[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 18, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E904]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     COMMEMORATING 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BARBARA LEE

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 18, 2004

  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, this is an enormously important day in the 
lives of African Americans and in the history of this country.
  Brown vs. Board of Education, almost without question, is the most 
important Supreme Court case of the twentieth century. With Brown, the 
Court threw out decades of doctrine and centuries of racist practice in 
this country in their conclusion that ``Separate educational facilities 
are inherently unequal.'' By making this just assertion, they forced 
this nation to begin to live up to its own promises and its own ideals. 
In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Brown represented a 
``joyous daybreak to end the long night of enforced segregation.''
  Brown was a transforming moment in the life of this country. Sadly, 
it was not immediately transformative, nor is the metamorphosis 
complete, even today. It took years--even decades in many cities and 
states--for the mandate of the Court to be carried out. In many places, 
it was met with fervent political opposition and violent resistance.
  In Virginia, for instance, the Governor closed the public school 
system rather than allow it to be integrated. And in 1957, National 
Guard troops had to be sent in to guard school children in Little Rock, 
Arkansas when they tried to begin their studies at Central High School.
  In the years after Brown, many, heroic people risked and sometimes 
lost their lives in the fight to desegregate schools, universities, 
stores and lunch counters, the workplace. And they risked their well-
being in the fight to ensure that they enjoyed that fundamental 
American right of being able to vote.
  But in the end, the forces of racism did not prevail because of the 
Thurgood Marshalls of the world, the Medger Evers, the Rosa Parks, the 
Fannie Lou Hamers, the Martin Luther King Jrs, and the Malcolm X's. 
They ensured that this nation would live up to its own promises, the 
guarantees that were laid out in Brown.
  The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, came about because brave 
men and women demanded it through bus boycotts and sit-ins and marches 
on Washington and a thousand other battles.
  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 came about because people like Fannie 
Lou Hamer dared to fight to register to vote, dared to form the 
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, dared to take on the Democratic 
Party and the establishment, and dared to win.
  The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which established the principles of 
fair access to housing, came about because African Americans demanded 
the full rights of citizenship and because they knew that housing is a 
human right. Unfortunately, there are some people in Washington today 
who still need to recognize that fact.
  Thanks to their efforts, Brown became the reality of the nation, not 
just the law of the land.
  Today, on this 50th anniversary, Brown is still the law of the land, 
but it is no longer a national reality. Legal walls of segregation have 
been replaced in many areas by de facto separation by neighborhood and 
community. Our schools are becoming less integrated by the year, and in 
too many cases, integration has vanished entirely from some schools.

  Across the country, efforts have been made--some of which have been 
successful, unfortunately--to undo the affirmative action programs, 
whose goal has been to create the fully diverse and integrated justice 
that the Supreme Court envisioned.
  In my home state of California, an African American, Ward Connerly, 
led the Proposition 209 initiative in 1996, which eliminated 
affirmative action programs for women and people of color run by state 
or local governments in the areas of public employment, contracting, 
and education.
  As chair of the California Black Legislature at the time, I fought 
against it, as did many, many Californians of all races.
  In what was a giant setback for Brown and racial equality, 
Proposition 209 passed, and in one fell swoop, it wiped out a very 
significant program that was intended to level an extremely uneven 
playing field. The results have been devastating. African American and 
Latino enrollments at far too many of our state's universities are in 
serious decline.
  As a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle indicated, African 
American admissions at UC-Berkeley, which is in my district, are down 
29 percent this year. In this year's freshman class, fewer than two and 
a half percent of the students accepted were African American. Two and 
a half percent. And compounding this serious injustice, Governor 
Schwarzenegger is cutting the budget for the outreach efforts of our 
universities.
  These numbers are an embarrassment. They are an embarrassment for our 
students, ourselves, and for the promise of Brown. These shameful 
statistics have profound economic, political, and cultural meaning.
  Do these bleak numbers that I have cited mean that Brown v Board of 
Education failed? No, but it means that our revolution is not over yet. 
It means that our revolution is still incomplete.
  On this 50th anniversary of this enormous Supreme Court victory, we 
must rededicate ourselves to carry out that opinion whose words rang 
out clear as a bell when Earl Warren, the former California governor 
and Oakland resident, read them, ``Separate educational facilities are 
inherently unequal.''
  We can not--we will not--let the victories that were won so hard 50 
years ago by Thurgood Marshall, Linda Brown, and so many others be 
reversed.
  Tonight we celebrate that moment, and we rededicate ourselves to 
ensuring that justice thrives in this country.