60 YEARS AFTER BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada for calling this special order to give us the opportunity to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court case of Brown v. The Board of Education.
As a representative from Virginia, I take personal pride in celebrating this anniversary because Virginia played such a prominent role in that case. In fact, one of the four cases that were combined into the Brown decision was Davis v. School Board of Prince Edward County, in Virginia. Two of the Nation's premier constitutional lawyers were involved in the case: Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson, both from Virginia.
In the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the legal footing for racial segregation in public schools in this country. The decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, a 1996 case that held that a State could maintain separate but equal public accommodations.
In Brown, the court highlighted the importance of education and language that still rings true today. The court said:
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of State and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the Armed Forces. It is a very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument and a awakening your child to cultural values in preparing him for later professional training and helping him to adjust normally to his 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.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ``tangible'' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.
The court then concluded that:
In the field of public education, the doctrine of ``separate but equal'' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Unfortunately, although the decision was a victory for minority students, not everyone was eager to comply. Virginia led the resistance to the Brown decision. Ironically, Virginia used the language in the Brown decision as its legal grounds for what they called Massive Resistance, where it said such an opportunity, where a State has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made to all on equal terms.
Virginia reasoned that it could avoid integrating the schools by having no schools at all. So, in Prince Edward County, they closed the schools for several years. Schools were also closed in Norfolk and Front Royal and Charlottesville. We overcame Massive Resistance after several years and those schools eventually reopened.
But now here we are six decades after Brown. Thankfully, we have made progress, but we still have work to do.
The promise of equal educational opportunities envisioned by Brown remains unfulfilled.
For example, equal educational opportunity does not occur when one jurisdiction spends substantially more per student than an adjacent jurisdiction because of the relative differences in wealth between the two jurisdictions.
Unequal funding results in unequal educational opportunities when you consider that studies have shown that one-half of low-income students who are qualified to attend college do not attend because they can't afford to. In fact, today, a high-income, low-achieving student is more likely to attend college than a high-achieving, low-income student.
Another example of educational inequality is the current debate over publicly financed school vouchers, which can be used at private schools, which might provide educational opportunities to a privileged few, but which would definitely deprive the public schools of desperately needed resources.
The supporters of vouchers frequently claim that this is a choice, when, actually, all it is is a chance. If you win the lottery, you have a chance to go to the private schools, but if you lose the lottery, then you are stuck in the public schools, with fewer resources, because all of the money is spent on vouchers.
Obviously, we have a lot of work to do to complete the promise of the Brown decision. The 60th anniversary of the decision offers us an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to achieving these lofty ideals.