Brown v. Board of Education: "separate but equal" has no place in our society.

I think I may have met the first African-American to obtain doctorate and master's degrees in ichthyology. While attending Florida Atlantic University during the early 70s, he shared that he would be the first African-American to obtain such degrees.

I replied, "Well, that's great." He quickly jarred my consciousness by assuring me I shouldn't be too impressed. It was the 70s and a pretty sad commentary for our nation to not have a black man with those graduate degrees.

For many reasons that conversation sticks with me, and even more so now that the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education is upon us. Brown helped pave the way for many African-American firsts.

The U.S. Supreme Court's case concluded that separate but equal educational facilities were unconstitutional and such facilities denied black children equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The case struck down the long adhered-to doctrine of "separate but equal" established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

The plaintiff, Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas, knew his constitutional rights were being eroded each day his eight-year-old daughter, Linda, bypassed the neighborhood white school to catch a bus to a segregated school 21 blocks away. In 1951, Brown sued the city school board. The judges ruled against Brown, finding the schools substantially equal.

The Brown case was a consolidation of cases from several states including Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. In each case, the plaintiffs sought admittance to segregated schools and were conversely denied admittance by federal district courts on the basis of the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Having some success in challenging public universities that had excluded blacks, the NAACP led the assault on desegregating primary and secondary education all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Brown case featured some of the most famous names in the recent history of the Supreme Court. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued on behalf of the plaintiff. Marshall had been working as legal director of the NAACP for nearly 15 years and was well seasoned in the art of arguing before the Supreme Court. As legal director, he made the issue of school desegregation a major point of action, first targeting post-graduate educational facilities and then expanding into lower levels of education.

In 1954, the court unanimously agreed that "in the field of education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion. Warren, who was appointed in 1953, had presided over only a handful of cases as chief justice by the time of the Brown decision.

Regardless of race, creed, or color, the rule of law in this case touches all of us. All the parties in this case--the parents, children, school board officials, legal scholars, and others--were asking that the guaranteed rights found in the Constitution be upheld.

Justice Peggy Quince sums it up poignantly:

The ideals underpinning Brown v. Board of Education are not new ... (and) are as old as the nation itself. Their moral foundations were established in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that all people are created equal, and in the 14th Amendment, which proclaimed that all citizens of the United States enjoy the equal protection of the laws. (The decision) marked the point in time when equality ceased to be merely a moral argument but became the law of the land, consistent with the basic ideals of this republic.

Your high court, the Florida Supreme Court, will celebrate Brown's significance with a ceremonial session to be held May 17 in Tallahassee, the same day the decision was read by Chief Justice Warren. Your Bar will also take part in this commemoration, beginning at 11:30 at the Florida Supreme Court building. A reception, sponsored by The Florida Bar, will follow.

I don't know if my classmate from long ago became the first African-American to receive a master's and a Ph.D. in the study offish; but I do know that momentous decision helped create a path on his journey to be the first, and the paths of many African-American firsts.

Today is a great day to be a Florida lawyer. I am proud to be one. You should be too.

MILES MCGRANE