Black people in America desperately wanted to believe that Brown v. Board of Education signaled the beginning of a new day in America. One of the things that sticks out for me is that in the majority opinion the Supreme Court says that the school board should proceed with all “due deliberate speed” If you’ve ever looked up the definition of deliberate you in the Oxford dictionary you know that it means long and careful consideration. In the Brown decision the highest court of the land was effectively code speaking to the South by effectively telling them to take their time.
I read Juan William’s book “Thurgood Marshall American Revolutionary”. After the Brown decision Marshall eventually recognized that in many respects Brown was a hollow victory. Eisenhower had no intention of putting the full weight of the Federal government behind it.
Marshall found himself fighting continuously to make the decision have consequences. The impact on Black people is illustrated in a paragraph from the book. Marshall was drinking with another lawyer in a pool hall in Little Rock.
“A young black man, smoking a cigarette and carrying a pool cue, walked over to Marshall and said, “Hey, lawyer—you know anything about this thing —where you come back after you die?” Marshall asked the pool player if he was talking about reincarnation. The guy nodded, and a laughing Marshall said he knew more about law than about spirituality. But the young man looked straight at him and said, “Well, if you find anybody that has anything to do with it, tell’em when I come back I don’t care what it is, whether it’s a man or a woman, a horse, a cow, a dog, a cat, what ever it is, let it be white”.
That’s the fifth paragraph on page 269 of the book. When I read it I was flooded with a veritable plethora of emotions. This was in the 50’s and here we are in 2020 and the promise remains unkept. Once again we are bearing witness to fresh life being given to the beast we refer to as racism.
Summer is not yet upon us but I can already feel the pot boiling.
Think!!
Eyes Wide Open!!!