Scholar speaks on effect of Brown case

By David Berry | Thresher staff

Calling Brown vs. Board of Education “one of the most significant decisions ever rendered by the Supreme Court,” Prairie View A&M University President George Wright said the public tends to underestimate both the history behind the ruling and the history made by it.

“It took more than a generation to get to Brown,” Wright, formerly a professor of African-American history at Duke University, said. “Brown did change the face of America.”

Wright began his lecture entitled “Brown versus Board: 50 Years Later,” by outlining the relevant Supreme Court cases prior to the ruling.

The Dred Scott case of 1857 stripped black Americans of any legal rights, Wright said, but was overturned by the passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed blacks equal protection under the law.

But equal protection did not mean an end to segregation, Wright said. The ruling in the 1897 case of Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld segregation in public services if services were “separate but equal.”

Not until 1954 did the Supreme Court reconsider Plessy’s defense of segregation.

“Only in the Brown decision did the Court come to see separate but equal as an impossibility,” Wright said.

Wright examined the legacy of the Brown decision by discussing his own life and the role of diversity in American society.

Wright said he was born in 1950 into a segregated society. Even after the desegregation of public schools in 1954, his career aspirations were belittled because of his race.

“I told people that I wanted to be a teacher,” he said, “but like in Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy, they told me, ‘You can’t do that, you just a black boy.’”

Nevertheless, Wright said he was a beneficiary of both the Brown decision and the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

“I graduated from high school in April 1968, the year Martin Luther King was assassinated. I benefited from his work,” Wright said. “When it came time for me to go to college, there was opportunity, and there were scholarships for me to go to the University of Kentucky.”

Wright attended graduate school at Duke University, where he reaped the benefits of expanding educational opportunity due to the Brown ruling, he said.

“Some shall sow, and some shall reap,” Wright said, altering a biblical proverb.

Wright concluded by tackling the question of diversity in today’s educational system and society.

“Brown put the question of diversity clearly on the map of American society,” Wright said. “The Brown decision can be viewed as a starting point for so many of the movements that have swept America since, including the women’s movement.”

Minority presence, both in universities’ student bodies and in their curricula, is important to continuing Brown’s work toward equality, Wright said.

“All of our students need to be knowledgeable about the minority experience,” Wright said. “The more we learn about minorities and other people, the better off we are. We also learn more about what we have in common.”

Wright indicted white America in particular for its amnesia about past discrimination against blacks. At the same time, he insisted that ethnic minorities can be ignorant about their history and must also guard against prejudice.

“Not knowing their own history, many blacks and Hispanics call certain qualities of society ‘white,’ failing to realize they are more universal,” Wright said.

Preceding Wright’s speech, the Black Student Association’s choir, Melodious Voices of Praise, gave a brief performance, dedicating its rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” to President Malcolm Gillis.

When he introduced Wright, Gillis spoke of the time he spent at a black Episcopal church while growing up in Mariana, Fla. as a source of his optimism for America.

Also preceding Wright’s speech, Houston actor Rutherford Craven gave a dramatic reading of the Brown opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Wiess College sophomore Marc Burrell said Wright’s speech was worthwhile.

“I thought Dr. Wright was truly informative and emotional,” Burrell said. “It was obviously a topic he was very knowledgeable about, informed by his own personal history.”

The lecture took place Wednesday in Duncan Hall.

April 2, 2004

The Student Newspaper of Rice University

Scholar speaks on effect of Brown case

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