(article is from the news section of the Jamestown Post-Journal)
4/30/2004 - By JOHN WHITTAKER
The
mission begun by Brown v. Board of Education will remain unfinished unless today's
youth pick up where the generation of Linda Brown Thompson and Cheryl Brown
Henderson left off. With nearly 1,000 people in the audience at the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater, the sisters whose father's name is attached to the case discussed the unfinished legacy of the famous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in the final event of the Robert H. Jackson Center's 50th anniversary celebration of the case.
Several hundred school students from throughout Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties and all of Western New York attended Wednesday's event.
Further
progress in racial equality is not likely to be accomplished by adults or older
people, Ms. Brown Henderson said, because history shows that most progress is
made by young people - whether it be 32-year-old Oliver Brown signing his name
to a challenge of school segregation, civil rights movements in the 1960s driven
by 24-year-old Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, and even college youth participating
in Freedom Rides and marches on Washington, D.C. ''Brown, like the civil rights movement, was brought by young people,'' she said. ''All of these were youth movements. Who do you see in the streets facing fire hoses and dogs? Teen-agers. People in their 20s.''
While Ms. Brown Thompson spoke largely about the way the case affected the Brown family and the troubled legacy surrounding school desegregation in the last 50 years, Ms. Brown Henderson warned those in the audience to know the history of the civil rights movement before it repeats itself.
Racism
and discrimination didn't happen unintentionally, she said, as is evidenced
by the U.S. Constitution and the infamous three-fifths clause or by such Supreme
Court cases as Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson. The fact that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution didn't put an end to racism and segregation are signs that people were naive in the 1950s after the Brown case was decided, Ms. Brown Henderson said. She said a simple study of history would show that the job was not completed yet.
''Had we known our history, we would have known that we were not the first black power movement in this country,'' she said. ''There's nothing new under the sun. I say that because had Thurgood Marshall and Robert Barnes and Jeff Weaver and Oliver Hill and Lewis Redding and the Scott family and all the attorneys involved in Brown and our parents and all the plaintiffs in Brown and the community thought for one minute, they would have known that Brown would remain unfinished business.''
Brown v. Board of Education is still significant, Ms. Brown Henderson said, because it began the end of legalized segregation, overturned the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, reversed segregation laws on the books in 21 states, ushered in the use of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution as a means to protect the rights of all Americans, and enhanced the United States' standing on the world stage at the height of the Cold War.
Much like Nicholas Katzenbach's speech at the Athenaeum Hotel on Wednesday, the sisters credit the Brown case with providing a foundation for Supreme Court cases that followed as well as such landmark laws as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
''We must be mindful of delivering effective education,'' Ms. Brown Thompson said. ''To me, the impact of Brown is best seen in the increasing numbers of black professionals today. These are the people that after 1954 were able to have some degree of choice. This surely made a difference in their aspirations and their achievements.''