Equal Protection and Race: The Path to Brown

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Equal Protection and Race The Path to Brown

• Professor Garcia
• www.cwsl.edu/rgarcia
• Office Hrs 2-3 MWF Seqouyah 121
• Rjgarcia_at_ucsd.edu

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Today

• Harlans Dissent
• Impact of Plessy
• After Plessy
• NAACP Challenging Inequality
• Sweatt v. Painter
• Scope of the Problem
• Plan of Attack
• Questions Presented in Brown

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Rationale of the Majority Decision

• 13th Amendment Any inferiority that segregation
  implies is self-imposed by the colored race.
• Privileges and Immunities of citizens At issue
  is not a political right its a social right
• Due Process No denial of due process in
  determining whiteness, because no injury to
  Plessy
• Equal Protection The statute is not about
  inferiority-the railcars are supposed equal even
  though they are separate.

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Harlans Dissent

• Thirteenth Amendment prevents re-imposing
  burdens and disabilities of slavery
• The Privileges and Immunities clause applies to
  civil rights, not just political rights like
  juries
• The State, the Government, should not be in the
  business of racial classification
• Our constitution is color-blind, and neither
  knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

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Impact of Plessy

• Plessy reinforced the logic of racial
  subordination
• Plessy was used as a justification for the
  increased segregation of schools
• Even the dissents color-blind rationale could be
  used to ignore race and material inequality, and
  continues in many quarters today.

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After Plessy

• 1905 - NAACP founded
• 1915 NAACP files its first amicus curiae
  (friend of the court brief) in Oklahoma literacy
  test case. (Guinn v United States)
• 1917 NAACP Amicus brief in successful challenge
  to Kentucky residential segregation law (Buchanan
  v. Warley)
• 1920s-100,000 grant to pursue a legal campaign
  against segregation

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NAACP Challenging Inequality

• 1938-Gaines (Missouri law school was not equal,
  resulted in a new law school for blacks)
• 1938 Thurgood Marshall creates LDF
• 1948 Sipuel v. Board of Regents (forcing
  Oklahoma to create a separate law school for
  blacks)
• 1948-Court refused Marshalls argument to
  overrule Plessy when the new Oklahoma law school
  was not equal

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Sweatt v Painter (1950)

• Herman Sweatt denied admission to the University
  of Texas (UT) Law School, instead sent to the
  Prairie View Law School (PVLS). Marshall again
  argues to overrule Plessy
• The U.S. govt agreed with Sweatt (amicus)
• Chief Justice Vinsons opinion followed Gaines,
  but ordered UT to admit Sweatt because in this
  case, there was no way for PVLS to be to UT.
• McLaurin (1950) (U. of Oklahoma could not
  segregate classrooms, cafeterias or libraries).

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Scope of the Problem

• For example, Florida did not permit whites and
  blacks to use the same editions of textbooks.
  Texas prohibited interracial boxing. Alabama
  prohibited white nurses from caring for blacks.
  North Carolina and South Carolina segregated
  washrooms in factories and mines. In eight
  states, parks, racetracks, pool halls, circuses,
  theaters, fishing facilities, among others, were
  segregated. Seventeen states and D.C. segregated
  public schools. 11,173 school districts in the
  United States were segregated at the time.