Case Year Question Decision Impact

Transcription

1 Case Year Question Decision Impact Plessy v. Ferguson Mendez v. Westminster Delgado v. Bastrop ISD Sweatt v. Painter Hernandez v Texas Brown v. Board of Education Edgewood ISD v. Kirby

2 Plessy v. Ferguson (1895) The Question: Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?

3 Background: Plessy v. Ferguson originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana s Separate Car Act (1890). The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide equal but separate accommodations for white and African American passengers. It also prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those they had been assigned based of their race. In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. On June 7, 1892, 30-year-old Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. He was a Creole of Color, a term used to refer to black persons in New Orleans who traced some of their ancestors to the French, Spanish, and Caribbean settlers of Louisiana before it became part of the United States. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, legally segregating common carriers in 1892, a black civil rights organization decided to challenge the law in the courts. Plessy deliberately sat in the white section and identified himself as black. He was arrested and the case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Plessy's lawyer argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment.

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6 The Decision In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and held the Louisiana segregation statute constitutional. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal. (The phrase, "separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.) Justice Brown conceded that the 14th amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law. But Brown noted that "in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either." The ruling established that segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination, thus establishing what would be known as separate but equal.

7 Delgado v. Bastrop ISD (1948) The Question: Does a public school district that maintains separate schools for Anglo and Mexican-American students in the absence of a state law requiring such violate the equal protection of the law clause of the U.S. Constitution s Fourteenth Amendment?

8 Background: In 1930 in Salvatierra v. Del Rio Independent School District, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) filed suit in a Texas district court on behalf of the parents of Mexican American children attending public school in Del Rio, Texas. The school district sold a municipal bond to allow the district to add some rooms and an auditorium to an elementary school attended only by Mexican American children in grades one through three. The Mexican American parents believed that the district s action made it clear that their children in those grades would be permanently segregated. Representing the parents, LULAC s attorneys did not argue about the differences in the facilities for Anglo and Mexican American students. Instead, they argued that the segregation itself was illegal. At the time, Texas law required separate but equal schools for Anglos and African Americans but not for Mexican Americans. The superintendent of the Del Rio I.S.D. testified that the separate school for these Mexican American children was for their benefit because of their poor attendance records and limited English language skills. The superintendent said that the motive was not segregation by reason of race or color. District Court Judge Joseph Jones ruled that the Mexican American children were entitled to go to school with the Anglo children. The Texas Court of Civil Appeals overturned Judge Jones ruling. They held that public schools could not segregate Mexican American children because of their ethnicity but that it was the duty of school personnel to classify and group the pupils so as to bring to each one the greatest benefits according to his or her individual needs and aptitudes. In other words, the Del Rio ISD was allowed to continue segregating Mexican American children if it was not being done for reasons of race or color. The outcome of the Mendez case in California prompted Mexican American civil rights activists in Texas to prepare the first school segregation case in Texas since the 1930 Salvatierra case. Thus began the case of Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District In the complaint filed for the Mexican American parents, the attorneys argued that the school districts had prohibited, barred, and excluded Mexican American children from attending public school with other white school children in violation of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution s Fourteenth Amendment.

9 High School, Mathis, Texas 1936 Mexican School, Mathis, Texas 1936

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11 The Decision District Judge Ben Rice agreed that segregation of Mexican American students was not authorized by Texas law and therefore violated the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Rice issued an injunction against the state and the school districts forbidding further segregation of students of Mexican or Latin descent. The decision left in place the legal segregation of African American students, which was specifically allowed under Texas law. The judge s decision allowed school districts to provide separate first-grade classes for language-deficient students who were identified by scientifically standardized tests. In his Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity, Professor Neil Foley reports, The Delgado case did little to end segregation because it was still legal to separate Mexicans from Anglos for language deficiency That same argument is made by Professor Paul Sracic: According to most scholars of Mexican American school segregation in Texas, Delgado and other similar cases had little impact on what was actually happening in the schools.

