Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism

4. "If we must and Are to Have Integration"

Chapter 4 “If We Must and Are to Have Integration” With the Supreme Court’s call for re-argument on remedy, the issue of school desegregation returned to the national stage and the parties to the case engaged in debates as to the pace of the desegregation of public schools. In briefs and oral arguments, the NAACP team took the position that the Court should order the implementation of desegregation programs as soon as— chief litigator Thurgood Marshall said—the “prerequisite administrative and mechanical procedures” allowed.1 With a clear set of policies and the firm enforcement of the laws by public officials, he continued, a September 1955 deadline was within the bounds of reason. Any further delay would result in a “serious and irreparable injury,” Marshall continued, given the Court’s reasoning on the effects of segregation on the mental development of black children , and would only embolden opponents of desegregation. The attorneys commissioned by the states, for the most part, attempted to focus the Court’s attention on the growing hostility expressed by whites toward desegregation and the real possibility of violence if desegregation plans were implemented. These communities needed time, they argued—and far more time than the NAACP assumed—to facilitate a peaceful transition to desegregated schools. Furthermore, the state contended, the district courts—which were presumably more sensitive to local conditions—should be given oversight over the implementation process.2 The Delaware case was unique in that the plaintiffs had been victorious in the lower courts. On the whole, recently elected attorney general Joseph Donald Craven demonstrated less overt commitment to the defense of segregation compared to his colleagues from South Carolina and Virginia. During his appearance at the lectern, he readily acknowledged the binding effect of Brown. As to remedy, Craven asked for a simple affirmation of the lower court’s decision and requested that the case be remanded to the state courts. Redding highlighted the constitutional and practical problems associated 137 “If We Must and Are to Have Integration” with the twofold system of education that had emerged in the wake of the state supreme court’s decision: the plaintiffs in the Belton and Bulah cases had the right to attend schools previously reserved for white students, as did black students in local districts that voluntarily moved to desegregate their schools in light of the State Board of Education post-Brown desegregation policy directive. But where white resistance was most pronounced throughout southern Delaware, black students were still denied this right. A decree requiring forthwith desegregation of all public schools, he told the Court, would address a disjunctive situation and put all schools on an even keel.3 The Supreme Court, in deliberations over a remedy, found itself in the difficult position of weighing the plaintiffs’ right to desegregated schooling against the chance that some white communities would violently resist any decision that threatened their perceived racial entitlement to segregated education . “The solution, it turned out,” recalled Mark Tushnet, “was to say less rather than more.”4 Indeed, the Court opinion outlining the procedures that would overturn almost a century of law, custom, and practice was merely seven paragraphs—four pages—long.5 The Court noted the substantial progress that had been made in Delaware, as well as in Kansas and the District of Columbia, while acknowledging that Virginia and South Carolina had decided to await the Court’s ruling on relief. Chief Justice Warren agreed with the states’ attorneys that the lower courts, which were assumed to be more sensitive to local conditions, were in the best position to oversee the desegregation process. He expressed faint sympathy for the states’ assertions that many among the white populace were not prepared to accept desegregation in their communities. “But it should go without saying,” Warren countered, “that the vitality of these constitutional principles cannot be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them.” The defendants must “make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance” with Brown and desegregate their schools. Warren thus reversed the judgments in the Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and District of Columbia cases and affirmed the judgment in the Delaware case. In a last directive, the Court also instructed— however imprecisely—the district courts to take such steps “as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases.”6 In their implementation decree, Warren and his colleagues gave further —if still vague—substance to the...