THE LEGACY OF W.E.B. DU BOIS: A
RATIONAL MODEL FOR ACHIEVING
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY FOR
AMERICA'S BLACK CHILDREN
DERRICK
A. BELL, JR.*
I
For a very long time, those living near the world's oceans
must have observed the ebb and flow of the tides and assumed
that those mighty bodies of water moved in, then out, then in
again according to some internal rhythm, majestic, inevitable,
unaffectable by any outside force. The apparent coincidence of
the Moon's phases to tidal changes perhaps was recognized long
before anyone proved definitively that the far off lunar body
influenced through its gravity ocean tides on this planet.' Even
today, those of us not conversant with either physics or astronomy accept this explanation with some reluctance. In matters so enormous, it is easier and, somehow, comforting to rely
on myth or religion rather than on rational, but cold, scientific
fact.
One can only imagine the difficulty of those early scientists
who, having worked out the Moon's influence on tidal oscillation, attempted to convey what they had learned to a skeptical
public quite committed to mythological or religious explanations for all important events of nature. Rational theories were
deemed heretical, at least, and those who propounded and espoused them did so at no little risk to their personal well-being.
Rational, as opposed to ideological, theories about society's
functioning, are seldom more easy to discover or communicate
* Professor of Law, Harvard University. B.A., Duquesne, 1952; LL.B.,
Pittsburgh, 1957. Ms. Susan Mentser, B.A., Swarthmore, 1975, provided valuable
assistance in the research of W.E.B. Du Bois. A version of this article was
delivered as the Inaugural Civil Rights Lecture, sponsored jointly by the Creighton University School of Law and the Black American Law Students Association, at the Creighton Law School on October 2, 1977.
1. In 9 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 999 (1977), tidal movements are attributed to the difference of the gravitational attraction between celestial bodies and
the centrifugal acceleration of their rotation. They are periodic because related
to the motion of the Sun and Earth as well as the Moon. The interval between
successive high tides at most coastal or island locations is about 12 hours and 25
minutes, one half the time of the Moon's apparent revolution around the Earth.
See 18 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 383 (1977).
409
CREIGHTON LAW REVIEW
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today than were those in the scientific area centuries ago. Resistance to rational approaches to racial issues are particularly
difficult. Discrimination based on color is, for its victims, an
overwhelming presence with origins as mammoth as nature.
Their response, like those of people in the pre-scientific age,
relies heavily on belief and ideology.
For example, American blacks have sought effective public
schooling for their children for two centuries. Tracing these
efforts over the generations reveals a pattern of dissatisfaction
first with integrated then with separate schools quite like the
lunar-induced ebb and flow of the earth's oceans. As with the
tides, the force which moved parents to oscillate back and forth
in their educational tactics is usually hidden or disguised.
Black parents attributed the ineffective instruction at the
schools attended by their children as due to one of two causes: if
the schools were all-black, failure was attributed to the racially
segregated character of those schools. "If whites were attending
these schools," black parents concluded, "conditions would be
better." This has been the predominant diagnosis. In other times
and places, discontent with the public schools occurred while
black children were attending predominantly white schools. In
those instances, the racially integrated character of the schools
was often found responsible. "Because they wish to favor
whites," black parents concluded, "our children don't stand a
chance in these schools." The experience of black parents in
Boston with separate and integrated school policies is both instructive and representative.
When public schools opened in Boston in the late eighteenth
century, black children were neither barred nor segregated. But
by 1790, racial insults and mistreatment had driven out all but
three or four black children. 2 The Boston children's experiences
were no different from those of other "free" black children in
Northern schools. Racism rendered educational equality for
black children impossible even though they were attending the
same schools as whites.3
2. White, The Black Leadership Class and Educationin Antebellum Boston, 42 J. OF NEGRO EDUC. 505 (1973).
3. The black historian Carter G. Woodson wrote that as free public
schools became available, "philanthropists deemed it wise to provide separate
schools for Negroes to bring them into contact with sympathetic persons, who
knew their peculiar needs." C. WOODSON, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO PRIOR
TO 1861, at 307 (1919).
Black children attended schools with whites in Connecticut until 1830, when
"either on account of the increasing race prejudice or the desire to do for
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
1977]
Prince Hall, the black Revolutionary War veteran and community leader, recognized what he saw as the problem-integrated schools. He began working for what appeared an appropriate solution-separate schools. In 1787,-Hall petitioned the
Massachusetts legislature seeking an "African" school because,
in his words, "We ... must fear for our rising offspring to see
'4
them in ignorance in a land of gospel light."
