Of Minds and Men: Brown v. Board of Education
A tale about correcting caves
May 17 is the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). That U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision was one of the most momentous and best SCOTUS decisions ever. It also was remarkably concise. SCOTUS justices did not—and did not need to—waste breath on verbose attempts at justification. Their decision was founded on our common sense and our common good. It was about today and tomorrow, not obsessing over and adhering to obvious errors of the past:
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. . . . [Education is essential] to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening [students] to cultural values, in preparing [them] for later professional training, and in helping [them] to adjust normally to [their] environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
Brown v. Board of Education reminds me quite a lot of another remarkably concise and momentous document. In President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address essentially 70 years earlier, he naturally spoke of “this ground” and these “brave,” but he necessarily meant the grounds of our nation (its foundation) and the brave of every generation and gender who have struggled and sacrificed for the sake of our Constitution and us:
in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave [combatants], living and dead, who struggled [and sacrificed], have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. . . . It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The declarations of SCOTUS justices and President Lincoln, above, echo the claps of thunder in other remarkably concise and momentous documents. The foundation of this nation are thunderous “Truths” that were “self-evident,” including that “all” were “created equal,” i.e., equally “endowed by their Creator” with “unalienable Rights,” including the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Our 1776 Declaration was not perfect for all purposes, and it was not meant to be. It was a wartime measure meant, in large part, to summon men to serve. It was meant mostly to inspire men (of all times) to choose to sacrifice much or all of their own lives, liberty and happiness for others. It was a crucial stone, but it was only one of many in the building of this nation. Over the course of much more than two centuries, multitudes of Americans laid myriads of stones, struggling and sacrificing much to build equality of opportunity, including opportunity for education and participation in our self-government.
Building on the 1776 Declaration, the original Constitution and the First Amendment emphasized “We the People” and the most precious “freedom” and “right of the people” to think and speak for ourselves and “assemble” as we wished, including without being constrained by any creed or faith. We built even higher and better with Amendments 13, 14, 15, 19, 24 and 26 (helping destroy barriers to equality and opportunity based on irrelevant and dangerous distinctions such as color, economic conditions, gender and age). Brown v. Board of Education was a crucial SCOTUS decision that did the same. It helped bring us together, bring out the best in us, and bring forth the best of us.
Bernard Bailyn was a historian who thought and wrote quite a lot about the processes of education that led to and through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. His book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution was devoted to that subject. In that book (published first in 1967 and most recently in 2017), Bailyn quoted a poem called Mind, written two mere years after Brown v. Board of Education. Mind might even have been written about that SCOTUS decision and about how the errors of our past do (or do not) constrain us:
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone. . . . The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save That in the very happiest of intellection A graceful error may correct the cave.
With Brown v. Board of Education SCOTUS justices did much to help correct the cave, and they did so without saying much. They did what they did by heeding what some of this nation’s best and brightest Founders said. Alexander Hamilton, for example, emphasized (contrary to pretenses in some recent SCOTUS decisions), SCOTUS justices cannot divine the truth about our rights by merely rummaging through old parchments and papers. They (and we) must look to the profound self-evident truths of human nature:
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.