[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 67 (Thursday, May 13, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5457-S5459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, right to the point. A lot of exercises 
are going on with respect to Brown v. Board of Education. Most of the 
comments, of course, are lamenting the fact we have not proceeded too 
far, or sufficiently, with respect to the integration of public 
education in America.
  That misses the point. The point is this decision itself more or less 
removed the lid off the punch bowl of segregation and allowed all 
Americans, regardless of race, creed, or color, to become, for the 
first time, full Americans, full citizens. Yes, if you please, Rosa 
Parks could know, in not moving from that front seat in the bus, down 
in Montgomery in 1955 after the 1954 Brown decision, that she was a 
full citizen, she was a full American. That in and of itself is the 
real significance of this history-making decision in the last century. 
It certainly is the most significant judicial decision of that century 
in that it amended the Constitution and gave us pride, all of us, in 
full citizenship in this land.
  I rise because of the emphasis nationally with respect to the Brown 
case, while the truth is the leading case was from the State of South 
Carolina. In December of 1952, the arguments before the U.S. Supreme 
Court, let the record show that Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for 
the NAACP, did not argue the Brown case; he argued the Briggs v. 
Elliott case of South Carolina. This is not to take in any sense away 
from the Kansas situation, but everyone should realize the State of 
Kansas had only a 7-percent minority population. People did not 
understand that. There was a law to the effect that all cities in 
excess of 15,000 population could either opt for segregated schools or 
for integrated schools. Under that particular law, it more or less 
devolved down to where the elementary schools were segregated and the 
secondary schools were integrated. But it was not a matter of societal 
significance--so much so that, in essence, the State of Kansas had 
already decided not even to argue the case before the Supreme Court. 
They were going to just submit it on written briefs.
  I speak advisedly. I was not the lawyer in the Briggs v. Elliott 
case. I was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court when we 
made our arguments in December 1952. I was sent at the last minute by 
Governor James Francis Byrnes, who formally occupied this desk as a 
Senator, as did John C. Calhoun, and Governor Byrnes said: Fritz, you 
wrote that 3-percent sales tax for the schools that we enacted in 1951 
under his leadership. He said: You know all the elements of the 
equalization of the teachers' pay, the transportation, and the 
construction of public schools in South Carolina. You know that issue 
of separate but equal, how we equalized everything and what we had done 
to the extent of over 3-percent sales tax to finance it and everything 
else, so it was real and not just what we intended. He said: You have 
to go up there with Robert McC. Figg, the active counsel at the local 
level in Briggs against Elliot, and with John W. Davis, former 
Solicitor General, candidate for President in 1924. According to 
Governor Byrnes, a former associate justice who sat on the Supreme 
Court, the constitutional mind of the legal profession is John W. Davis 
of West Virginia. I have called him and he is going to make the 
arguments pro bono for the State of South Carolina that he believes so 
vehemently in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the 1896 decision of the Supreme 
Court that enunciated the separate but equal doctrine. That was my 
participation.
  Let me go back to the earliest part because that is the real 
significance of this change in our culture, society, and Constitution.
  It was back in 1947 that a group in Summerton, SC, which is in 
Clarendon County, and had gotten together an old, discarded bus. Levi 
Pearson was the principal mechanic. He fixed the engine and got that 
bus all ready to go. They went to the school board for a little 
gasoline money. The school board said: No, we are not giving you any 
gasoline money. They said: Well, you have it for the White children. 
They have the money. We have to walk to the Scotts Branch School--which 
was a 9-mile walk for some of them--down a dirt road.
  We get this big yellow bus full of White children passing us in the 
dust or in the rain--whichever of the two. They said: And we just fixed 
up the bus. It won't cost you anything.
  They said: No. You folks don't pay taxes and we don't have any money 
for gasoline for you to have a ride to school.
  When you hear this, you begin to understand the significance of the 
change in our society and what we call equal rights under the law. That 
is somewhere along the ceiling up here.
  So Pearson got together with Rev. Joseph De Laine. Reverend De Laine 
was an AME preacher and also a schoolteacher, and later a 
superintendent. They went up to Columbia and they got the case going. 
On a technicality, if you please--they found out the plaintiff in the 
case lived just over the line. His children were attending school in 
the district where the case was brought, but on a technical thing they 
had it thrown out. They could always find something to prohibit any 
kind of relief for the African Americans at that particular time.
  So Reverend De Laine went and talked, in Columbia, to James M. 
Hinton, the NAACP director. He said: Look, Reverend, if you go down to 
Summerton and you get 20 plaintiffs, I can get that lawyer Marshall, up 
there in Washington, DC, to bring a class action.
  So Reverend De Laine came back down to Summerton, got the 20 parents, 
and some 46 children, and that gives the genesis of the famous 
``Summerton 66.'' Anywhere you talk, in the African-American community 
in America, they know of that ``Summerton 66.'' Mind you me, this 
started 8 years before Rosa Parks.
  Incidentally, and I am grateful to the Senate, they unanimously 
endorsed the Congressional Gold Medal for Levi Pearson, for Harry and 
Eliza Briggs, as well as for Rev. Joseph De Laine. That is one of the 
reasons why this afternoon, when we are not too busy, I am speaking. I 
had intended to speak on Monday, which is May 17, the actual 50-year 
anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, but I have to be at an 
event in South Carolina. I do not know that I will get back in time.
  But be that as it may, it is important that the record be made about 
these valiant Americans who changed history.
  When they got there, sure enough, Thurgood Marshall took up the case. 
Then, as the expression goes, all hell broke loose. I could go into the 
details, but that is why I speak without notes. I could tell you just 
when and where and how Reverend De Laine's home was shot, and later it 
was burned. He escaped to a church down in Lake City

