Brown vs. Board of Education: Finding the Images and Voices of theChildren for Use in the Classroom

Lisa L. Ossian

In the black and white photograph, the ten-year-old girl held her six-year-old sister's hand as they walked to their all-black elementary school. The two little girls clutched buttoned-up winter coats and carried paper lunch bags as they made their way down a long stretch of railroad track with an enormous freight train towering above them. This was a lengthy, dangerous, and lonely walk, especially when another elementary school resided within their own Topeka, Kansas, neighborhood. Access and safety were just two of the many reasons for the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v Board of Education on May 17, 1954. And Linda Brown—the girl in the picture—was more than "a named plaintiff"--she was a little girl trying to help her sister make the long trek every day to their segregated school.

Too often children have remained invisible within accounts of school integration even though children should be the central character of the desegregation drama. For example, Reed Sarratt's The Ordeal of Desegregation: The First Decade (1966) listed in its table of contents the following people: governors, legislators, presidents, school men, college officials, police, lawyers, judges, editors, clergy, and businessmen. But no children's names or references appeared in that index.

For this column about integrating the Brown decision into teaching children's history, I have suggested a number of primary sources that can help present the decision from a child's perspective. One of the most useful is Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, edited by Waldo E. Martin, Jr. (part of the Bedford Series in History and Culture from St. Martin's Press). Martin's introduction outlines the events of the period preceding the decision, the components of the actual case and other desegregation cases, as well as examples of warnings by contemporary African American leaders that the Supreme Court decision might devalue black institutions and culture. This volume contains a six part introduction to the Supreme Court legal struggle; segregation cases dated from 1849 through 1955 along with briefs and other legal documents concerning Brown; the various popular responses to Brown from newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, and political cartoons; and a chronology of segregation from 1793 to 1992.

Several books published just after the Brown decision came down offer contemporary views of the issue and provide documents and approaches useful for undergraduate instruction.. A short (only 120 pages) book written in first person and dedicated "To Children Everywhere" is Now is the Time by Lillian Smith (New York: The Viking Press, 1955) in which she describes what the decision might mean for the children of America. The following excerpt would work well as a class session's introduction to that day's event and meaning:

Smith's Now is the Time is divided into three sections. The last, called "The Twenty-Five Questions," presents those racist questions that, in Smith's words, "have won elections for politicians in the South.” Question number 1: "Don't you think each race should keep its culture separate?" Number 9: "Isn't the Supreme Court playing politics when it reverses itself?" These were the questions heard over and over again from various groups and individuals opposed to integration which give context to the times and the worries people had over this monumental social change. The sometimes startling questions, combined with Smith's detailed social science responses, could spark fruitful small group discussions in class.

Another useful—and small—contemporary publication is Kenneth B. Clark's Prejudice and Your Child (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955/148 pp.) Clark had prepared a report on "The Effects of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development in Children," for the Division of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee, which the U.S. Supreme Court cited in their May 1954 decision. Clark presented this perspective on the case:

His first chapter, "How Children Learn About Race" presents a basic child development question: "Is it natural to dislike people who are different from one in physical characteristics or is this learned behavior?" The rest of the chapter cited other studies, including the famous "doll test" administered by Clark and cited in the Brown decision. This chapter provides an effective introduction to the psychological arguments regarding children's growth and development presented to the courts in the early 1950s.

A decade after the decision, Lillian Smith compiled a second book on the topic. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1964) provided additional first person accounts of young adults' experiences in the Civil Rights Movement (profits from the book went to the Congress on Racial Equality) as well as intriguing black and white photographs (one photo depicts a crowd of white protesters; in the corner stands a determined little white girl with the handwritten sign, "I am integrated and I like it," p. 58).

Her dedication explains her motives:

Although most of Smith's book records the early 1960s, one passage from a white college woman's perspective recounts her childhood memories of the 1954 Brown decision and then her subsequent volunteer work within the Movement.