Backstory: Brown in black and white

By Michael Green

Half a century ago this week, nine U.S. Supreme Court justices--Northern and Southern, Democratic and Republican--joined to try to force this nation to live up to its ideals. The nation and Nevada had trouble with it then and are working on it now. Some of the parallels are striking.

Brown vs. Board of Education was one of several cases challenging school segregation. The court had heard the cases nearly two years before and was closely divided. Only after Chief Justice Earl Warren's appointment did the court unite.

As California's governor, Warren had been a moderate Republican in a largely right-wing state. Not to compare his popularity with its current GOP governor, or suggest the decline of moderation, but Warren won three terms, once running unopposed. If you want to know how Warren would fare today, ask moderate Republicans--if you can find one the right-wing hasn't tried to tar and feather.

Warren and the other justices understood a divided opinion would be like no opinion at all, given the inevitable criticism of a ruling that necessarily told a large section of the country that its words and deeds were wrong. The vote wasn't 5-4 along partisan or sectional lines, and it threw out bad law; it didn't trample good law or majority rule.

As chief justice, Warren led the court to a moderate, even Lincolnesque opinion: simple, blaming no person or region, appealing to the heart and mind. Legally, it wasn't brilliantly argued, but it stressed the importance of education to the nation and its citizens. In many Southern states, the response was not merely to criticize the opinion, but to overthrow it, by violence or by simply ignoring it.

Not that judicial opinions in Nevada haven't provoked nasty reactions. The state high court's 2003 decision on taxes hardly compares in importance, and its argumentation was embarrassing. But as in the Brown case, the court did what it thought was right for the sake of education--and given the character of some of the critics and criticism, the comparison might be apt.

Some critics of Brown revealed their character. After generations of lynchings and other forms of violence, they used bombs, fire hoses and attack dogs, trying to maintain a racist way of life, against African-Americans seeking no more than their constitutional rights.

While Nevada was less violent, its segregationist policies earned it the nickname "Mississippi of the West." Las Vegas forced African-Americans to live west of the railroad tracks, without water lines, paved streets and other basic amenities.

Not until the national civil rights movement of the 1950s--and Brown had a lot to do with it--did black Las Vegans begin to win justice. While they faced less danger than their fellow freedom fighters, white and black alike, in the South, it still was a struggle. They had to fight for the right even to gamble in Strip and downtown casinos.

But local schools remained segregated, and as Warren's decision noted, education and racism can go hand in hand. In 1971, two events here began to change that. The state passed a fair housing law, thanks to the efforts of white Democratic Gov. Mike O'Callaghan and black Republican Assemblyman Woodrow Wilson. You may recall that political parties used to be able to cooperate on important issues.

And federal judges pushed Las Vegas to integrate. West Las Vegas schools became sixth-grade centers, with white students bused there for a year while black students in grades first through fifth came east. It wasn't the best solution, but it introduced some of us white kids to children of other colors and vice versa.

Today we have yet to achieve integration. That has less to do with old laws than with old attitudes and economic problems. Brown and the civil rights movement brought tremendous progress to the nation and Nevada, but let's face the obvious: Those from richer backgrounds have a better chance of getting (further) ahead in life than those from poorer areas. That's why affirmative action needs to survive: to assure a level playing field.

Those who claim it's level are playing on a different field, perhaps because their father and grandfather went to Yale. If you doubt that, consider the irony of the recent news of prisoner abuse in Iraq. African-Americans once faced far worse. Such actions may not be what America is all about, but the same is supposed to be true of denying people their rights or trying to kill them on account of race--or, for that matter, their religion or sexual orientation.

We can have hope for better in the future, but whose future? After arguing and winning Brown, Thurgood Marshall expected our racial problems to be solved in five years. In 1991, retiring from the Supreme Court due to age and ill health, he yielded his spot to Clarence Thomas, deemed the best choice by a president who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That president's son, in office partly because his Florida friends kept some African-Americans from voting, thinks Thomas is a great justice because he wants to turn the legal clock back to the 14th century. We have come a long way since Brown. Some still have a long way to go.