Sherrilyn Ifill, a professor at Harvard Law School and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, spoke about the promise and reality of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which established the nation’s separate-but-equal education was declared unconstitutional. system. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
LAWRENCE – Former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Sherilyn Ifill said the nation should celebrate the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in overdue recognition of the need to end to legal apartheid in the United States.
Ifill warned in a speech to a diverse audience at the University of Kansas on Friday that the upcoming May 17 anniversary of the decision declaring racial segregation in public education unconstitutional would be celebrated in an era when forces committed to the derailing growth of multiracial democracy and citizenship gained ground.
She pointed to recent court rulings against race-informed college admissions and further legislative challenges in Kansas and other states to diversity, equity and inclusion programs on higher education campuses and within private companies.
“Brown was not just about schools or even about race,” she said. “Brown was crucial to the uniquely American project of creating a healthy multiracial democracy… in which equality and justice are part of the defining national identity.”
Ifill, a distinguished professor at Howard University Law School who was selected to start a new center there focusing on the 14th Amendment, said the 1954 decision not only addressed the subordination of black children through legally sanctioned segregation in a country with a deep history of genocide. and slavery. An intellectually thoughtful person would not define a country with strict laws that enforce racial apartheid as a functioning democracy, she said.
The Supreme Court also spoke powerfully 70 years ago about the importance of education to the development of citizenship and the functioning of a democracy, Ifill said.
“It is one of Brown’s most powerful, unequivocal statements. And for me, I don’t know why we’re not saying that at this point,” she said. “The court went on to define education as the most important function of state and local government. I don’t hear us saying that either.”
Ifill, who served as president and director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 2013 to 2022, said education does not guarantee an educated citizen. She said some of the most anti-democratic and damaging attacks on equality under the Constitution have come from graduates of the nation’s best schools and colleges.
The failure to fully implement Brown’s idea as a tool for education, citizenship and democracy put the nation at risk given the U.S. Supreme Court’s “manifestly dangerous” opposition to Brown, she said.
“Those who have been against it for a long time feel their strength and feel that they can ultimately overcome this vision,” Ifill said.
The NAACP provided legal counsel to plaintiffs in the consolidated school segregation lawsuit that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown. The landmark ruling was the Legal Defense Fund’s most celebrated victory in a long struggle for civil rights.
In the Brown decision, all nine justices voted to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine established by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. In this earlier decision, the justices held that state-imposed segregation laws did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Ifill said she was disturbed that the Brown decision was being distorted by the U.S. Supreme Court to push back on racially influenced confessions. Such attacks, she said, repeated the joke that the Constitution was a colorblind document.
“The project now is to hollow out Brown and leave his shell behind so that it can be available for use by the forces that have always opposed Brown’s promise,” Ifill said.
She spoke at a two-day conference sponsored by KU and the National Park Service on “Brown v Board at 70: Looking Back and Striving Forward.” On Saturday, participants had the opportunity to visit Brown v. Board National Historical Park in Topeka.
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