Siding With the Board (Oliver Brown Vs. The Board of Education)

"It was the second Emancipation...", former president of the National Urban League, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. concludes in the included video.

This video not only brought me to tears but purely exemplifies the struggle of Black America and the cultural pride and maintained/restored-hopefulness that such successes as Brown v. Board result in. The Brown v. Board decision is very rightfully considered the second emancipation as it's result and conclusion over-turned Plessy v. Ferguson, actively taking back and enforcing the rights of Black Americans.

Most recently in a mock trial series done by my litigation team, we were selected to argue on the side of the Board in the Brown v. Board trial. My argument was as follows:

o No law is being broken as we are providing a free public education for all children, staying within separate but equal laws, AND staying within the law that states that “It shall be unlawful for pupils of one race to attend the schools provide by boards of trustees for persons of another race.” (These all being laws of our greater state of South Carolina.)

o We are doing nothing unlawful. There is no discrimination. Colored children are receiving a free education just as white children. The “quality” of that education as an argument is merely opinion, not fact, and should be rid from this HOPEFULLY judicially restrained environment.

o We are abiding by the laws set forth by the state of South Carolina and if, in fact, there is a problem with said laws, then Mr. Brown should take that argument up at the federal level with the state of South Carolina, Kansas, Virginia, or Delaware and not the Boards of Education within them. However, as state-run facilities I consider it to be my duty, in the best interest of the states, to clarify that the states of South Carolina, Kansas, Virginia, and Delaware are not enforcing any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of any citizen (these children are privileged enough to have the right to a free public education), there is no deprivation of life, liberty, or property present (colored children are being granted, in their right to a free public education, exactly all of these things), and similarly, no person or persons are being denied equal protection of the law within our jurisdiction. We are embodying the beneficial law set forth by the states of our origin from the U.S. Supreme Court decision that “Separate But Equal” IS constitutional.

In closing, I will say again that the Board of Education of Clarendon County Schools, nor the Boards of Virginia, Delaware, and Kansas should be held accountable in the court of law for doing nothing but following the law in which that very court is to follow all the same.

Not unlike the first mock trial in which my litigation team had to defend the attempted murder (debatable, though he did SHOOT her and was originally charged of battery) of a one Ms. Lydia, a slave woman whom tried to escape a beating in the State V. Mann trial, this monumental and historic case, of which overturned Plessy V. Ferguson and the De Facto and then De Jure belief that segregation was constitutional and just; my litigation team represented the Boards of Education in Brown V. Board's mock trial.

Yet again being an African American and having to see through the perspective of those who wanted to hinder your progression, your culture's progression, you and everyone in your family and the future generations that you have; but at the same time I found this to be yet another eye-opening and ultimately positive method of learning. I learned the most I'd ever known about Brown V. Board and I am proud to say so.

One quote from Thurgood Marshall's argument to the Supreme Court spoke volumes to me and struck a tone in me, a tone of pride in my culture, my history, and tone of strength and determination to dream, it went as the following:

So whichever way it is done, the only way that this Court can decide this case in opposition to our position, is that there must be some reason which gives the state the right to make a classification that they can make in regard to nothing else in regard to Negroes, and we submit the only way to arrive at that decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings. Nobody will stand in the Court and urge that, and in order to arrive at the decision that they want us to arrive at, there would have to be some recognition of a reason why of all of the multitudinous groups of people in this country you have to single out Negroes and give them this separate treatment. It can't be because of slavery in the past, because there are very few groups in this country that haven't had slavery some place back in history of their groups. It can't be color because there are Negroes as white as the drifted snow, with blue eyes, and they are just as segregated as the colored man. The only thing can be is an inherent determination that the people who were formerly in slavery, regardless of anything else, shall be kept as near that stage as is possible, and now is the time, we submit, that this Court should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for. Thank you, sir. -