THE MAKING OF A CASE EXPLORING BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION 50 YEARS LATER.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Fifty years ago this May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation according to race is inherently unequal.

The Brown v. Board of Education ruling, encompassing the legal quest of black second-grader Linda Brown to attend an all-white public school closer to her Topeka, Kan., home and other comparable cases, has been hailed as perhaps as important as the Emancipation Proclamation for its impact on black Americans.

But it did not bring about an end to segregation in schools, nor did the later Brown II decision that added the ``all deliberate speed'' language to spur foot-dragging white educators, particularly in the South. Forced busing in the 1970s didn't stop it, nor are magnet and open-enrollment programs - designed to encourage racial integration - making much difference at Los Angeles Unified School District campuses. In fall 2002, district-wide enrollment was 71.9 percent Hispanic, 12.1 percent black and 9.4 percent non-Hispanic white.

The California African American Museum in Exposition Park recently hosted a panel of judges and education officials to discuss the case in conjunction with its current art and history exhibition, ``Through the Gates: Brown v. Board of Education.''

``One of the things we were all real clear about was that the Brown decision was a remarkable, remarkable feat - and it achieved exactly what it was trying to achieve, which was to have a national decision that you could not say being separate was equal, that it was inherently unequal and therefore schools had to have quality equal education (and) take all deliberate speed to make that happen,'' museum director Charmaine Jefferson said during a tour of the exhibit.

``It didn't necessarily say one way or the other how you were supposed to do that,'' she added, noting that that led to assorted remedies implemented at different rates, along with white flight.

``Today, I think that part of our issue is not about racism - although racism still exists - but is much more about how we have simply settled into allowing schools to be unequal in the way they present and teach to children.

``You still have to recognize cultural differences and language barriers and all these other things, but if it's really equal, then all schools have double books, all schools have bathrooms that work, there's a chair for every child in the classroom, and the ratio of teachers to kids in the class is exactly what it's supposed to be.''

Mixed results

The economic and social segregation still evident in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and other major cities is affecting the tone of cultural observations of the Brown anniversary; they are not purely celebratory but reflect on the decision's legacy, good and bad.

The CAAM exhibit begins in its spacious sculpture court with a display of images, documents and artifacts going back to the Dred Scott case, in which a slave attempted to buy his own freedom, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which dealt with racially separate accommodations for railroad passengers and in 1896 effectively codified segregation.

The documents include a pamphlet published by the 1917 valedictorian of Los Angeles High School, Myrtle Anderson, her class's only black student that year, who felt compelled to publicly rebut a school official's remarks favoring lynching.

``The guts in 1917 it must have taken to do that are the kinds of steps that get you up to Brown,'' Jefferson said. ``All the strategies that (Brown lead attorney) Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP were going after were just saying, 'We're going to take little baby steps.' ''

Other cases preceding Brown, dealing with such matters as whites-only transportation, chipped away at Plessy v. Ferguson ``so that by the time you got to the thing that was closest to everyone's heart - my child - it was easier to win that case,'' Jefferson said.

Through artists' eyes

Inside the gallery are works by 15 artists invited by CAAM to address education as well as issues of law, gender, family and economics to depict the struggles of the '50s and '60s or since.

John Outterbridge created an outhouse installation, its surfaces covered with photos and newspaper pages of race-related stories and speakers playing broadcast news accounts of such events. Ama Schulman, an American who spent much of her childhood in Africa, has provided an illustration of a black woman with an ornate upswept hairdo, a jab at black women's pursuit of beauty as defined by a white culture. Kianga Ford's ``Counting'' is a series of blackboards filled with mathematical formulas, raising questions about mixed racial backgrounds and ethnic identity.

Phyllis Caskey, president of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, said her museum's ``Integrating Hollywood: Brown v. Board of Education,'' now being planned for September, will include film clips, documents, photos and posters addressing the impact of desegregation on the entertainment industry and the industry's impact on civil rights progress.

``We're going to immerse the public in that period of time,'' Caskey said. ``When visitors come through, they will receive an identity - a racial description and possibly even a description of what they did.

``We realized there is a whole segment of society that wasn't present during that period of time, and we hoped that we could provide some sort of experience that will give them an idea what it was like.''

Children at risk

A Scholastic News elementary school handout last month focused on the 50th anniversary with a history lesson about the cases joined in the Brown decision. It included a graph showing the percentage of blacks at white-majority schools in the South - barely registering until the mid-'60s, peaking in the late '80s and declining ever since. The story's illustrations include present-day photos of two high school lunchrooms in Clarendon County, S.C. - one filled with nearly all black students, the other all white.

That point is made by some writers in Hyperion Books' recently released ``Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone: The Brown v. Board of Education Decision,'' a book of essays and short stories by children's authors, all of them old enough to recall the mid-'50s in their different American communities.

``I have witnessed the collapse of many solidly middle-class black neighborhoods all over St. Louis since the Brown decision,'' author Quincy Troupe (``Take It to the Hoop, Magic Johnson'') writes. ``And as they imploded following the loss of jobs and patronage, they took down with them many venerable cultural, religious and financial institutions. The Brown decision inadvertently contributed to transforming black communities into urban ghettos all over the United States.

``Today, there is a growing resegregation of America's schools, and the concentrated poverty of students in largely black schools places the future of millions of black children at risk. The average family income of a black child today is far lower than that of whites, and family income is closely related to educational levels.''

Ariela Gross, professor of law and history at the University of Southern California, says there is some merit to Troupe's complaint.

``When integration took effect, it was the black students being sent to the all-white schools. There was never any question of white students being taught at the black schools,'' Gross said. ``That meant a generation of black teachers and administrators were on the short end of the stick, and there was a loss of those figures in their communities.''

CAAM's Jefferson said her panelists concurred that the next step toward breaking down racial barriers in schools will more likely come from grass-roots action - probably increased parental and community involvement - than from another piece of litigation or legislation that holds a gun to an unwilling parent, administrator or student.

``There are amazing things we as a society put on our children - even white kids who were bused back and forth - to change an adult mentality,'' Jefferson said.

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Black, white and BROWN

Exhibit examines legacy of landmark desegregation case 50 years later

(2) Charmaine Jefferson, director of the California African American Museum, shows off an exhibit that mixes historical artifacts with artists' impressions of the landmark decision.

(3) An installation at the California African American Museum called ``Counting,'' by Kianga Ford, shows formulas that illustrate the difficulties of determining race.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(4) Linda Smith, the former Linda Brown, stands in front of Sumner School in Topeka, Kan., on May 8, 1964. The school's refusal to admit Brown in 1951 led to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

Associated Press