The petition was rejected. Blacks and liberal whites later
opened a black school in the home of Primus Hall, Prince Hall's
son. 5 They also petitioned the Boston School Committee for
black schools. Citing the additional expense involved in maintaining special schools for blacks, the School Committee insisted that in the existing schools, "ample provision is made for the
education of all." 6 Black entitlement and access to integrated
schools has seldom since been so complete. For what was to
prove the first, but not the last time, educational equality
seemed to lie with the separate, rather than the integrated
school.
A separate school was established in 1806. Located in the
basement of the newly erected African Baptist Church, the
school was initially financed by blacks with the help of whites.
Later, the Boston School Committee began contributing to the
school's support, exercising even greater control as its contributions increased. 7 In 1818, for example, the School Committee
dismissed the school's master selected by black parents and
appointed another, all without consulting the parents. Several
years later, the Committee ignored black parent's complaints
that the school master was an incompetent teacher guilty of
"improper familiarities" with female students. The charges of
sexual improprieties need not be taken seriously, the Committhemselves, the colored people of Hartford presented to the School Society of
that city a petition to establish a separate school for persons of color." Id. at 317.
See also H. BOND, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN SOCIAL ORDER
367-90 (1934).
4. Hall, Negroes Ask for Equal EducationalFacilities,1787, in A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES 19 (H. Aptheker
ed. 1951).
5.
S. SCHULTZ, THE CULTURE FACTORY: BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1789-
1860, at 159-61 (1973). The school's teacher was white. The facility closed after a
few months in the wake of a yellow-fever epidemic. Id. at 161.
6. White, supra note 2, at 504, 509. If special schools were provided for
blacks, school officials feared other ethnic groups: the French, Irish, and Germans might also request them. SCHULTZ, supra note 5, at 160-61.
7. SCHULTZ, supra note 5, at 161-64.
CREIGHTON LAW REVIEW
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tee reasoned, because, in their view, the girls who made them
were known to be of "bad character."8
By 1835, the onslaught of complaints regarding the poor
quality of instruction and poor conditions in the black schools,
as compared to those schools serving white children, resulted in
the construction of a new school. Dissatisfaction over heavyhanded policy-making was not alleviated by the improved
facilities, and many parents, whose children were now required
to attend black schools, became convinced that they had a better idea-integrated schools. A few, unaware of the mistreatment of black children in white schools that led to Prince Hall's
petition almost fifty years earlier, likely strengthened their
conviction with the thought that the integration idea was new as
well as better. Thus motivated, a suit to desegregate Boston's
public schools was filed in state court.
Using arguments in 1850 remarkably similar to those that
would be made in the Supreme Court a century later in Brown
v. Board of Education,9 Charles Sumner, abolitionist lawyer
and later United States Senator, maintained that the black
schools were inferior in equipment and staffing; that they were
inconvenient for those black children living closer to white
schools; that neither state or federal law supported segregated
schools; and finally that: "The separation of the schools, so far
from being for the benefit of both races, is an injury to both. It
tends to create a feeling of degradation in the blacks, and of
prejudice and uncharitableness in the whites."' 10
The Massachusetts court was not moved. In its view, the
School Committee's segregation policy was reasonable. And
because the feelings of prejudice by whites were rooted deep in
community opinion and feelings, the court concluded they
would influence white actions as effectually in an integrated as
in a separate school."
Undaunted, black leaders transferred their efforts from the
courts to the Massachusetts legislature, where, five years later, a
law was passed barring the exclusion of any child from the
public schools on account of race. 2 School integration advo8.
Id. at 171-72.
9. 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
10.
Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 198, 201-04 (1850).
11.
Id. at 209.
12. Mass. Laws 1855 ch. 256, § 1. The school integration lobby was aided by
the rampant anti-slavery feelings in the state at that time caused by efforts to
enforce federal fugitive slave laws. See SCHULTZ, supra note 5, at 204-05. The
current revision of the Massachusetts law reads: "No child shall be excluded
1977]
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
cates had won, but their victory was to prove costly. When
school officials complied with the desegregation law, they
closed the black schools and dismissed black teachers. White
parents, they feared, would not send their children to the former
nor allow them to receive instruction from the latter.13 Textbook
aid provided black children under segregation was cut off,'14 and
pubafter a decade or so, state officials conceded that Boston's
15
lic schools had again become identifiable by race.
Boston's schools, along with most public school systems in
the nation, remained basically segregated despite the 1855 statute. In 1970, litigation was once again initiated in Boston and
desegregation ordered in 1974.16 Northerners have been appalled and Southerners amused that so much violent resistance
could be mustered against school desegregation, two decades
after Brown, in a city where school integration was mandated
by law in 1855, and where it was the policy in 1790.
