clients he served - Thurgood Marshall, the "people's lawyer," became a legend.

And he paid the price of most true prophets.

We should never forget that Marshall:

-       lived, traveled and worked in the same segregated hells as the clients he represented;
-       endured the same threats and dangers;
-       and struggled to support a family, never making much money as a lawyer.

How great was the impact on America of all that Marshall accomplished during those two decades?

There are at least two different answers to this rhetorical question.  I will return to this question in a few minutes, but for now, this should be said.

It is irrefutably true -- as Marshall himself acknowledged -- that the America of our time is yet to fully accept the prophetic vision of an all-inclusive nation that Marshall championed.

Conditions in America have not yet become fully humane for far too many Americans -- Americans  of every racial background.

But I will never forget the majesty of Thurgood Marshall's words as he gave expression to the deepest aspirations of America's soul.

So, as we think about the impact of Brown v. Board of Education, we should never forget that, before Justice Thurgood Marshall:

We didn't know about the Constitution. He brought us the Constitution like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments.

II.  THE BROWN DECISION

I need not devote a great deal of time this afternoon to the details of the Brown decision.

I am more interested in having a conversation about our nation in the years since Brown.

For the sake of continuity, however, I will refresh your recollection of a few salient points.

First, as I have already noted, during the nine decades leading up to 1954, America=s concept of "equal protection of the laws," as guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment to our Constitution, was governed by the "separate but equal doctrine" of Plessy v. Ferguson.

And, since the separate schools and other public accommodations available to Black people were seldom, if ever, equal in fact B the Plessy doctrine was based upon an untruth.

To state the matter with greater candor B under Plessy v. Ferguson, America was living a lie.

The second point I should make has to do with how wide spread this lie about equality was in the America of that time.

More than 20 states segregated the races by law or by custom B and equal opportunity for Americans of color was hard to find in any state of the land.  Although we tend to think of Brown in the context of one child, Linda Brown, who lived in Topeka, Kansas, in point of fact, the Supreme Court decided four consolidated cases that day in 1954.

One of those cases arose right here in the Commonwealth of Virginia: the case entitled Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Another of the four cases - called Briggs v. Elliott - arose in South Carolina, the ancestral home where my ancestors lived until just after World War II.

So, ladies and gentlemen, when we think about the unequal and inhumane rules that were presented to the Supreme Court back in 1954, we are not talking about what life was like for Americans somewhere else.

We are talking about what life was like for Americans of color right here in Virginia 50 years ago.

My third observation reflects just how deeply ingrained this pattern of segregation and discrimination was in American society.

We are celebrating the Supreme Court=s decision in 1954, but, in fact, the underlying difficulty of addressing segregation in the legal struggle continued over several years.

The cases were first brought by the NAACP and, by then, its Chief Counsel, Thurgood Marshall, in 1952

The issue that had plagued America since the Civil War was directly presented: What place would African Americans enjoy in American society?

The cases were argued, but the Supreme Court Justices could not reach a decision at first.

Although a majority agreed that segregation was wrong, they were divided over whether the Court had the power to overrule the Plessy Aseparate but equal@ doctrine.

So, a divided Court set the cases down for re-argument in 1953, specifically asking both sides to address particular issues.

And, then, historical fate intervened.

Chief Justice Vinson, who, by all accounts, was opposed to overruling the Plessy Doctrine, unexpectedly died a few weeks before the re-argument.

And the new chief justice, Earl Warren, skillfully steered the Court to its unanimous and historic ruling that racially separate schools were inherently unequal on May 17, 1954.

Yet, even after the Court unanimously ruled that "separate but equal" could no longer be the law of the land, the Justices were in a quandary as to how to go about fixing a society that had been broken for so long.

The 1954 decision was sent down to the lower federal courts for their evaluation B and returned for a final ruling in 1955.

And, even then, the best that the Supreme Court could do was to rule that racial integration of the nation=s schools proceed with "all deliberate speed."

III.  THE AFTERMATH: IMPACT OF BROWN

I return, now, to the underlying question we are discussing today:  What was the impact of Brown v. Board of Education upon America and her people?

In my mind, at least, the answer to this question is mixed.

Positive

On the positive side, Brown ended public school segregation mandated by law.  The advocates of division would henceforth be on the defensive.

As I noted to you earlier, Thurgood Marshall brought Americans of color hope and determination B he brought us the Constitution like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments.

This hope for a better life in America under law, I believe, is a fundamental reason why Dr. King=s philosophy of non-violent legal and political change won out over those civil rights leaders who honestly believed that change "by any means necessary" was justified.

So, in my view, Thurgood Marshall B and the Supreme Court that he convinced to do the right thing B made a very real contribution to peaceful change in America.

Negative

On the negative side, the years that followed Brown brought America riots, assassinations, and extraordinary efforts like court-ordered busing and affirmative action.  White flight was followed by middle-class Black flight.

As a result, throughout too much of America today, public schools remain burdened by the de facto segregation of our time B a racial division that, too often, is nearly as pronounced as the legally- mandated segregation of half a century ago.  And in those schools where students of color seek to learn, the financial resources supporting their education are typically far inferior to the help that White children enjoy.