[[Page S5458]]

some 35 miles away, where, again, his church was burned and he escaped 
with his life, never to return to the State of South Carolina. They 
held a warrant out on him for 45 years. He had fired back at the car 
the first time when they shot his home in order to identify the car, 
but he never got a chance. They held on to the warrant on him for some 
45 years.
  Harry Briggs, the plaintiff, he ran a filling station there in 
Summerton. Nobody would buy gas from him anymore. He escaped down to 
Florida to make a living with his wife. Others who were just dirt 
farmers there could not, all of a sudden, buy seed to plant. They lost 
their livelihoods and everything of that kind.
  I could go down throughout the years. They stuck with it for a good 
5- or 6-year period, until that decision was made. Every pressure in 
the Lord's world was made to try to threaten, coerce, and make them 
remove their names from that particular petition. But the famous 
``Summerton 66''--the 20 parents and 46 kids--stuck with it, and they 
made history.

  When I came to Washington, it was on a Saturday morning. Robert McC. 
Figg, a distinguished lawyer--a Columbia University law graduate--had 
handled the case at the local level under Judge Waring in the Fourth 
Circuit Court of Appeals. We came up, obviously, on the appeal of the 
NAACP and Thurgood Marshall. We got here on a Saturday morning. You 
will begin to understand what we learned, to our shock, that our Briggs 
v. Elliott case, the lead case, all of a sudden had been set aside, and 
the lead case was made Brown v. the Board of Education in Topeka. Roy 
Wilkins was a friend of the Solicitor General, and they moved the case 
up because they knew that Kansas was not really disturbed and did not 
have a strong case one way or the other; it could care less. That was 
proved by that they were not going to even send an attorney to argue 
the case.
  I will never forget, on a Saturday afternoon and evening, Governor 
Byrnes was on the line with the Governor of Kansas, finally persuading 
him to send someone. Late on Sunday evening they sent Paul Wilson--an 
Assistant Attorney General. They did not send the Attorney General or 
anybody to handle it; they sent the Assistant Attorney General, and we 
helped brief him over at the Wardman Park.
  But I am getting ahead of my story. This morning I noticed in the 
Washington Post a Brown v. Board of Education decision whereby it is 
quoted that Thurgood Marshall thought that once they had won on May 17, 
1954, there would be complete integration within 5 years. Absolutely 
wrong. False. I know, and the reason I know is because we were at Union 
Station here in the District. We were having breakfast--that is Dean 
Figg, who was later the dean of our law school--Dean Figg and myself. 
And in walked Mr. Marshall. He sat down and they began to exchange 
stories. Incidentally, they had the highest respect for each other. 
They got along. I will never forget when they were hanging a portrait 
of Jimmy Byrnes over in the Supreme Court, and Figg came in the doorway 
and Associate Justice Marshall hugged him and almost lifted him off the 
floor. And all the other Justices wondered what in the world was going 
on. They thought the world of each other.

