From Courtrooms to Classrooms: Understanding Brown v. Board with Dr. James T Patterson

Arnold 00:00:00  70 years ago, Brown v Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court. Separate but equal educational facilities for racial minorities is inherently unequal, and it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court was unanimous in their decision. We're going to find out more about that today on Saint Louis in tune. Welcome to Saint Louis, Antoon, and thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders and everyday people who are driving change and making an impact that shapes our society and world. I'm Arnold Stricker, your host, along with co-host Mark Langston. We have a special guest today. James T Patterson is one of the most distinguished historians of modern America. He received his master's and PhD from Harvard University and went on to teach at Indiana University and Brown University, where he spent the remainder of his teaching career. His research focused on legal, social, and political history, as well as the history of education, medicine, and race relations. Doctor Patterson is regarded as one of the top scholars on Brown v Board of Education.

Arnold 00:01:25  He has been the recipient of many awards, including NIH and Guggenheim Fellowships. He is one of the few American historians to hold both the Harmsworth Professorship at Oxford University and the Pitt Professorship at Cambridge University. His list of publications is enormous and extraordinarily wide ranging. His book on congressional conservatism and the New Deal from 1967, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians. In 1966, he published Grand Expectations The United States, 1945 to 1974 and The Oxford History of the United States. This book is the most balanced and fair minded work that deals with one of the most divisive periods in American history, and it was awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize. Doctor Patterson retired from Brown University in 2002 as the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus. While he was at Brown, he served for three years as chair of the History Department and for two years as Associate Provost of the university. In all of his work, Doctor Paterson has demonstrated not only an extraordinary clarity in his prose, but a degree of impartiality rarely seen in the history writing of recent events.

Arnold 00:02:36  Doctor Patterson, welcome to Saint Louis Intune. What is your background as a historian? Give us a little of your background.

Dr. Patterson 00:02:45  I am, I've always been interested in history, and I majored in IT. And college, Williams College and and Massachusetts. And then I came in on a student and wrote a thesis which is very boring and then went on to the army after the Army went, went to a newspaper, the Hartford Courant, which bragged about the fact the newspaper with longest continuous circulation in the world, and they basically covered a town outside of Hartford. I did that for about a year and a half, and I got tired of working nights and it was social life. So I went on that and to graduate school, and I got a PhD thesis and the Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal, which then became a book and received a prize.

Arnold 00:03:34  You were at Indiana University for a while, and then you went to Brown. Background of researching books has been commended that you are impartial and even handed, which is rarely seen in history today.

Arnold 00:03:49  My questions to you today are about your book, Brown versus Board of Education A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy. And for our listeners, this is the 70th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education. Doctor Patterson. Describe a little bit about what the Brown versus Board of Education decision was about.

Dr. Patterson 00:04:13  Brown versus Board of Education was a civil rights milestone because it tried to do away with racial discrimination in the schools for the first time.

Arnold 00:04:25  Let's look into some of the details of the Brown case in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka. Specific and detailed arguments challenged the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools. Thurgood Marshall and his team did that with some key points first, a violation of the equal protection laws. They contended that separate educational facilities for African Americans and white students inherently created unequal conditions, regardless of the physical facilities themselves. Second, psychological harm and impact on students. They argued that segregation contributed to feelings of inferiority among African American students, and undermined their self-esteem and sense of belonging in society. Third, inherently unequal facilities and resources.

Arnold 00:05:10  They presented evidence of disparities in funding, teacher qualifications, textbooks, school buildings, and extracurricular activities between segregated schools for African American students and those for white students. Fourth, the precedent and legal arguments. They challenged the precedent set by Plessy v Ferguson and argued separate but equal doctrine should be overturned. In addition, they emphasized that social science research and evolving understanding of equality supported their argument that segregation could not provide truly equal educational opportunities and fifth, the impact on citizenship and equal participation. They emphasize that denying African American children equal educational opportunities hindered their ability to contribute fully to society and to realize their potential. Many people don't know that there were four cases from different states, which were consolidated together with the Brown case, to challenge the constitutionality of segregation in public schools. Here are some of the details of those cases. Briggs versus Elliott in South Carolina. This was a challenge to the unequal educational facilities for black and white students. The plaintiffs argued that the separate but equal doctrine established by Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 was not being upheld.

