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65 LOUISIANA 11 Taking a Stand Alex J. Hurder I finished high school in Atlanta, Georgia, without ever experiencing a day of integrated education, but the case of Brown v. Board of Education had a profound impact on my life. I am a clinical law professor at Vanderbilt Law School. My students and I are often cocounsel in cases seeking rights for children with disabilities under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, rights that would be inconceivable without the Brown case. I also teach a course in public education law that has Brown as its centerpiece. I have a clear recollection of sitting at the kitchen table in the summer of 1955 and asking my father what “integration” is. He told me about the Brown decision. In May 1954, my father, William Paul Hurder, left a job as a professor of psychology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge to become superintendent of the State Colony and Training School in Pineville, Louisiana, a residential institution for persons with mental retardation, now named the Pinecrest State School. The time was charged with emotion for my parents. Both my parents, who were white, favored integration. In the summer of 1954 my father, himself a recent medical school graduate , assembled a team of psychologists, physicians, nurses, and social workers to coordinate services for the residents of the State Colony. By the summer of 1955 the new team had ended patronage hiring, completed individualized assessments of all the residents of the institution, and initiated individualized case conferences for each resident. The case conferences resulted in assigning residents to programs and services that were appropriate to their level of development . The changes began to break down the racial segregation that had existed at the institution. Opponents of the reforms focused their attacks on the changes in relations between the races. They complained that an African American psychologist who worked for the institution had told white residents to call him “Mister” rather than by his first name. They complained that white residents had been transferred into rooms formerly occupied by black residents. They claimed that the institution was allowing sexual relationships between white and black residents. I remember my father meeting with the psychologist at our house. Af- 66 De Jure States and the District of Columbia terward, my father explained to me that it was customary under segregation for white people to call black adults by their first names and never by a courtesy title. He supported the psychologist, who wanted the signs of respect due anyone else in his position. This example of the cruelty and irrationality of segregation made a permanent impression on me. Segregation caused many injuries, but it was the personal humiliations that I felt most strongly. A political battle raged statewide from 1954 to 1957 over the direction of the State Colony and Training School. The Louisiana State Board of Institutions held hearings in Pineville in the summer of 1956 to hear the complaints against the institution, including the ones I’ve mentioned. The hearing panel concluded the investigation with a strong endorsement of the reforms. A series of investigations by the Rapides Parish Grand Jury also failed to reverse the changes that had taken place. In spite of the attacks, the program at the institution gained a national reputation. In 1963 the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation, appointed by President Kennedy, cited the individualized case conferences pioneered at the Louisiana institution as a model for the coordination of individualized services for persons with mental retardation.1 My family moved to Atlanta in 1957, and my father began working for the Southern Regional Education Board. School desegregation did not begin in Atlanta until after I graduated from high school in 1963, but the civil rights movement and the progress of integration were constant subjects of conversation among students. The fact that I was for integration was a central feature of how I saw myself. Although the civil rights movement existed long before Brown v. Board of Education and will continue for long afterward, the Brown case made me a part of that movement and invited me to take a stand. I remain convinced that racial equality is the key to progress in every aspect of human welfare in the United States. NOTE 1. See the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation, Report of the Task Force on Coordination (August 1963). Alex J. Hurder was born in May 1945 and attended elementary schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from 1951...

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