As Boston's school desegregation orders were slowly implemented, predictable reports of mistreatment and prejudice of
black children became available. In racial incidents, black students were far more likely to be expelled than whites. 7 The
School Committee in Boston as elsewhere attempted to close
black schools and dismiss black teachers. A hard-working federal judge sought to curb the worst abuses, 18 but it is clear to the
careful observer that Boston's twentieth century school desegregation campaign is following the same path, and
threatened by a fate identical to similar efforts in the pre-Civil
War era.
High tide then low tide, racial integration and then separation. The Boston history, repeated with endless variations
from a public school of any town on account of race, color or religion." MASS.
ANN. LAWS ch. 76, § 5 (Michie Law. Co-op (1971).
13. White, supra note 2, at 514.
14. White, Integrated Schools in Antebellum Boston, VI URBAN EDUC.
July-Oct., 1971, at 131, 135.
15. White, supra note 2, at 514.
16. Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F.Supp. 410 (D. Mass. 1974). In Morgan, a
school desegregation suit was brought by black parents for themselves and on
behalf of their children against the Boston School Committee, its members, the
Superintendent of Boston public schools, the Board of Education, its members,
and the Commissioner of Education. The court held that the entire school
system of Boston was unconstitutionally segregated. Accordingly, the court
enjoined the city defendants from practicing racial discrimination in the operation of the Boston public schools and ordered the "formulation and implementation of plans to secure for the plaintiffs their constitutional rights." Id. at 482.
17. Bell, The Burden of Brown on Blacks: History-Based Observationson
a Landmark Decision, 7 N. C. CENT. L.J. 25, 31-32 (1975).
18. See, e.g., Morgan v. Kerrigan, 401 F.Supp. 216 (D. Mass. 1975).
CREIGHTON LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 11
throughout the country, serves notice that ideological commitment to either integrated or separate schools leads to the alternate ascent then desolation of black hopes for the long-sought
goal-equal educational opportunity. Blacks remain at the mercy of societal forces which exert a lunar-like gravitational influence which cannot be countered or even understood without a
rational approach designed specifically for that purpose.
II
Twenty years before the Supreme Court removed the
Constitution's protection from segregated public schools,
W.E.B. Du Bois, the premier American scholar on racial issues,
addressed this problem. 19 Directing his attention to what, for
most blacks, is the least attractive of the public school alternatives, Du Bois asked, with characteristic candor, "Does the Negro need separate schools?" 20 And with a certainty that was
equally characteristic, Dr. Du Bois proposed an answer that
provides-then and now-a deceptively simple, but controversial priority structure for selecting between the two arrange19. Born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Dr. Du Bois was
educated at Fisk, Harvard, and Humboldt (Berlin, Germany) Universities. During a career of seventy years, Du Bois studied, wrote, and taught in many fields:
sociology history, economics, literature, and politics. A partial bibliography of
his more than twenty major books and hundreds of articles is published in II
THE SEVENTH SON: THE THOUGHT AND WRITINGS OF W.E.B.Du Bois 739 (J. Lester
ed. 1971) [hereinafter cited as Vol I or II THE SEVENTH SON].
Du Bois was as much advocate as academic. He helped found the Niagara
Movement in 1905, a gathering that led to the formation in 1910 of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He edited that organization's magazine, The Crisis,.from 1910 until 1934.
In accepting Du Bois' resignation in 1934, the NAACP Board of Directors
wrote:
He founded The Crisis without a cent of capital, and for many years
made it completely self-supporting, reaching a maximum monthly circulation at the end of the World War of 100,000 .... [T]he ideas which he
propounded in it and his books and essays transformed the Negro world
as well as a large portion of the liberal white world, so that the whole
problem of the relation of black and white races has ever since had a
completely new orientation.
W. Du Bois, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF W.E.B. Du Bois 299 (1968).
The editor of his letters, Dr. Herbert Aptheker, described Du Bois as
a source of inspiration to the Black intelligentsia in the United States; a
progenitor and participant in the so-called Harlem Renaissance of the
1920s; a staunch opponent of racism, colonialism, and imperialist war;
an advocate of independent political activity for the Afro-American
people; and, for over half a century, an adherent of socialism.
I THE CORRESPONDENCE OF W.E.B. Du BoIs XXIII (H. Aptheker ed. 1973).
20. Du Bois, Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?, 4 J. OF NEGRO EDUC.
328 (1935) [hereinafter cited as Does the Negro Need SeparateSchools?]. The
essay is reprinted in II THE SEVENTH SON, supra note 19, at 408.
1977]
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
ments. The Negro, Du Bois advised, "needs neither segregated
21
schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education."
One notes immediately that Du Bois' model eschews emotional ideology, and focuses hard on rationality. His priority is
the educational goal rather than the means of achieving that
goal. While there is widespread agreement among blacks about
the value of education, Du Bois' strategy is controversial in that
(a) he suggests that effective schooling for black children may
be possible even though the socializing aspects of integrated
classrooms are not available; and (b) he implies the possible
educational appropriateness and acceptability of all-black
schools, a stance that appears obsolete in a post-Brown world.