We remain a separate and unequal society.

The Economics of Division

When people ask me why de facto segregation continues to prevail in far too many of this nation=s schools, here is my answer.

• Integration of our public schools has always been an economic challenge in America B as well as a moral one.
  
• We have a tradition in this country of locally supported public schools.
  
• From one-half to three-quarters of all public school funding is raised at the local level.
  
• Since people want the best schools that they can afford for their children, they will pay a higher price for homes in local jurisdictions with good schools.
  
• And those rising property tax values, in turn, support even larger local investments in local schools.
  
• The corollary to this formula for educational success is also at work in America.
  
• When less affluent local jurisdictions with lower property tax bases cannot afford the same quality of education as their more affluent neighbors, parents move away and property values decline.
  
• Trapped in this downward spiral of declining real estate and public schools are poor children of every race B and especially poor children of color.
  

So, as we attempt to fully understand why the impact of the Brown decision has been so mixed, we need to take a close look at how our local public schools are funded.

And what we find, when we undertake this examination, is an American society divided by both race and social class.

San Antonio School District

This is why B to fully understand Thurgood Marshall=s vision for a more fair, more prosperous and more united America B we must look at the Supreme Court case that he lost, as well as the Brown decision that he won.

Nearly 20 years after Brown, by then Justice Thurgood Marshall joined his brethren on the Supreme Court as the Court considered a case challenging the unequal financing of Texas public schools.

The 1973 case was called San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.

You can look it up at your school or public library.

At issue was whether the States have a constitutional obligation to assure equal funding to all of their public schools.

The case, in short, challenged the economic formula for inequality, separation and racial division that I recited to you a few moments ago.

And, in a sharply divided 5-4 majority decision written by Justice Powell, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that our Constitution=s guarantee of equal protection does not mandate equal funding of a state=s public schools.

Four Justices, including Justice Marshall, disagreed.

Here is just a small part of what Justice Marshall had to say.

The majority=s decision represents an abrupt departure from the mainstream of recent state and federal court decisions concerning the unconstitutionality of state educational financing schemes dependent upon taxable local wealth.

More unfortunately, though, the majority=s holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity and as unsupportable acquiescence in a system which deprives children in their earliest years of the chance to reach their full potential as citizens.

We can point, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, to the exact instant in time when the Supreme Court of the United States that signaled political and economic power B not constitutional legality B would define the course of educational opportunity in America.

Echoing the oral arguments he had made in the Brown case nearly 20 years earlier, Justice Marshall=s condemnation of this retreat by the Court was scathing:

 I, for one, am unsatisfied, he declared, with the hope of an ultimate "political" solution sometime in the indefinite future while, in the meantime, countless children unjustifiably receive inferior educations that "may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."  I must therefore respectfully dissent.

CLOSING

Ladies and gentlemen, as we gather here at this wonderful community college today B five decades after Thurgood Marshall's victory in Brown and three decades after his prophetic challenge to the conscience and common sense of America in San Antonio School District B we are left with both a compelling question about our future and the answer that is the civil rights movement=s most lasting legacy.

Today, as in 1954:

Our continuing challenge as Americans is to move beyond the self-imposed boundaries that divide us as a people B to move beyond the divisions that continue to limit our strength and threaten our national survival.

For thirty years now, the answer to this question has been a political one B not a matter for judicial determination.

So, for those of us who are truly concerned about inclusion and empowerment of All Americans, we must follow the example of those on whose shoulders we stand.

Today, I stand before you:

• as a son of sharecroppers who devoted their lives to raising up their children;
  
• as a man who began his training in a poor, segregated South Baltimore elementary school B and who was able to complete his formal education at the same law school that once rejected Thurgood Marshall because of his race; and
  
• as Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus B 39 Americans of color who have been entrusted by more than 26 million Americans of every racial background to represent them in the Congress of the United States.
  

I come before you this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and these are the most important words that I came here to say.

• It is up to us B Americans of every racial and religious background B to realize Thurgood Marshall=s vision for American.
  
• It is up to those of us who, like me, are Americans of color, to speak truth to power about the continuing divisions and inequities in this society.
  

The truth that I came here to say is based upon these harsh realities of life in our America today:

• Black children are disproportionately poor; but most poor children in America are not Black.
  
• Black children are disproportionately denied an effective and empowering education; but most of the children who are being denied an education in America today are not Black.
  
• Black children are disproportionately vulnerable to illness; but most sick children in America are not Black.
  
• Black families are disproportionately denied affordable and comprehensive health care; but most Americans who cannot afford health insurance are not Black.

All of these American children are our children, ladies and gentlemen.

As a nation, we cannot afford to lose any of them B not even one.

We are the people B you and I B to answer Thurgood Marshall=s prophetic challenge to America.

We are the people who can exercise our constitutional right and power to vote.

And we are the people, my friends, upon whom all of these millions of children who are being left behind every day must depend.

These American children B whatever their color may be B are our living messages to a future that we may never see.

This is our time, our choice, and our duty.

This is our opportunity to send a message to America's future that will realize America=s dream of universal justice and equality.

Thank you.