  Thurgood Marshall turned and said: Now, Bob, let's assume I have won 
the case. How long do you think before there will be any real 
integration?
  And I will never forget it. Figg said: Thurgood, you are not going to 
like my answer, but it is going to be a good 25 years before there is 
any real integration.
  Marshall looked at him and said: No, you're wrong. It will be nearer 
50 years.
  And here we are today, 50 years later, where the Scott's Branch 
School in the Briggs v. Elliott case is still 95-percent segregated. 
When that decision came out on May 17, we had 16 private schools in my 
little State of South Carolina. Now we have 372 private schools. Do you 
know why charter schools, tax credits, all that there malarkey is 
coming along? That is the drive to finance segregation. That is all it 
is. And they all know it. But you don't see that printed.
  We ought to test this to see how the schools can work.
  I wish they would go back to Horace Mann, when the greatness of 
America was public education, where all people of all classes and 
creeds were all put together, and they came and studied and graduated 
together and became one strong society. That is why I cosponsored the 
draft, yes, on the inequality of those who have to serve, but more than 
anything else, the strength of the draft itself in the building of 
America.
  There was another story that some will say is not politically 
correct, but I will never forget Marshall turned to Figg, and he said: 
By the way, Bob, you know--at that time they were referred to not as 
African Americans--that Negro family in Cicero, they are having near 
riots and everything else like that. So he said: Do you know what I had 
to do? I had to go down to Springfield and see Governor Adlai 
Stevenson. I got Governor Stevenson to send that family back to 
Mississippi for safekeeping. And he said: But for Heaven's sake, don't 
tell anybody that. That will ruin me.
  I said: Thurgood, don't tell anybody I am eating breakfast with you. 
I will never get elected to another office.
  I was a young Speaker pro tempore back over 50 years ago in 1952. Now 
we Democrats are begging to eat breakfast with African Americans, but 
not then. Oh, no. You folks in this Chamber have to understand the 
changes that have come about over America.
  But be that as it may, when we left that morning after breakfast, we 
found out that they had moved that case up for known reasons, and we 
had to fight all weekend to get Wilson. And Wilson teed off on Monday 
morning as the first argument in Brown against the board. He literally 
shocked the other side because he made a splendid argument. There were 
3 days of arguments.
  Fred Vinson was the Chief Justice at the time. All of the lawyers 
were talking about the value of association under the Vinson decision 
of Sweatt v. Painter and making appeals, knowing that the court would 
once again confirm Plessy v. Ferguson.
  Governor Byrnes, incidentally, told me: Don't worry about that case. 
I have talked to some friends up there.
  He wouldn't want to say he talked to the Court. He said: I talked to 
some friends, and we will win that case. And there is no question that 
they probably would have.
  But what happened was that a few months later, Chief Justice Vinson 
passed away and Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice. That changed 
history because Warren said: Come back and don't argue.
  So Warren made us come back, reargue not separate but equal, but the 
fundamental that segregation in and of itself was unconstitutional.
  So we went back and we reargued that case. On May 17, a unanimous 
court decision came down which changed America. There is no question in 
my mind that was for the good. I had my doubts at that particular time. 
Still as a young southern politician, I said: Good gosh, how are we 
going to do this?
  Well, it is very interesting. Thurgood Marshall, Bob Figg, Roy 
Wilkins, the NAACP lawyers, they all got together. And the Court, on 
May 17, said: desegregate with all deliberate speed. So Wilkins and 
Marshall had agreed to this--they said what we will do is the first 
year we will integrate the first grade. The second year we will 
integrate the first grade again, and of course the second grade is 
already integrated, then on up the line over a 12-year period, and we 
will have, with all deliberate speed, all the elementary grades 
integrated, beginning with the little ones playing together.
  That was Marshall's answer to Felix Frankfurter when Frankfurter 
asked him: What happens when you have won your case? What happens?
  He said: Well, the little children, if Your Honor please, who play 
together and go off to separate schools will come back and play 
together, and they will have freedom of choice. They can go to whatever 
school they want. What we are trying to remove is the State-imposed 
separation of race in public education.
  Our Constitution and the law of South Carolina, unlike Kansas, which 
was local option, our Constitution and law required separate but equal.
  We had it all worked out until the lawyer up in New York for the 
NAACP said: No, sir. We are not going to be

