PERSONAL MEMORIES OF SEGREGATION 70 YEARS AFTER THE SUPREME COURT’S BROWN DECISION
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
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The nation recently commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, finding racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. This has led to much discussion about the state of race relations at the present time. Having lived in the South during the years of segregation, as well in the North, I have some thoughts about where we are now—-and what life was like then.
I grew up in New York City. In New York, there was no legal segregation. In my elementary school, junior high school, and high school there was not a single non-white student. I never encountered a black person that I can remember. Reading about racial problems when I was in high school, it disturbed me that I did not know a single black person. I was invited to participate in a weekend meeting sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. At this meeting I, made a black friend. We met for lunch a number of times. This was the only black person I knew. This was in New York, not the segregated South.
When I arrived in Virginia to begin my freshman year at the College of William and Mary, legal segregation was all around me. There were separate waiting rooms and restaurants for black and white travelers at airports and train stations. In Williamsburg, restaurants were strictly segregated. Still, for the first time I encountered many black people. They were the women who cleaned our dormitory rooms, the men and women who served us in the cafeteria. Segregation was complete. This was several years after the Brown decision.
I joined the staff of the college newspaper, The Flat Hat. For three years I wrote a weekly column. I criticized segregation and supported the sit-ins that were taking place throughout the South to integrate restaurants. Generally, my columns were quite conservative, but I made it clear that racism was not something I wanted to see continue into the future.. To their credit, no one in the College administration ever tried to censor my column.
. I became involved with the Virginia Republican Party. Today, few people remember that Republicans in Virginia opposed segregation. It was the Democratic Party, led by Sen.Harry Byrd, which closed public schools throughout Virginia rather than integrate. In fact, in 1964, ten years after the Brown decision, the year I graduated from law school, public schools in Virginia were still segregated. I taught for year at St.Stephen’s Episcopal School in Alexandria, Virginia. That school had one black student. This was considered an important step forward. The Alexandria public schools were still completely segregated.
In 1958, I was an officer in the Political Science Club at the College. We invited guest speakers of a variety of political views. I thought that it was time that a black speaker was invited. I invited Dr. Alonzo Moron, the president of Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), the nearby black college. Dr.Moron went on to a distinguished career as governor of the Virgin Islands and head of the Red Cross. When news circulated that a black speaker had been invited—-the first in the College’s history—-I was called to the President’s office. He said, if I am remembering correctly, “Mr. Brownfeld, I read your column. It is very conservative. Why are you doing this?” I replied, again if my memory is correct, “Racism is not something I want to conserve.” I then promised that our next speaker would be a defender of segregation.
The meeting with Dr. Moron took place. We usually invited our guest speakers to dinner. Where could we bring a black speaker to dinner in Williamsburg in 1958? We thought our best possibility was the Williamsburg Inn. Since Dr. Moron was light-skinned, we were seated and everything went smoothly. After the meeting, the Political Science club was told we could no longer meet on campus.
Where could we meet? I visited the ministers of a number of churches close to the College. They sympathized with our having invited a black speaker, but said their members would not approve. Finally, the Methodist minister, Rudolph Benesh——a recent immigrant who fled Hungary when the Russians invaded, and was not involved in Virginia’s racial problems—-said we could meet at Williamsburg’s United Methodist Church. Fulfilling my promise, We invited a speaker who would defend segregation, James J. Kilpatrick, then editor of the Richmond News Leader. Kilpatrick said it was strictly a legal question of state’s rights. Later, he moved to awashington and wrote a column and became a commentator on television. He completely reversed his position on segregation in his new environment and when Harry Byrd died, he wrote a column praising Byrd, but noting that he had been blind on the question of segregation.
In the bull sessions we had in the College dormitories, if anyone suggested that we would live to see two black Secretaries of State, a black Secretary of Defense, and a black President—-elected twice—-he would have been viewed as mad. Yet, we have now seen all of these things-and much more.
This is not to say that racial problems and divisions are gone. They are not. But those of us who remember the years of segregation know how far we have come.
The goal of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was that men and women should be judged on the “content of their character” not the “color of their skin.” In recent years, we have embraced a number of race-based affirmative action programs which do the opposite of what the Rev. king advised—-they judge men and women precisely on the basis of race.
I served as a member of the transition team for President Ronald Reagan at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The chairman of our team was Jay Parker, my good friend and colleague. Jay, a leading black conservative voice, and I edited the Lincoln Review, a quarterly journal which promoted the goal of a genuinely color-blind society. Our contributors included such prominent black academics as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Anne Wortham, and William B. Allen. Black opinion, many tend not to understand, is as diverse as that of any other group of Americans.
Ironically, even early American leaders who owned slaves, recognized the immorality of slavery. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission…Can the liberties be thought secure when we have removed their firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”
America, many today forget, is something new and unique in history. It is made up of people of every race and ethnicity. Visiting New Amsterdam in 1643, the French Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues was surprised to discover that in this town of 8,000 people 18 languages were spoken. In his Letters From an American Farmer, Hector St.John Crevecoeur wrote in 1782: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”
In the 1840s, Herman Melville wrote that, “We are the heirs of all time and with all nations we divide our inheritance. If you kill an American, you shed the blood of the entire world.”
As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of Brown v.Board of Education, it is important to remember the problems we still have to confront——but it is also important to remember how far we have come. In the years I first encountered segregation, no one could have imagined the America we have today.
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