Richard Kluger

No supreme court has changed the United States as did Brown v. Board of Education. Many articles have been written about the case, but one that starts off and tells how it all really began and shows the whole process until the decision has been made is Richard Kluger’s “From Simple Justice”. In this article, Kluger takes us back to the moment of change. This article explains the struggle this case suffered to finally come out victorious at the end.

It went through two main Chief Justices, one of whom was very lost and uncertain of where this was all going to end, and the other whom was sure of what he believed in and had a strong faith in his overall goal that he wanted to achieve. It all began with Chief Justice Vinson. By the 1952 term, the court was failing to reach a unanimous decision eighty one percent of the time, making this twice as high percentage of disagreement as it had been recorded a decade earlier. This showed Chief Vinson’s failure as Chief Justice.

Soon thereafter, Chief Vinson and the rest of the Justices had to deal with the case of Brown v Board of Education. He would find himself lost and confused most of the time as to what direction this case would take. Their main focus would be to deal with the segregated states of the South, who would be very difficult to persuade dealing with this issue that was of great importance in that area. As the 1952 term ended, Vinson was distressed over the court’s inability to find a strong, unified position on such an important case.

Not too long after this, Vinson dies in an unfortunate event of a heart attack on 1953. The rest of the members of the Court attended Vinson’s burial in Louisa, Kentucky, which was his ancestral home, but not all of the members grieved equally for his death. One of the members, Frankfurter, did not grieve at all. He had not admired Vinson as a judge or man. Frankfurter thought Vinson was the main obstacle for reaching a humanitarian agreement dealing with the subject of segregation. Kluger quotes Frankfurter as saying that “This is the first indication I have ever had that there is a God. After Vinson’s death, a new Chief Justice had to be chosen to lead the Supreme Court as it faced one of its most momentous decisions in the segregation case.

This led President Dwight Eisenhower to choose Earl Warren as the new Chief Justice. Warren would then later become the Chief Justice who wrote the landmark decision and reversed case Plessy v. Ferguson, which in its time in 1896, had named as constitutional some state laws that allowed racial segregation in private businesses under the doctrine “separate but equal. Since Warren’s start as Chief Justice, he knew where this case needed to be headed.

He knew the case had been chipped away eroding Plessy, rather than ever facing it. It eroded up to the point where only the fact of segregation remained unconstitutional. Warren knew that the time had finally come when the Court’s policy of delay on the matters of segregation could no longer be permitted. Warren knew that the segregation in schools of colored children had to be ended. He stated that at that day and age, law could not keep setting colored people apart.

To do so would be like going against intentions of the three Civil War amendments. Warren’s remarks meant that the majority of the Court was ready to strike down the practice of segregation. The words of Warren and his opinion won him the support of every member of the court. It was finally in 1954 that the decision had been officially made by Warren in the case of Brown v Board of Education. Warren ruled that separate but equal had no place and that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

The news was spread fast and its point was clear: No Americans were more equal than any other Americans. In conclusion, Warren was the main factor in the decision of Brown v Board of Education. His great skills of speaking and sharing his opinions gained him the support of his colleague Justices, which made the final decision of this case much easier to decide. In the end, Warren was successful in getting his point across and ending the segregation of colored people in schools and other places of public and private businesses.

Question for Class: What do you think would have been the outcome of this case if Warren had never been appointed to this position and Vinson had remained Chief Justice? Answer to Question: I personally believe that the outcome would have been something completely different. Vinson was never sure of the direction this case would take. To me it seemed like he didn’t know how to be a leader and direct the rest of the Justice in the right direction, or at least in the direction he thought was right.

If he had been successful with his beliefs, maybe segregation would not have been ended because, as Frankfurter stated, he thought Vinson was “the main obstacle to the Court’s prospects of reaching a humanitarian and judicially defensible settlement of the monumental segregation case”. I think Vinson would have continued to “chip away” from Plessy by changing and adding a few things, but still keeping the idea of segregation very much alive.