Brown versus Board of Education was really the most significant of a series
of Supreme Court cases that dealt with inequality in education.
What had existed there since the 19th century had been a separate school system—
one for whites and one for blacks.
And this was allowable under the Constitution because
of the Supreme Court decision in the late 19th century, Plessy versus Ferguson.
The principle that was outlined in Plessy versus Ferguson was the principle of separate but equal.
And, of course, what we know now is that those facilities were never equal.
Before Brown, and even for years following Brown,
there were dramatic differences in the quality of schooling.
Black schools might run three or four months a year.
The quality of the curriculum was really limited, and these were the facts that were brought forward.
It was over a series of years that the court heard arguments and re-arguments.
It issued its decision in May of 1954.
And written by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, it was a unanimous decision.
And that was very important.
And they wanted to show that the Supreme Court was speaking with a single voice
on this very important issue.
Now, just because the Supreme Court declared that separate and unequal was
no longer constitutional, didn't mean that states were just going to suddenly
change what they were doing.
The immediate impact of the Brown decision was very little.
Very little actually changed.
It was a year later that they issued a decision—it was called Brown II—
in 1955, that laid out when this was to be implemented.
And they used a famous phrase there: "With all deliberate speed,"
which was kind of a mystifying phrase.
The people didn't know exactly what it meant, but it seemed to imply that it could be
worked out over a long period of time.
And so southern states ended up taking a long period of time to work this out.
And many of them didn't desegregate their schools at all.
Just to pass a court case declaring segregation illegal is one thing,
but bringing it to life really took courage.
Someone had to actually agree to walk into these schools
where previously they had not been allowed to go.
Probably the most widely recognized or prominent example would be the Little Rock Nine.
Nine students, who were some of the brightest, smartest students anywhere in Little Rock,
and they wanted to enroll in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September of 1957.
There were protests.
The governor, Orval Faubus, actually called in the Arkansas National Guard
to block the way of these nine students from entering.
And it became a showdown.
There would be throngs of white Southerners there protesting, shouting
slurs at them, shouting all kinds of obscenities at them.
But Dwight Eisenhower sends federal troops to Little Rock to actually protect and
guard the nine students who go to school.
And so they are admitted, and they spend that year in school.
They had to show great restraint in not responding to the harassment of their fellow students.
People would yell at them.
People would not try to knock the the trays out of their hand in the in the cafeteria.
And they knew if they yelled back or if they'd hit back at their fellow students, they would be expelled.
This would be exactly what the white folks wanted
because it would it would give them an excuse to kick them out of school.
To have the state police or the National Guard having to escort you into the building,
to have to worry about what you would experience or encounter once there,
it's not the most conducive environment to learning. And yet they did.
Another place in which the desegregation of southern schools was particularly difficult
was in the city of New Orleans in 1960.
And one of the most remarkable characters to emerge out of that conflict was a young girl called Ruby Bridges.
Ruby Bridges' mother was determined that she would go to the local white school in New Orleans.
And there's a famous story that she tells
that she remembers showing up at school the first day,
and she was accompanied by these large US Marshals.
And there was such energy and activity.
There were people yelling and screaming, and she thought it was a Mardi Gras parade.
There were many other acts of courage all over the country and here in Georgia.
Both in our high schools, as early as 1961 when four high schools
agreed to integrate right here in Atlanta, to the integration of our
colleges and universities, here in Georgia.
So the middle to late 1960s were in one sense tumultuous,
but in another really important in terms of breaking
the barriers of race in our schools.
The kind of courage that was exercised by young people and their families
to be the ones who would be out front in trying to bring integration to
life I think is really remarkable