Lawyer analyzes landmark case progress

Robert L. Carter, the head counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People legal team that challenged school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, has unfinished business.\nAlthough the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 and 1955 decisions in Brown ended the 'separate but equal' standard for education, Carter said he believes urban schools today are no better than they were before the landmark case. \nFull integration has still not been achieved. \n"Schools where blacks attend, in Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, Detroit -- I'm talking about poor blacks ... are not giving education to those children to compete for decent jobs," he said. \nCarter spoke Tuesday at the IU School of Law on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. His topic was the role he played in Brown and the other 20 civil rights cases he argued and won in front of the Supreme Court.\nCarter said Brown's effects include an expansion of the black middle class, the creation of a more aggressive black community and more volatile race relations.\nBut it also showed that blacks could not expect any white institution in America to promote racial equality, he said.\n"The mistake we made was that segregation was the evil," Carter said. "It was the symptom. The evil is white supremacy ... that evil is marring this country."\nIn Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 the "separate but equal" standard that legally permitted racial segregation in schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the Constitution.\nCarter said psychologist Kenneth Clark's 1951 "Doll Test" was a key part of the NAACP case showing separate schools fostered a feeling of inferiority in black children.\nThe Court in 1955 supplemented its first ruling by declaring that integration should occur with "all deliberate speed."\nCarter said this phrase was a racial stain on the ruling. \n"They should have (integrated) immediately," he said. "They thought they were making it easier for the South to accept the decision. It shored up the resistance, actually."\nCarter said Affirmative Action has given blacks the opportunity to attend college despite deficiencies in reading and writing. \nAlvin O'Chambliss, a distinguished visiting professor in the IU School of Education who studied law under Carter at Howard University in Washington D.C and won a case in 1991 in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that argued Mississippi had not done enough to promote equality in its public universities, said Carter's speech was frank and direct.\n"Disparities are wider now," O'Chambliss said. "Racial equality will not come until we change."\nIU Law Professor Kevin Brown said the biggest issue facing equality in education today is the constitutional challenges to voluntary desegregation plans. \nOn Oct. 20, a federal appeals court struck down a Massachusetts plan to improve racial imbalance present in the state's schools. \n"That's the irony of it all," Brown said. "What he set in motion boomeranged and came back." \n-- Contact staff writer Adam VanOsdol at avanosdo@indiana.edu.