![]() ![]() Jackson, though staunchly opposed to segregation, were troubled by the legal propriety of overturning a well-established precedent. Clark, a Texan, indicate greater uncertainty, but he was clearly willing to entertain the position that “we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out.” ![]() “Negroes have not thoroughly assimilated,” he said segregation was “for the benefit of both” blacks and whites, and “states should be left to work out the problem for themselves.” The notes for Justice Tom C. Reed, also a Kentuckian, was even more skeptical of overturning segregation. “Congress has not declared there should be no segregation,” Vinson observed, and surely, he went on, the Court must be responsive to “the long-continued interpretation of Congress ever since the Amendments.” Justice Stanley F. Vinson, a Truman appointee from Kentucky, argued that Plessy should be permitted to stand. Klarman, a professor of law and history at the University of Virginia-have been able to reconstruct what went on through the justices’ conference notes and draft opinions. ![]() Though there is no official record of the Court’s internal deliberations, scholars of the decision-notably Michael J. ![]() Burton, and Sherman Minton) were solidly in favor of overturning Plessy. When the school-segregation cases first came before the Court, in 1952, the justices, all Roosevelt and Truman appointees, were split over the constitutional questions. And the fact that it was unanimous was little short of miraculous. But it didn’t seem inevitable at the time. The Brown ruling-the culmination of a decades-long effort by the N.A.A.C.P.-has today acquired an aura of inevitability. It thus overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal,” which had been the law of the land since 1896, when Plessy v. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the Court ruled unanimously, declaring that they violated the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Brown v. ![]()
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