Fifty years ago, in the decade before the Supreme Court heard Brown vs. Board of Education, the American Federation of Teachers was a small union of about 50,000 members. Like other unions, it organized people where they were employed, and since schools were segregated, a number of AFT locals were, too, especially in the South. After World War II, AFT stopped accepting segregated locals into the union. Nevertheless, in cities like New Orleans and Atlanta, we had a large number of members in separate black and white locals.
When Brown was about to reach the Supreme Court, there were AFT members who agitated to have the union enter the suit on the side of the plaintiffs. But there were others who felt, just as strongly, that AFT should stay out of Brown. They said that we would alienate many union people and would lose members, and maybe even locals, in the South. It would also make further recruiting there very tough.
Despite these practical considerations, AFT decided to present a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the plaintiffs. We were the only education group to do so -- no other teachers' union or association of principals or superintendents or other educators or school board association came forward to argue that school segregation was unconstitutional.
Shortly after Brown was decided, AFT began to enforce the decision in its locals. This, too, was difficult and controversial. Critics said that if black and white locals were ordered to merge, most white locals would disaffiliate. And in the hostile climate following the decision, it was unclear that black locals could survive alone. A national referendum confirmed the policy, but all the segregated white locals did leave the union and, ultimately, many of the black locals folded. It was a long time before AFT began to come back in the South.
Those who worked for the Brown decision did not question its importance. In striking down segregation, the Supreme Court righted a terrible injustice and helped to make the U.S. more faithful to its democratic principles. But the response of many people to the 40th anniversary of Brown has been skeptical or indifferent. Many schools are still segregated -- some of them after being integrated 20 years ago. And some African-Americans now question the validity of integration as an ideal. Was the fight worth it? Did Brown accomplish anything?
Forty years later, there is still a lot wrong with our society. We have not come as far toward eradicating the effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws as we hoped. In some respects, it looks as though we have regressed. Nevertheless, the decision removing the legal basis for segregated schools led to enormous changes in our entire society. It led to the Montgomery bus boycott and the lunchroom sit-ins, to the March on Washington and the Voting Rights Acts of 1955 and 1964. Before Brown, we would never have had an African-American Supreme Court justice or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who is now being looked at as a serious contender for a presidential nomination). We would not have had numerous elected officials who were African-American -- mayors and members of Congress -- some in constituencies that are not majority black.
Remembering Brown -- and the odds against the people who worked for it -- should counter pessimism and give us the guts to try harder and push for more and continuing change.
Some of the discouragement that African-Americans now feel about the pace of progress expresses itself in hostility toward white America and a desire to separate themselves from white society. Brown should also remind us that the African-Americans who achieved that victory were joined by white supporters, though small in number. And the great legislative victories that followed Brown depended on winning the support of the majority of Americans.
Since there is still a job to be done, white support is essential, and racism, anti-Semitism and talk about hatred toward all whites will only prevent African-Americans from getting the support they need and deserve in continuing their fight for justice. Some of the denial of progress and the insistence on hatred is a political tactic based on the idea that an extreme view will be more effective than a reasonable one. But white Americans did not participate in the changes introduced by Brown because they were afraid but because their consciences and their sense of justice were stirred. Tactics that depend on hatred and intimidation are bound to backfire.
Our democracy is capable of growing and becoming truer to its principles. But continuing progress depends on our joining together and negotiating our differences, rather than going our separate ways.