Arnold 00:06:25  In South Carolina, African American schools were significantly underfunded and provided inferior resources compared to white schools. The second case was Davis v County School Board of Prince Edward County in Virginia. African American students in Farmville, Virginia, protested against the poor conditions and inequality in their segregated schools. They argued that segregation policies in Virginia violated their constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment. The third case is Belton v Gephardt in Delaware. African American families challenged the segregation of schools in Newcastle County. Their argument was that Delaware segregation laws violated the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, because the separate schools for African American students were unequal to those for white students in terms of facilities, resources, and educational opportunities. The fourth case, Bolling versus Sharpe in Washington, DC, was under federal jurisdiction rather than state jurisdiction. The plaintiffs argued that segregation in Washington, D.C. public schools violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which applies to the federal government. The consolidation of these cases, along with Brown, allowed the Supreme Court to consider multiple instances of segregation in public education across different states and contexts.

Dr. Patterson 00:07:42  I chose the one I named Kansas Just to make it clear that it wasn't just the South that they were attacking. So you had Kansas, and Linda Brown and her father were the ones who were the real basic people in the case. They basically said that this should not be discrimination in schools.

Arnold 00:08:01  When you were researching this, was there any discussion about just making things equal and fair versus getting rid of segregation and pushing to integration?

Dr. Patterson 00:08:12  Not too much. At various times that did happen, but not in Brown versus Board of Education just aimed at discrimination.

Arnold 00:08:20  They were more worried about the integration portion of it from what Thurgood Marshall was really pressing.

Dr. Patterson 00:08:25  Yes. That's right.

Arnold 00:08:27  And when you were researching this, what surprised you? What changed in your mind as you started this research and then as you ended it in writing the book?

Dr. Patterson 00:08:37  I think we had just learned a lot. I hadn't really studied very much about that. So it really basically a learning process and learned a lot about the Supreme Court had done a lot with that when Roosevelt tried to stack the court in 1937.

Dr. Patterson 00:08:51  And so I didn't know that.

Arnold 00:08:53  When your opinion what has changed over the course of time about the court's decision and its effect on education and black white relations?

Dr. Patterson 00:09:04  It started off pretty well, but in the real time gain was in a very liberal late 60s when you really did have an attempt to deal with racial problems. But later on in the 90s, the situation had not greatly changed and the interest in the whole thing had declined and segregation continued in the schools. I have a couple of statistics here that the percentage of black students who attended schools, or black percentage is 90%, was up from 37% in 2000 to 40% and 2 to 22. So we're getting worse, really in terms of integration. And we have a decline in residential segregation in the last 30 years. But school segregation is worse as some people who are poor really care about the schools, and they don't want to have any blacks in the schools. And the cities, of course, you had what was called black white flight and a whole lot of a concentration of blacks in continuation in the cities.

Dr. Patterson 00:10:13  Yeah. This situation called redlining. Which basically was handled by real estate people and assured that blacks would not move into their neighborhoods. Obama tried to do something via federal grants to help the schools and to increase diversity, but he did not get it from Trump administration killed it 2020. Research in the schools showed a lot of inequality in 1977. So you had considerable decline after the 1960s, mainly in the 1990s, and says we're worse off now a little bit. And we were a few years ago in terms of integration in the schools.

Arnold 00:10:54  You mentioned white flight. What do you think of bright flight where some whites would send their children to private schools, even if blacks and whites lived together in the same community? Do you consider that part of the decline?

Dr. Patterson 00:11:08  Very much. That's right. Did it happen?

Arnold 00:11:11  So what has propelled us forward in a good way and stopped us, are pushed us backwards as it relates to these decisions and as time has moved. Brown v Board of Education forward.

Dr. Patterson 00:11:23  We show to have the court Brown education continues to be the law.

Dr. Patterson 00:11:29  The court, of course, has generally become a little bit more conservative. A book to read, the one that I got a lot of promise. Kluger. Shepherd. Justice. Have you ever read that?

Arnold 00:11:38  I have that sitting on my bookshelf.

Dr. Patterson 00:11:41  It will really enjoy it. It's a outstanding book. It's not very long either. It really made an impact on me, on me and a lot of other people. It came out.

Arnold 00:11:51  How did it impact you?

Dr. Patterson 00:11:54  It was the story of the Brown case and short and newspaper ish do all the research I had to do, but it had the same conclusions and made it very clear to me what a bad situation was in the schools. It had a lot to do with my choosing to do this. I was buried, bookish, and wrote ten books. It's just one of my favorites. And I realized how much research I had done.

Arnold 00:12:24  You've done tremendous research. Why is it one of your favorite books?

Dr. Patterson 00:12:29  Mainly because of the book. And I think Brown Versus board was an outstanding decision.

Dr. Patterson 00:12:36  And I learned how it happened.

Arnold 00:12:38  Do you think that we have improved race relations because of Brown v Board of Education?

Dr. Patterson 00:12:44  I'm not sure. It's certainly better than it was in the 50s. But obviously there's a long way to go.

Arnold 00:12:51  We've come a long way.

