Delaware’s Cases in Brown v. the Board of Education

The photograph of Linda Brown and her mother were taken after the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas Case. They are sitting on the steps of the Court

This lesson is about the two Delaware cases that were a part of that court decision.

Belton v. Gebhart

and

Bulah v. GebhartFrom www.teachingamericanhistorymd.net

FOCUS QUESTION

What do we mean by the term equity

and

What does It allow the court to do?

From the National Park Service

Background on Cases

Belton v. Gebhart “There were two separate cases in Delaware, but the issues were identical. In Suburban Claymont, about nine miles north of Wilmington along the Delaware River, the attractive grade school and high school accommodated 400 or so students on a landscaped fourteen-acre site with well-equipped playing fields and carefully tended ornamental shrubbery. Negro children were not allowed to attend it. Instead, they had to take a bus to downtown Wilmington’s venerable Howard High School, an unlovely structure bounded by factories, warehouses, and badly deteriorating tenements. The trip took most of the colored children from Claymont fifty or more minutes each way. Howard, with nearly 1,300 pupils, had a pupil-teacher ratio of 24:1 - one-third higher than the ratio at Claymont - and nearly 60 percent of the Claymont faculty members held masters’ degrees compared with fewer than 40 percent at Howard. Claymont offered several subjects unavailable at Howard, such as public speaking, economics, Spanish, and trigonometry, and a wide range of extracurricular activities, such as an art club, a driver’s -education group, a student newspaper and a square-dancing group, not offered at Howard… Everything considered, the trip into Wilmington seemed hardly worth it to Ethel Belton and seven other Negro parents of Claymont who brought the matter to the attention of Louis Redding in Wilmington in March of 1951. Redding urged the Claymont parents to ask the State Board of Education to admit their children to the local high school. They tried and were turned down.”

Bulah v. Gebhart“In the autumn of 1950, Sarah Bulah got it into her head that there was something basically unjust about the fact that a bus passed right by her front door to take the white children of Hockessin to their pretty little school up on the hill while she had to drive her daughter, Shirley, two miles to the old one-room schoolhouse for colored youngsters down in the village..... It was not right. If there was a bus for white children, there should be one for colored children. Or maybe the school bus for whites that went right by her door could stop for Shirley. ...Sarah Bulah wrote the Department of Public Instruction for the State of Delaware in Dover. Weeks passed . Nothing happened. ...Finally she got a firm letter from the state superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction that said that the State Board of Education had reviewed her case and decided that “ bus transportation is an integral part of a school program and that since the State Constitution requires separate educational facilities for colored and white children, your children may not ride on a bus serving a white school.” Delaware, in other words, was telling Sarah Bulah that colored children were not entitled to what white children were. She went to see Louis Redding

Simple Justice, by Richard KlugVintage Books, 1977, pages 433 - 435.

Questions for Student Handout One In pairs, students should read about the two cases, discuss what happened and answer the following questions: 1. What happened in the two cases? 2. How are the issues identical? 3. Who are the parties in the case?

4. What facts are important? 5. Why did the people involved act the way they did? 6. What Constitutional right would you argue is being violated if you were Louis Redding.

Louis L. Redding, Esquire

Comparison of the Schoolsused with permission of the Delaware State Archives, from their digital records

Hockessin Public SchoolHockessin Colored School

Analysis of Historical Data Example: Defense Opening Statement in Belton

List arguments to support positions.Defense:Judicial fiatImposed upon people against their willHeritage, tradition, government sanctionRealities, not accepted by peopleConstitution of state and nationMay make situation worsePlaintiffSegregation harmed the children as well as the communitySegregation whether practiced by custom or law, seriously impaired the mental health of the childrenSegregation most virulent when practices by the stateSegregation challenged the ethical foundations of the state

Student Handout Five: Belton v. Gebhart, An Excerpt from Judge Seitz’s Opinion

“I now consider whether the facilities of the two institutions are separate but equal, within the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Are the separate facilities and educational opportunities offered these Negro plaintiffs, and those similarly situated, “equal” in the Constitutional sense, to those available at Claymont High to white children, similarly situated? The answer to this question is often much more difficult than it appears, because many of the factors to be considered are not just susceptible of mathematical evaluation; e.g., aesthetic considerations. Moreover, and of real importance, the United States Supreme Court has not yet decided what should be done if a Negro school being compared with a white school is inferior in some respects and superior in others. It is easy, as courts do, to talk about the necessity for finding substantial equity. But, under this approach, how is one to deal with a situation where, as here, the mental and physical health services at the Negro school are superior to those offered at the white school, while the teacher load at the Negro school is not only substantially heavier than that at the white school, but often exceeds the State announced educationally desirable maximum teacher-pupil ratio. The answer, it seems to me is this: Where the facilities or educational opportunities available to the Negro are, as to any substantial factor, inferior to those available to white children similarly situated, the Constitutional principal of “separate but equal” is violated, even though the State may point to other factors as to which the Negro school is superior. I reach this conclusion because I do not believe that a court can say that the substantial factor as to which the Negro school is inferior will not adversely affect the educational progress of at least some of those concerned. Moreover, evaluating the unlike factors is unrealistic. If this is a harsh test, then I answer that a State which divides its citizens should pay the price” Power Point 3D

How the Cases Flowed through the Courts

U.S. Supreme Court affirms the Delaware Courts opinion, ordering the immediate admission of the plaintiffs to the public schools.

U.S. Supreme Court decides that segregation of students on racial grounds is unconstitutional in May 1954 and requests further arguments to help formulate

decrees.

U.S. Supreme Court holds two arguments on the six cases combined in Brown, one in

1952 and one in 1953.

U.S. Supreme Court accepts cases and joins the cases to Brown v. Board of Education

from Kansas and cases from South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

State of Delaware appeals cases to the U.S. Supreme Court.

State of Delaware appeals the case to the Supreme Court of Delaware.

Cases moved to Delaware Chancery Court and decided in favor of the Plaintiffs in April 1952.

Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart filed inU.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

Description:The case started in Federal Court and was returned to a State Court. The State Supreme Court agreed with the State Court (Chancery Court) The State of Delaware appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was joined to other similar cases and Named for Linda Brown, the Plaintiff in the Kansas case.

Questions:

What would have happened if the State of Delaware had not appealed the case to the Supreme Court?

Who was Responsible for Implementing the Court’s Decision

What officials or agencies areIncluded in your documents?

What’s the source of their Elected State-wide Appointed by the Elected by

Responsibility for implementing Governor the people

The Court’s decision in Brown? In the school district

What steps did they take to meetThese Responsibilities?

This chart is based on material from Foundations of Democracy: Middle School and Above and is used with permission of the Center for Civic Education, 1996, Calabasas, California.