[[Page S5459]]

given our constitutional rights on the installment plan.
  And the rest is history. We had the white citizens councils on the 
one hand. We had Martin Luther King, Jr., and burn baby burn on the 
other hand. And we literally had some 20 years--Malcolm X and 
everything else of that kind--of trauma, upset, burning here in 
Washington. I will never forget the riots in 1968. It has been quite a 
history over that period of time.
  What has happened is not integrated public education. That is agreed 
to. But it really made legitimate Rosa Parks and everybody else coming 
south, the freedom riders and everything else like that. For the first 
time officially everyone became a full citizen under the Constitution 
and under the law in America on May 17, 1954.
  So we made a lot of progress in the United States since that time. It 
was done through the valiant effort of the Summerton 66 that literally 
lost their lives--one was attributed to having lost his life as a 
result of the discord. But whatever it might be, Reverend De Laine 
could not return to South Carolina. The United States Senate and the 
House of Representatives unanimously have agreed now to present them 
the Congressional Gold Medal.
  It had been my hope that next Monday afternoon, May 17, we would have 
a ceremony in the Rotunda, but we will look forward to the time later 
this year when we can honor Reverend De Laine, Harry and Eliza Briggs, 
and Levi Pearson, who really understood the Constitution in America 
better than this particular Senator, who at that time was only a 
fledgling Democratic politician. That is the history. I will be glad to 
go into it sometime with my colleagues about some of the arguments 
made.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, did I hear the Senator say that the first 
arguments took 3 days?
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Three days, yes.
  Mr. REID. Now, in the Supreme Court, if you get an hour, you are 
lucky.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right, it took 3 days. I will never forget, 
Henry Fonda was over at the National Theater, and I was sitting right 
inside the rail with John W. Davis and Mr. Briggs right at the table, 
and I got Fonda to sit up there with me during the 3 days. He didn't 
leave. He wanted to hear all the arguments. That was in December of 
1952.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, what a great history 
lesson we had today. We have only heard a short bit of the knowledge of 
the Senator from South Carolina. The Senator from South Carolina was 
one of the originals who decided things were not the way they should be 
in the South. He has been able to work through the process and stand 
for what he believed, and because of this, the people of South Carolina 
have elected him time after time. It is obvious why. He is a man who is 
a World War II combat veteran, someone we admire so much. We are all 
disappointed that he has indicated he is not going to seek reelection. 
It is a disappointment to me.
  I cannot express in words what a role model he has been for me. Not 
only can he stand and speak, as he did today, about the most serious 
subjects that face the world, but he has one of the best senses of 
humor of anyone I have dealt with.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator.

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