Tyrone N. Butts
APE Reporter
16
'Deliberate Speed' indeed, prof laments
DURHAM -- In the 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in public schools, the nation has yet to fully implement the U.S. Supreme Court decision, said a leading civil rights attorney.
Charles Ogletree Jr. addressed a luncheon meeting Tuesday at Duke University of the Harvard Club of the Triangle and Harvard Law School Association. About 30 people heard Ogletree discuss the Supreme Court and his recent book "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education."
Ogletree is a Harvard Law School professor. He represented Anita Hill in her allegations of sexual harassment in 1991 against then-Supreme Co
urt nominee Clarence Thomas and is lead counsel in a law
suit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race riots.
In the latter capacity, Ogletree acknowledged a client in the audience Tuesday, John Hope Franklin. The venerable Duke historian's father was a victim of the notorious riots. Buck Colbert Franklin's law office in Tulsa was burned down, and in the days afterward he practiced law in a tent.
Ogletree's talk took place in the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke. Another Harvard alumnus, Duke law professor Robinson Everett, had arranged the session and introduced Ogletree.
Although the Brown decision, whose 50th anniversary was observed last year, is often thought of as decisive and singular, it was one of several legal challenges to public-school segregation, Ogletree said. Perhaps more significantly, it was really two cases, with the second one providing the means of integration. But its opinio
n also contained the phrase of his book's title, which in legal parlance meant that schools could take their
time about integration, in deference to those who would resist it indefinitely.
"That's exactly what happened," Ogletree said.
The resistance hasn't ended, he added.
"In some sense, 50 years after Brown, we're seeing the same problems," he said. They include "white flight," de facto segregation of schools by shifting attendance patterns.
Progress on the civil rights front, however, has come in minority appointments to the federal courts, Ogletree said. Administrations of Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did the most among recent presidents to diversify the judiciary, although presidents George Bush elder and younger have done a
"fairly reasonable job," particularly in promoting Hispanics, he said.
He speculated on who might replace William Rehnquist when the ailing chief justice steps down. Thomas and Antonin Scalia could be considered leading candidate
s, he said. And while he disagrees with their views, he said, he praised Thomas' consistency and Scalia's writing.
While resistance to school integration is infrequent today, the latent attitudes that once defied it still perpetuate separation in education and other spheres, Ogletree said.
"I think that is right below the surface," he said.
Ogletree quoted from Justice Thurgood Marshall, a major figure in his book, in Marshall's dissenting opinion in Milliken v. Bradley. The court's majority in 1974 declined to require racial balance in Detroit schools. The hope Marshall spoke of remains elusive today, Ogletree said: "Unless our c
hildren begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together," Marshall wrote.
***********
Nigger, you don't know the half of it.
T.N.B.
'Deliberate Speed' indeed, prof laments
DURHAM -- In the 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in public schools, the nation has yet to fully implement the U.S. Supreme Court decision, said a leading civil rights attorney.
Charles Ogletree Jr. addressed a luncheon meeting Tuesday at Duke University of the Harvard Club of the Triangle and Harvard Law School Association. About 30 people heard Ogletree discuss the Supreme Court and his recent book "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education."
Ogletree is a Harvard Law School professor. He represented Anita Hill in her allegations of sexual harassment in 1991 against then-Supreme Co
urt nominee Clarence Thomas and is lead counsel in a law
suit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race riots.
In the latter capacity, Ogletree acknowledged a client in the audience Tuesday, John Hope Franklin. The venerable Duke historian's father was a victim of the notorious riots. Buck Colbert Franklin's law office in Tulsa was burned down, and in the days afterward he practiced law in a tent.
Ogletree's talk took place in the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke. Another Harvard alumnus, Duke law professor Robinson Everett, had arranged the session and introduced Ogletree.
Although the Brown decision, whose 50th anniversary was observed last year, is often thought of as decisive and singular, it was one of several legal challenges to public-school segregation, Ogletree said. Perhaps more significantly, it was really two cases, with the second one providing the means of integration. But its opinio
n also contained the phrase of his book's title, which in legal parlance meant that schools could take their
time about integration, in deference to those who would resist it indefinitely.
"That's exactly what happened," Ogletree said.
The resistance hasn't ended, he added.
"In some sense, 50 years after Brown, we're seeing the same problems," he said. They include "white flight," de facto segregation of schools by shifting attendance patterns.
Progress on the civil rights front, however, has come in minority appointments to the federal courts, Ogletree said. Administrations of Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did the most among recent presidents to diversify the judiciary, although presidents George Bush elder and younger have done a
"fairly reasonable job," particularly in promoting Hispanics, he said.
He speculated on who might replace William Rehnquist when the ailing chief justice steps down. Thomas and Antonin Scalia could be considered leading candidate
s, he said. And while he disagrees with their views, he said, he praised Thomas' consistency and Scalia's writing.
While resistance to school integration is infrequent today, the latent attitudes that once defied it still perpetuate separation in education and other spheres, Ogletree said.
"I think that is right below the surface," he said.
Ogletree quoted from Justice Thurgood Marshall, a major figure in his book, in Marshall's dissenting opinion in Milliken v. Bradley. The court's majority in 1974 declined to require racial balance in Detroit schools. The hope Marshall spoke of remains elusive today, Ogletree said: "Unless our c
hildren begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together," Marshall wrote.
***********
Nigger, you don't know the half of it.
T.N.B.