12 Brown v. Board of Education ISD (1954) The Question: Does the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprive the minority children of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment?

13 Background: Linda Brown, an eight-year-old African-American girl, had been denied permission to attend an elementary school only five blocks from her home in Topeka, Kansas. School officials refused to register her at the nearby school, assigning her instead to a school for nonwhite students some 21 blocks from her home. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools for whites and nonwhites. Brown's parents filed a lawsuit to force the schools to allow her to attend the school closest to her residence even though it was designated for white students. Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP lawyer, and Brown's attorneys argued that the operation of separate schools, based on race, was harmful to African-American children. Extensive testimony was provided to support the idea that legal segregation resulted in both an unequal education and low self-esteem among minority students. The Brown family lawyers argued that segregation by law implied that African Americans were inferior to whites. For these reasons they asked the Court to strike down segregation under the law. Attorneys for Topeka argued that the separate schools for nonwhites in Topeka were equal in every way, and were in complete conformity with the Plessy v. Ferguson standards. Buildings, the courses of study offered, and the quality of teachers were completely equal. In fact, because some federal funds for Native Americans only applied at the nonwhite schools, some programs for minority children were even better than those offered at the schools for whites. They pointed to the Plessy decision of 1896 to support segregation and argued that they had in good faith created equal facilities, even though races were segregated. They also argued discrimination by race did not harm children.

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15 (A year after the Supreme Court s Brown v. Board of Education ruling ended school segregation, first-graders recite the Pledge of Allegiance in 1955 at Gwynns Falls Elementary School. [Source:Richard Stacks, Baltimore Sun]

16 The Decision On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson. It also served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s. Arguments would be heard during the next term to determine just how the ruling would be enacted and enfored. Just over one year later, on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, now referred to as Brown II, instructing the states to begin desegregation plans "with all deliberate speed."

17 Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby (1968) The Question: Does Texas present public school finance system that has resulted in great disparities among the state s public school districts violate Article VII, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution, which requires the state to support and maintain an efficient system of public free schools?

18 Background: On May 16, 1968, 400 students at Edgewood High School in San Antonio, Texas staged a walkout in protest of the dire state of their school facilities. The windows were cracked; the air conditioning was broken; the school was literally crumbling, all despite the fact that the Edgewood ISD had one of the highest property tax rates in San Antonio. Parents, among them Demetrio Rodriguez, a sheet metal worker at Kelly Air Force Base, were concerned. They formed the Edgewood District Concerned Parents Association to investigate the situation. Arthur Gochman, the attorney representing the group, discovered that even though tax rates were considerably higher in Edgewood, low property values meant that the school district could raise only a small percentage of the tax revenue in sharp contract to other, wealthy school districts, such as the nearby Alamo Heights ISD. Under the Texas system, the state appropriated funds to provide each child with a minimum education. Each local school district then enriched that basic education with funds created from local property taxes. Since the value of taxable property and the number of school-aged children varied greatly among the state s many school districts, significant differences existed in available enrichment revenues, per-pupil expenditures, and tax rates. In 1968, Demetrio Rodriguez and other parents of Mexican American students in the Edgewood Independent School District of San Antonio, Texas, filed a class action suit in U.S. District Court challenging Texas public school finance system claiming it led to unequal opportunities for quality education.

19 On May 16, 1968, 400 students at Edgewood High School in San Antonio, Texas staged a walkout in protest of the dire state of their school facilities. The windows were cracked; the air conditioning was non-- existent; the school was crumbling all despite the fact that the Edgewood Independent School District (ISD) had one of the highest property tax rates in San Antonio. The struggle for equality in schools continues today.

20 Edgewood victorious - Edgewood I.S.D. students in San Antonio celebrate at John F. Kennedy High School after the Texas Supreme Court ruled the state's public educational funding system unconstitutional. The decision came after 21 years of litigation. Photo by Tom Lanks. Courtesy of Austin American-Statesmen.

