Rice to mark 50 years since Brown v. Board ruling

Rice
to mark 50 years since Brown v. Board ruling

BY ELLEN CHANG
Rice News staff

The Supreme Court
ruling that ended segregation in American schools will be
discussed by the president of Prairie View A&M University
at a lecture March 31 at Rice University.

George Wright

The lecture is
the first in a series of events commemorating the 50th anniversary
of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. the Board
of Education. George Wright will present “Brown v.
Board 50 Years Later” at 8 p.m. in McMurtry Auditorium,
Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. Melodious Voices of Praise,
a Rice student choir, will perform and Houston actor Rutherford
Craven will present a reading of the Brown decision.

Segregation in
the United States was struck down in 1954 by the Supreme
Court because of the efforts by the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights
groups.

Though remembered
as a case against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.,
the case actually consolidated suits originating not only
in Kansas, but in South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware,
said Alexander Byrd, assistant professor of history at Rice.

The Brown ruling
signaled the Supreme Court’s divorce from a principle
of segregation that had guided the court since the end of
the 19th century — that separate facilities, educational
and otherwise, for blacks and whites were constitutional
so long as they were nominally equal.

Chief Justice
Earl Warren, who wrote the opinion for the unanimous court
ruling, said, “We conclude that in the field of public
education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’
has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal.”

By destabilizing
the legal foundations of Jim Crow, the ruling settled the
question of the constitutionality of legally enforced racial
segregation, Byrd said.

The ruling also
raised new questions that are still debated, such as whether
and how the nation is obliged to strive toward integration
in education, not just desegregation and other realms, he
said.

“As such,
the case remains at the heart of current discussions concerning
racial equity in American life,” Byrd said.

In his lecture,
Wright will clarify the issues at stake in the case 50 years
ago and will assess the country’s current progress
in those issues, such as equity in education and American
life. Wright is the author of three books on African-American
history and is best known for his trailblazing work on racial
violence in the American South.

The Brown ruling
weakened the foundations of American segregation and paved
the way for finding solutions to achieve racial equity in
education.

“The case
is still very much alive, and those concerned with the nature
of our democracy and the place of education in nurturing
that democracy cannot afford to be ignorant about the road
to Brown nor about the road since Brown,” Byrd said.
“Brown v. Board is a seminal case. In American education,
there is not a more important decision.”

The lecture is
sponsored by the Office of the President.

Other events
commemorating the anniversary include:

• James
Banks of the University of Washington will speak about “Teaching
for Multicultural Literacy, Global Citizenship and Social
Justice” at 4:30 p.m. April 22. The lecture is sponsored
by the Center for Education’s Hazel Creekmore Symposium.
For more information about the lecture, go to <www.ruf.rice.edu/~ctreduc>.

• Secretary
of Education Rod Paige is the invited speaker at the “Brown
v. Board: A 50th Anniversary Symposium” sponsored by
Rice and the Education Foundation of Harris County May 17.
Steven Klineberg, professor of sociology, and Richard Smalley,
University Professor, will also give presentations. Visit
<www.educationfoundation.info/brown.htm>
for more information.