Within the months main as much as the landmark Brown v. Board of Training of Topeka choice — 70 years in the past this month — Thurgood Marshall, arguing earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket, efficiently challenged racial segregation in public faculties. Then the NAACP’s chief authorized counsel, Marshall would go on to change into the nation’s first Black Supreme Court docket Justice. His December 8, 1953 remarks earlier than the excessive court docket are beneath. Chalkbeat has added hyperlinks for context.
It follows that with training, this Court docket has made segregation and inequality equal ideas. They’ve equal ranking, equal footing, and if segregation thus essentially imports inequality, it makes no nice distinction whether or not we are saying that the Negro is wronged as a result of he’s segregated, or that he’s wronged as a result of he acquired unequal therapy…
I want to say that every lawyer on the opposite aspect has made it clear as to what the place of the state was on this, and it will be all proper probably however for the truth that that is so essential. There is no such thing as a method you possibly can repay misplaced college years.
These youngsters in these instances are assured by the states some 12 years of training in various levels, and this concept, if I perceive it, to go away it to the states till they work it out — and I feel that may be a most ingenious argument — you allow it to the states, they are saying, after which they are saying that the states haven’t achieved something about it in 100 years, so for that motive this Court docket doesn’t contact it.
The argument of judicial restraint has no utility on this case. There’s a relationship between federal and state, however there isn’t a corollary or relationship as to the Fourteenth Modification.
The responsibility of imposing, the responsibility of following the Fourteenth Modification, is positioned upon the states. The responsibility of imposing the Fourteenth Modification is positioned upon this Court docket, and the argument that they make again and again to my thoughts is identical kind of argument they cost us with making, the identical argument Charles Sumner made. Probably so.
And we hereby cost them with making the identical argument that was made earlier than the Civil Struggle, the identical argument that was made throughout the interval between the ratification of the Fourteenth Modification and the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
And I feel it makes no progress for us to search out out who made what argument. It’s our place that whether or not or not you base this case solely on the Intent of Congress or whether or not you base it on the logical extension of the doctrine as set forth within the McLaurin case, on both foundation the identical conclusion is required, which is that this Court docket makes it clear to all of those states that in administering their governmental features, not less than these which might be very important to not the lifetime of the state alone, to not the nation alone, however very important to the world basically, that little pet emotions of race, little pet emotions of customized — I obtained the sensation on listening to the dialogue yesterday that once you put a white baby in a college with an entire lot of coloured youngsters, the kid would collapse or one thing. Everyone is aware of that isn’t true.
Those self same youngsters in Virginia and South Carolina — and I’ve seen them do it — they play within the streets collectively, they play on their farms collectively, they go down the street collectively, they separate to go to highschool, they arrive out of faculty and play ball collectively. They must be separated in class.
There may be some magic to it. You may have them voting collectively, you possibly can have them not restricted due to regulation within the homes they dwell in. You may have them going to the identical state college and the identical school, but when they go to elementary and highschool, the world will collapse. And it’s the very same argument that has been made to this Court docket again and again, and we submit that once they cost us with making a legislative argument, it’s in fact they who’re making the legislative argument.
They’ll’t take race out of this case. From the day this case was filed till this second, no one has in any type or style, regardless of the very fact I made it clear within the opening argument that I used to be counting on it, achieved something to differentiate this statute from the Black Codes, which they have to admit, as a result of no one can dispute, say something anyone desires to say, somehow, the Fourteenth Modification was supposed to deprive the states of energy to implement Black Codes or the rest prefer it.
We cost that they’re Black Codes. They clearly are Black Codes if you happen to learn them. They haven’t denied that they’re Black Codes, so if the Court docket desires to very narrowly determine this case, they will determine it on that time.
So whichever method it’s achieved, the one method that this Court docket can determine this case in opposition to our place, is that there have to be some motive which supplies the state the best to make a classification that they will make in regard to nothing else in regard to Negroes, and we submit the one option to arrive at that call is to search out that for some motive Negroes are inferior to all different human beings.
No person will stand within the Court docket and urge that, and with a view to arrive on the choice that they need us to reach at, there must be some recognition of a motive why of all the multitudinous teams of individuals on this nation you must single out Negroes and provides them this separate therapy.
It might’t be due to slavery prior to now, as a result of there are only a few teams on this nation that haven’t had slavery some place again in historical past of their teams. It might’t be colour as a result of there are Negroes as white because the drifted snow, with blue eyes, and they’re simply as segregated as the coloured man.
The one factor may be is an inherent willpower that the individuals who have been previously in slavery, no matter the rest, shall be stored as close to that stage as is feasible, and now’s the time, we submit, that this Court docket ought to make it clear that that isn’t what our Structure stands for.
Thanks, sir.
