Two months ago, May 17, 2024, marked the seventieth anniversary of the Brown decision, which declared that the doctrine of separate but equal, established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case was unconstitutional. While the opinion of the High Court failed to properly account for how racist structures would adjust accordingly, the decision paved the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and even the Voting Rights Act.
Of course, we reflect on the words of the Warren Court, but it was Black parents who resisted Jim Crow that must be remembered as the catalyst of this landmark decision. We must also remember that the resistance of Black parents where their children’s education was concerned didn’t start with the Brown case. There are countless stories of Black Parents fighting for the integration of their children before Brown.
Why did they fight? They fought for one of three reasons—or all three simultaneously. First, they fought for access to all schools. Generally, segregated schools were a further distance from Black families. Attending the local white school was a matter of convenience, not a matter of simply wanting to send Black children to white schools. Black parents wanted access to local options. Second, Black parents fought for equal funding. Black children received a quality education at Black schools, despite inequity at those schools. Without the same financial resources, their schools were worn down. Poor facilities, aging texts, little space, and few resources… these things made it harder for quality education to be had. Lastly, Black parents fought for equal opportunity for all. Black and white children should attend school together, particularly if that was the way of the community due to its makeup. This was the case for the townships of Tredyffrin and Easttown in the early 1930’s.
Both communities had small but lively and active Black communities. Both townships are about a 25 to 30-minute ride outside of Philadelphia. Black people and white people lived in these communities together and their children attended schools together. That was until 1932 when the school boards in both towns agreed to segregate their elementary schools. According to the president of the Tredyffrin school board:
“Negro pupils of Tredyffrin and Easttown townships to have their own grade school … it is a shame that the building-up process has been stagnated by inadequate schools and the policy of mixing the races therein … Easttown and Tredyffrin townships are two of the few townships in the State which have not had colored schools.”
Black children in both townships would be bused to one of two schools managed by both school boards on a joint basis. The teachers and maintenance staff would be Black but the administrators would be white as per the joint boards. In addition to the forced segregation, those Black teachers would have to manage what Dr. Jarvis Givens referred to as white surveillance in ways they hadn’t had previously.
Meanwhile, white students in Tredyffrin would be bused to freshly built all-white schools. In response, Black parents activated. They met with their local branch of the NAACP. Some white residents joined them. The result of the meeting yielded the following statement, that the move by the joint school boards:
“… tends not toward the betterment and benefit of the conditions surrounding the negro school children, but rather toward the degradation and segregation … the colored people cannot see
why they should be forced to use an old school building no longer wanted by the school board when they, like the white residents of the same section, have paid taxes to support the building of the new $ 250,000-grade school in Berwyn.”
What followed their statement was activism.
First, the parents approached the boards with a petition full of signatures to protest the decision. After the petition was rejected, Black parents openly protested the school throughout the 1932 school year. Those parents also acquired legal representation. Their lawyer was Raymond Pace Alexander.
Alexander, a Philadelphia legend and champion of civil rights represented the group for free. He was a graduate of Harvard Law School, the first Black graduate of UPenn’s Wharton School of Business, a former member of Philadelphia’s City Council and was the first African American judge appointed to the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas.
As Pace took up the legal fight, the people continued the fight on the ground. In the Fall of 1933, Black parents were fined and subsequently jailed for failing to pay the fine, because their children were absent. Black men were the first to be jailed. One wife volunteered to exchange her husband with herself and her infant child so that he could go to work and provide for the family.
That became an embarrassment for the white folks involved. It was such an embarrassment that the then-PA Attorney General stepped in to support Black parents. But he had a personal motive: he wanted to become governor and he needed the Black vote in order to win. With his action to support Black parents m, the joint boards of Tredyffrin and Easttown ended the segregated school system.
This was a win for equality and racial justice. It was a win because Black parents spoke out, activated, and acted on behalf of their children and behalf of justice. This is important to note, that Black parents pushed the government to do right by them because too often Americans either have a selective memory or are absent memory of history. This results in white people patting themselves on the back for doing the right thing.
But the truth is absent the work; advocacy and activism of Black people, our nation may be stuck in the 1950s or worse, the 1850s like so many wish we were. So much attention these days elevates conservative white parents who fight to maintain white settler innocence at the expense of truth. Rather, the work of Black parents should be elevated and honored. These are the people who pushed this country to be as Dr. King said: what it said that it was on paper. As we remember the Brown decision throughout the year, we can’t forget the work Black parents did before and after on behalf of Black children. May their resistance encourage us all to continue to resist today.