21 The Decision: The Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state s public school finance system was a violation of the Texas Constitution. Justice Oscar Mauzy wrote: There are glaring disparities in the abilities of the various school districts to raise revenues from property taxes because taxable property wealth varies greatly from district to district. The wealthiest district has over $14,000,000 of property wealth per student, while the poorest has approximately $20,000; this disparity reflects a 700 to 1 ratio. Because of the disparities in district property wealth, spending per student varies widely, ranging from $2,112 to $19,333. Property-poor districts are trapped in a cycle of poverty from which there is no opportunity to free themselves. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez by a 5-4 vote reversed the lower court s decision and thus sustained Texas public school finance system. The majority held that education is not a fundamental right because education is neither explicitly nor implicitly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In the decade after Rodriguez, Texas enacted a series of equalization reforms but failed to reduce significantly the inequities in access to resources, per-pupil expenditures, and tax rates among districts.

22 Hernandez v. Texas (1954) The Question: Is the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment violated when a state tries a person of a particular race or ancestry before a jury in which all persons of that race or ancestry have been excluded from serving?

23 Background: In 1950 Pete Hernández, a migrant cotton picker, was accused of murdering Joe Espinosa in Edna, Texas. Edna was small town where no person of Mexican origin had served on a jury for at least twenty-five years. Gustavo (Gus) García, an experienced Mexican-American civil-rights lawyer, offered to represent Hernandez for free. García saw the Hernández case as an opportunity to challenge the system that excluded persons of Mexican origin from jury duty in at least seventy counties. It was no surprise when Hernández was found guilty and the decision was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. García argued that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed protection not only on the basis of race, Caucasian and Negro, but also class. Those who administered the process of jury selection introduced discrimination based on class. The state of Texas contended that the Fourteenth Amendment covered only whites and blacks, and that Mexican Americans are white. The state admitted that no person with a Spanish surname had served on any type of jury for twenty-five years, but that this absence only indicated coincidence, not a pattern of attitude and behavior. García and his associates presented comprehensive evidence that i discrimination and segregation were common practice, and Mexican Americans were treated differently.

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25 After the Supreme Court decision, Hernández was retried by a jury that included two Mexican Americans, found guilty, and sent to prison.

26 The Decision: Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous opinion of the court in favor of Hernández and ordered a reversal of the conviction. The Supreme Court accepted the concept of distinction between "white" and Hispanic, and found that when laws produce unreasonable and different treatment based on that distinction, the constitutional guarantee of equal protection is violated. The court held that Hernández had "the right to be indicted and tried by juries from which all members of his class are not systematically excluded." This decision was a major victory for the "other white" concept, the legal strategy of Mexican-American civil-rights activists from 1930 to Faced with the separate but equal doctrine they argued that segregation of Mexican-origin persons was illegal. Hernández v. Texas set a valuable precedent until Hispanics were recognized as an identifiable minority group and utilized the Brown decision of 1954 to prohibit segregation.

27 Mendez v. Westminster (1947) The Question: Does the segregation of Mexican-American public school children in the absence of a state law mandating their segregation violate California law as well as the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

28 Background: Gonzalo Mendez, Mexico born, moved with his mother and his four siblings to Westminster, California, in In 1943, at age 30, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and was a relatively well-off vegetable farmer. By this time, Mendez and his wife had three children who grew up speaking English as well as Spanish. The family spoke more English than Spanish when at home. In their neighborhood, there was only one other Mexican- American family. The other neighbors were all Anglos, and all of their children attended Westminster Main School. In 1945, when his children went to enroll in school, Gonzalo planned on their attending Westminster Main School, the same school that he had attended with other Mexican and Anglo children until he was forced to drop out to help support his family. Much to his surprise, his children were told they must attend the Hoover School, which was located in a different school district, and furthermore, all of the students there were Mexican or Mexican-American. Gonzalo took his concerns to the principal, the Westminster School Board, and eventually the Orange County School Board, but without success. With the aid of his lawyer, Gonzalo discovered that other school districts in Orange County also segregated their Mexican-American students. On March 2, 1945, the attorney representing Mendez and the other plaintiffs filed a class action suit in a U.S. District Court not only on their behalf but also on behalf of some 5,000 other persons of Mexican and Latin descent. They argued that separate schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

29 Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of the parents, and appellate courts upheld his decision. In 1947 California Governor Earl Warren pushed through legislation ending school segregation for American Indian and Asian children. This photograph shows students from Lincoln Elementary School for Mexican children in Orange County, California, 1930s.