Dr. Patterson 00:12:53  I think it's been progress. I think a little more makeshift schools, which I think is a good thing, but obviously you go wrong. There you go.

Arnold 00:13:02  As I read your book, it became apparent that when there was local leadership that was very involved in making Brown v Board of Education come about, that leadership was critical. And when that leadership was not there, things failed. That was an important point that I thought that you made, that even in the South, good Good leadership was important. True.

Dr. Patterson 00:13:25  Once the decision is made and you can sit back and say, we done it. But it didn't happen that way. I don't think whites and blacks were ever mixed very well, but maybe in 3001 they will. I'm not very optimistic.

Arnold 00:13:40  Why do you say that?

Dr. Patterson 00:13:42  I just know what people see and how they behave. And still a good deal of residential segregation. I think if you asked a black person, he would say that whites don't treat him very well.

Arnold 00:13:52  In your book and in some subsequent talks that you made, especially like at the Kennedy Center, you talked how many people think that the decision in Brown v Board of Education was a flame for the civil rights movement? I went back and listed several things that were going on at the time. And after you had Brown v Board of Education, Brown one and Brown two, you had Emmett Till's lynching in August of 1955. You had the Montgomery bus boycott and the Rosa Parks and bus segregation decision in 1956. You had the little Rock nine, in and 1957, you had the Greensboro Four and Ruby Bridges in 1960, the Freedom Rides in 61, James Meredith in 1961 62, the Birmingham demonstration in 63, the March on Washington and 63 Civil Rights Act in 64, Selma march in 65, the James Meredith March against fair in 66, you were you were stating this.

Arnold 00:15:00  You didn't know whether it was the flame as much as it was a push. People didn't cover the Supreme Court like they do today. It wasn't broadcast like it would be today. Today it would be all over the news. Back then, you described that it really wasn't. So was it just a foundational.

Speaker 3 00:15:19  Thing.

Arnold 00:15:20  For the.

Speaker 3 00:15:20  Civil.

Arnold 00:15:21  Rights movement, or was it something which actually connected itself to the civil rights movement?

Dr. Patterson 00:15:26  I think it was the first thing that the court had ever done, like that extremely important decision. Once they said it, you know, not all that happened. It brought the subject up. Grace relations front and center. You could avoid it if people did avoid it. It didn't make a huge difference, but it did happen and I hope we will never go back to that. I think it's one of the great cities of the history of the court.

Arnold 00:16:02  Because it brought race relations to the forefront.

Dr. Patterson 00:16:05  Especially in the schools.

Arnold 00:16:06  And people were very sensitive about segregation and integration happening for the schools, especially in the South.

Dr. Patterson 00:16:14  Sure, we're sure where.

Arnold 00:16:16  But even in the North, there wasn't what I would call excitement about integration. I think there was more verbal and mental excitement rather than actually put it into practice. For instance, what happened in Boston with the busing and what happened in Kansas City and frankly, Saint Louis and all major metropolitan urban centers. Why do you think that the North was a little bit hesitant in actually carrying out something that they advocated for so long?

Dr. Patterson 00:16:44  I do think that I talked to the children that did not want them in bad schools, and they tended to think that school and it was going to be a bad school elsewhere. Of course, they were going out of their way to live in terms of residential segregation. He really wanted no part of blacks. I can't help it.

Arnold 00:17:05  I'm thinking now about the the dolls and that research that was provided to the courts that greatly influenced the court's decision. Doctor Kenneth Clarke's experiments with dolls showed that black children in segregated schools often felt inferior to their white peers, perpetuating feelings of inferiority and damaging their self-esteem.

Arnold 00:17:26  With the help of social scientists like Doctor Kenneth Clarke, Thurgood Marshall presented studies that demonstrated the detrimental effects of segregation on young minds, denying African American children equal educational opportunities and perpetuating a system of second class citizenship. Doctor Kenneth Clarke and his wife, Mamie sat with a group of African American children, each with a set of dolls arranged before them. It was an experiment that would change the course of history, revealing profound insights into the psychological effects of segregation and discrimination on young minds. The dolls themselves were identical except for their skin color, one with brown skin and black hair representing African American features, and the other with fair skinned and blonde hair representing white features. Clark and his wife asked the children a series of questions, including which doll they preferred to play with, which doll was nice, which doll looked bad, and which doll looked like them. The responses were very unsettling. Overwhelmingly, the children, even those with brown skin like the dolls, expressed a preference for the white doll. They described the brown doll as bad or ugly, and often attributed positive qualities to the white doll.

