Fifty years ago, the United States was "separate but equal." Schools, restaurants and hotels opened their doors to one race. \nFifty years ago, Bloomington resembled the rest of America's segregated cities. Barbershops and social facilities throughout the city denied access to families who had lived here since the Civil War, and the only school black children could attend was Banneker Elementary.\nFifty years ago, IU did not have a single integrated fraternity, and black student athletes had to stay in separate hotels at away games. \nFifty years ago, with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the country went from "separate but equal" to equal.\nThe doors to Banneker Elementary closed.\nOn May 17, 1954, the court ruled in favor of Oliver Brown and his daughter in their struggle for integrated schools. The suffering and sacrifice of Brown's family and their two lawyers finally set right the suffering and sacrifice of people like them for ages past. It was on that day segregation was supposed to drop from America's vocabulary and integration would flourish.\nWith the court's decision, Thurgood Marshall, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's lead lawyer, delegated school segregation would be eliminated within five years. But 50 years later, Marshall's prediction has yet to come true.
A welder fights for his daughters\nThe legendary case of Brown v. Board of Education concluded in 1954, but the story truly begins closer to 1950, when black students in Clarendon County, S.C., vied for improved conditions in black schools. With Marshall's leadership, they soon called for the desegregation of their schools. \nCases of this accord began springing up in Prince Edward County, Va., Topeka, Kan., Delaware and Washington, D.C., with more than 200 plaintiffs. But the Topeka case would eventually be the one to rise to the Supreme Court, allowing a welder and his three daughters to become the representatives for thousands of discriminated African Americans.\n"The question it confronts is how do you want to teach the lessons of your society," said Frank Motley, IU associate vice chancellor for academic support and diversity. "We were teaching one way to whites and one way to blacks, and they had the philosophy to keep those separate."\nChief Justice Fred Vinson headed the court that would decide the fate of the country. In 1952, it seemed as if Vinson was ready to reaffirm the statutes set up by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, which gave birth to the term "separate but equal."\nThe case was close, but it appeared as if Vinson would have enough backing for a 5-4 defeat and "separate but equal" would live on. The justices, though, asked for a re-argument in 1953 so additional issues could be briefed by each side. In September, the biggest turn in the case came when Vinson died of a heart attack, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed civil rights supporter and California Governor Earl Warren as his replacement.\nJust eight months later, the court handed down the decision that segregating America's public schools violated the Constitution. The previously fractious group of justices made the decision in a unanimous fashion.\n"Many of (the justices) felt it was wrong," said Associate Dean of the IU Law School John Applegate. "But the others were left persuaded that it was a dying institution, it just needed someone to kill it."
Wells strives for civil rights at IU\nIn Herman B Wells' autobiography, "Being Lucky: Reminiscences and Reflections," he wrote, "one of the most time-consuming and important responsibilities relating to students that occurred during my administration involved the effort to shake off previous University practices that discriminated against black students -- in essence, the effort to make black students full-fledged members of the University community."\nFor much of IU's early history, places for African Americans simply didn't exist. Many of the University's first black students were forced to live with professors or Bloomington residents like Ruth Mays, who opened their doors to the revolutionary students. The first "separate but equal" facilities did not even exist at IU until 1948. Students even had the option to request living with other students of their own race, but steps toward integration were under way.\nFollowing World War I, the activities of the Ku Klux Klan began to touch even closer to IU, as Wells made efforts to integrate swimming pools, the Commons dining room in the Indiana Memorial Union and the ROTC program. His approach for integrating these areas set the tone for IU's future involving race relations.\nIn regard to the IMU's dining facilities, Wells simply asked that one day the signs separating "blacks" from "whites" be removed from the Commons room. Without drawing much attention to the change, the signs were discreetly removed, and the IMU has not seen segregation since. Wells also called on a black student athlete to inconspicuously select a time to break the school's code on black students using the University swimming pool. \nWells set the bar for IU's stance on an integrated learning community and the upcoming decision of Brown v. Board would only further fuel the fire that would eventually take down segregation in Bloomington.\n"Dr. Wells was very, very committed to equality and to diversity," History Professor James Madison said. "A lot of folks were not really willing to go nearly as far, or nearly as fast as Wells was, so he had to be thoughtful and politically astute in his actions."\nBy 1958, many of the University's fraternities and sororities no longer denied membership based on race, but discrimination still existed within the walls of some businesses and facilities. \nOne year later, then-student body senator Kenneth Naylor petitioned Wells to end discrimination in businesses around Bloomington and to "relieve the plight of minority students." The year also brought IU's first black tenured professor, Richard Atkins.\nStill, after countless steps to better integrate IU had been taken, only an estimated 700 of IU's near 25,000 students were African Americans. The more things seemed to change, the more they stayed the same.
A slow start sparks action\nThe Brown v. Board ruling got off to a rocky start. By 1956, more than 100 congressmen from the 11 states of the old confederacy had signed the Southern Manifesto attacking the court's decision. In 1957, the United States Army escorted nine black students into Central High School in Arkansas past mobs of angry whites.\nThe court originally called schools to begin desegregation with "deliberate speed," but after nine years, only 2 percent of black students attended integrated schools. And by 1968, 85 percent of the country's black students still remained in the schools that had been reserved for them during segregation. \nIt was understood that changes of this magnitude could not be made overnight, but still, the issue was too crucial to wait on.\n"Cases like that are always going to be rare," Applegate said. "It's fortunately rare that you have such clear-cut injustices where many people believe there is such clearly defined right and wrong. Once you get beyond Brown, it gets more complicated."\nAfter the slow start, the courts once again took action in 1969 and changed "all deliberate speed" to schools desegregating "at once." The action paid off, and 37 percent of black children in the 11 old confederacy states were attending majority white schools by 1972.\nSoon after, many white families suburbanized themselves, and segregation began to peer its head once more. Almost 20 years after the Brown v. Board case, the Supreme Court overturned a metropolitan-area plan in a move Thurgood Marshall would later describe as a "giant step backward."
An ongoing struggle\nThe integration efforts peaked in the south in 1988, when 43 percent of African Americans attended majority white schools. By 2000, that number had fallen to 31 percent nationwide. The more things changed, the more they were remaining the same.\nThe ruling made in Brown v. Board of Education is now evident every day in places like IU. Diversity continues to be heightened as schools and businesses promote the concept of expanded learning opportunities through diversity. Through it all, however, 70 percent of black students still attend schools where racial minorities are the majority.\n"Public education has an extremely important place in this country," Applegate said. "It says a lot about this country's values. You have just an enormous symbolic significance that this incredibly important activity can't be segregated."\nFifty years ago, diversity was a nearly unknown commodity at IU. Today it stretches to every corner of the campus and every corner of Bloomington.\nFifty years ago, Thurgood Marshall thought America needed five years to completely eliminate segregation. Today, the country still waits for his prophecy to come true.\nBut America has changed for the better.\nFifty years ago, every African-American child in Bloomington went to Banneker Elementary. Today, that school no longer has students, and every child in Bloomington can go to the same school.\n"(Brown v. Board) serves as a reminder that we still have a long way to go," Applegate said. "The court was unequivocal in its decision that segregation had to go, but you look at the world today and, in many ways, it has been succeeded beyond the authors' wildest imagination, but in many ways it has failed beyond their imagination."\n-- Contact senior writer Brian Janosch at bjanosch@indiana.edu