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31 The Decision: Federal judge Paul J McCormick ruled in favor of Mendez and the coplaintiffs. He found that '"the segregation of Mexican Americans in public schools was a violation of the state law"" and unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because of the denial of due process and equal protection.3 Thus, McCormick struck down systematic segregation in public schools in California. The defense appealed the decision claiming the federal court did not have authority in this matter. With financial support from LULAC and support from other organizations such as, NAACP, American Jewish Council, ACLU, and the Japanese American Citizens League, Mendezes team defeated the defense. The Mendez v. Westminster School District case broke down legalized segregation and brought attention to the racism and discrimination which occurred not only in California but the rest of the country.

32 Sweatt v. Painter (1950) The Question: Does the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allow Texas to provide separate law schools for students of different races if those law schools are "substantially equal"?

33 Background: In 1946, Heman Sweatt, a 33-year-old African-American mail carrier from Houston, Texas, who wanted to be a lawyer, appeared on the University of Texas campus. He presented the President of the University, Theophilus Painter, with a copy of his undergraduate transcript and a formal application for admission to the University's Law School. He believed he had a right to the same legal training as any other Texan who was a college graduate and since Texas did not have a law school for African- Americans, the state must admit him to the University of Texas Law School. Hoping that it would not have to admit Sweat to the "white" law school if a "black" school already existed, elsewhere on the University s campus, the state hastily set up an underfunded "black" law school. At this point, Sweat employed the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and sued to be admitted to the University s all "white" law school. He argued that the education that he was receiving in the "black" law school was not of the same academic caliber as the education that he would be receiving if he attended the established, well-funded "white" law school. When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950, the Court unanimously agreed with him, citing the blatant inequalities between the University s law school (the school for whites) and the hastily opened school for blacks. In other words, the "black" law school was "separate," but not "equal." The Court ruled the only appropriate remedy for this situation was to admit Sweat to the University s law school.

34 Heman Marion Sweatt registering for classes at the University of Texas, September The University's refusal to admit Sweatt in 1946 because of his race resulted in a four-and-a-half year legal battle that ended in June 1950 when the U. S. Supreme Court decided Sweatt v. Painter, which barred segregation in the nation's law schools.

35 Two days after the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregation of graduate and professional schools, John Saunders Chase enrolls at The University of Texas at Austin to pursue a master s degree in architecture. Photo taken June 7, 1950.

36 The Decision: The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the state of Texas and in favor of Heman Sweatt. Chief Justice Fred Vinson wrote: "We hold that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that petitioner be admitted to the University of Texas Law School." Vinson wrote: "Whether the University of Texas Law School is compared with the original or the new law school for Negroes, we cannot find substantial equality in the educational opportunities offered white and Negro law students by the state. In terms of number of the faculty, variety of courses and opportunity for specialization, size of the student body, scope of the library, availability of law review and similar activities, the University of Texas Law School is superior. What is more important, the University of Texas Law School possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school. Such qualities, to name but a few, include reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige. It is difficult to believe that one who had a free choice between these law schools would consider the question close." Sweatt v. Painter did not establish the invalidation of race separation, but the criteria used by the court in the application of the separate but equal doctrine gave legal experts cause to believe that the doctrine was virtually dead. It was clear from the opinion that a good-faith effort to supply equality of treatment without integration was insufficient; rather, it must be equality in fact. The case had a direct impact on the University of Texas in that it provided for admission of black applicants to graduate and professional programs. However, black students could pursue only those degrees that were not available from Prairie View or Texas Southern, since the university opted for a narrow interpretation of Sweatt. Black undergraduates were not admitted to the school.