Arnold 00:18:34  This pattern held true across age groups and regions, painting a troubling picture of internalized racial bias and self devaluation among African American children. Despite Clarksdale experiments, they've not been without criticism. Some scholars question the methodology, suggesting that the children's responses may have been influenced by societal attitudes or the experimental setting itself. Ethical concerns have been raised about the potential psychological harm caused by asking children to express preferences based on race. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. They conducted those experiments, the doll test to study the psychological effects of segregation on black children, and which dolls were nice and bad. Was that research valid and reliable in the long run?

Dr. Patterson 00:19:21  Preference for white dolls? I really don't know.

Arnold 00:19:26  I'm going to read you a quote from Jack Greenberg which ends your book. It says this all together. School desegregation has been a story of conspicuous achievements, flawed by marked failures, the causes of which lie beyond the capacity of lawyers to correct. Lawyers can do right. They can do good. But they have their limits. The rest of the job is up to society.

Arnold 00:19:56  What is society's role to make it right?

Dr. Patterson 00:20:01  Do the best you can to treat people well. Do what you can to promote equality. But as I say, I'm not particularly competent. I'm a pessimist, but I'm not positive about it.

Arnold 00:20:14  You mentioned that the Brown v Board of Education book was one of your favorites. When you look back on your career, what can you say to people that you are most proud of?

Dr. Patterson 00:20:25  Two books, probably the first one, which called Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal, was an eye opener for me, was based on my thesis. My first wife, she died later, went with me down to the south and found private papers of very important decision makers in Congress. And that's the sort of name it taught in graduate school. You must do if you expect to be promoted. Anyway. Enjoyed it. It took me to Virginia, North Carolina, as I told you, I was in Mexico, and it introduced me to a lot of people, and it made my name, and I still picked it up and looked at it.

Dr. Patterson 00:21:03  The other one, I also wrote a book on cancer. Believe it or not, my first wife died, but I won't go into that. I became very interested in Daniel Moynihan, actually. Did you see the editing on him?

Arnold 00:21:15  I have not.

Dr. Patterson 00:21:17  I was actually in it. You can see it. I got to know him really well and his way too. He was quite a guy when he wasn't drinking. So I did this book, and report. I can't remember the name of it. The freedom to Moynihan Report was very interesting to me.

Arnold 00:21:33  It's freedom is not enough. The Moynihan Report and America's struggle over black family life from LBJ to Obama. So what was interesting about it from your perspective?

Dr. Patterson 00:21:44  First of all, Moynihan second of all, family life, he was a Catholic and believes strongly in the family. Of course, you drank a lot, but I enjoyed Moynihan and the papers and the Washington and Gold mine is probably the biggest private collection of papers anywhere. So I really enjoyed that.

Dr. Patterson 00:22:07  And I believe that family is worth so much. Just started and that's what he was all about. So I enjoyed that. You might enjoy yourself in that very big boat.

Arnold 00:22:17  I will look that one up.

Dr. Patterson 00:22:19  It's got a fair amount of fire.

Arnold 00:22:21  I controversy in what way?

Dr. Patterson 00:22:24  I mean, you seem to think that family life was playing with the government to deal with. And we all go that way anyway. That's pretty much. It's not for debate.

Arnold 00:22:34  I want to read you another quote. It's a quote of yours about history and historians. The quote is this Doctor Patterson, the historian, helps people understand the vastness of the past. We do this with thorough research from original sources. I don't believe that history can be instrumental as a guideline as to how you should act, but it will help you understand the immense variety and oddity of human nature.

Dr. Patterson 00:23:06  I like that.

Arnold 00:23:07  You wrote that.

Dr. Patterson 00:23:09  That's why I like it. I would agree with it. Would you?

Arnold 00:23:14  I would agree with that.

Arnold 00:23:15  There's the quote that if you don't know history, you're doomed to repeat it. But the fact that you brought in the issue of.

Speaker 4 00:23:23  The.

Arnold 00:23:24  Variety and oddity of human nature really speaks to history can repeat itself if people don't want to change or have no desire to change, or just want to go off in a different direction.

Speaker 5 00:23:37  All true.

Arnold 00:23:39  I greatly appreciate your time today, Doctor Patterson. Thank you for speaking with us.

Dr. Patterson 00:23:44  Thank you for your very much for including me.

Arnold 00:23:47  I greatly appreciate Doctor Patterson coming on the show and speaking with us to discover more about what he was talking about, and get more information on his book about Brown v Board of Education, and also his other books. Please refer to the show notes that are listed on the podcast website. Well, that's all for this hour and thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can listen to additional shows at STL and tune.com. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Pod Chaser or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow.

Arnold 00:24:22  Thanks to Bob Brazil for our theme music and co-host, Mark Langston, and we thank you for being a part of our community of curious minds. Saint Louis and Tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US Radio Network. Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy and let your light shine for Saint Louis and tune. I'm Arnold Stricker.