Dr. Du Bois did not claim infallibility. "I have not always
been right," he once wrote, but "I have been sincere. ' 22 Sincerity hardly describes the fierce intellectual integrity Du Bois
brought to every issue. The conclusions he reached through his
prodigious analytical abilities were asserted with a conviction
and passion that reinforced an insight and accuracy that not
many mortals could match, and few dared challenge directly.
A long, vigorous lifetime of work by Dr. Du Bois produced a
line of educational policies that were philosophically challenging, pedagogically sound, and pragmatically as consistent as the
harsh political circumstances permitted. Du Bois was not worried about being inconsistent. "What worries me," he said, "is
the truth. '23 Truth was not to be slavishly followed in the face of
new facts manifesting a new truth. Du Bois' truths were not,
alas, always popular and were often misunderstood. His stance
on separate versus integrated schools, for example, created
21. Does the Negro Need SeparateSchools?, supra note 20, at 335.
22. Du Bois, DUSK OF DAWN 313 (1940). The statement was part of his
written reasons for resigning as editor of The Crisis in 1934. He wrote:
In thirty five years of public service my contribution to the settlement of
the Negro problems has been mainly candid criticism based on a careful
effort to know the facts. I have not always been right, but I have been
sincere, and I am unwilling at this late day to be limited in the expression of my honest opinions in the way in which the Board proposes ....
Id.
His commitment to integrity gives added weight and substance to all Du
Bois' work. In explaining how, during the Depression, he lost a Harlem apartment building in which he had invested everything he had, Dr. Du Bois said he
refused to save his investment by turning the property into a rooming house for
prostitution and gambling. "As many of my friends have since informed me, I
was a fool; but I was not a thief which I count to my credit." W. Du Bois, THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF W.E.B. Du Bois 278-79 (1971).
23. I THE SEVENTH SON, supra note 19, at 112.
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[Vol. 11
confusion in the minds of those who sought a simple, consistent
solution to the problem of how best to educate
the children of an
24
oppressed people living in a hostile land.
In the face of experience that educational equity cannot be
guaranteed whether blacks select separate or integrated
schools, where is the value in Du Bois' suggestion that black
parents should commit themselves to neither? Where in such a
strategy may we expect to find and overcome the force that predetermines the ultimate failure of either alternative? There is a
partial answer in Dr. Du Bois' own response to the school desegregation policies he surveyed during his long life. His
foresight in assessing accurately the real meaning and value of
the Brown decision are indicative.
W.E.B. Du Bois was eighty-six years old when the Supreme
Court handed down its 1954 decision overthrowing the "separate but equal" doctrine in the public schools. 25 His reaction was
thoughtful rather than exuberant, evocative of caution more
than celebration. He noted first that "[n]o such decision would
have been possible without the world pressure of communism"
which rendered it "simply impossible for the United States to
continue to lead a 'Free World' with race segregation kept legal
over a third of its territory. '26 Then, and second, he predicted
that the South would not comply with the decision for many
years, "long enough to ruin the education of millions of black
and white children. '27 He predicted, accurately as later events
were to prove, the dismissal of thousands of black teachers. He
warned against the exploitation of legal research by black
scholars, and the decline and loss of black culture. To avoid
the
28
latter he urged that black history be taught in the home.
24. See, e.g., I THE CORRESPONDENCE OF W.E.B. Du BoIs 272-73 (H. Aptheker ed. 1973). In response to a 1923 inquiry about his position on "Jim Crow"
schools, Du Bois responded that he viewed them as a menace and a hindrance to
black advancement, but he noted that there were some excellent separate
schools which he supported because they were doing excellent work. Id. at 273.
25. The Supreme Court had adopted the standard in Plessy v. Ferguson,
163 U.S. 537 (1896), while sustaining the validity of a state statute requiring
segregated facilities on trains. The Court supported its conclusion that the law
was reasonable by citing to the approval of school segregation in Roberts v. City
of Boston, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 198 (1850). Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. at 544-45.
The Court acknowledged the legal origin of the doctrine when it was set aside in
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 491 n. 6 (1954).
26. W. Du Bois, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF W.E.B. Du Bois 333 (1968).
27.
Id.
28. W. Du BoIs, Two Hundred Years of Segregated Schools, in W.E.B. Du
BoIs SPEAKS: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES 1920-63, at 278, 284 (P. Foner ed. 1970).
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
1977]
In 1960, Dr. Du Bois in an essay, Whither Now and Why, 29
explained: "What I have been fighting for and am still fighting
for is the possibility of black folk and their cultural patterns
existing in America without discrimination; and on terms
of
'3 1
equality. '30 He warned, "We must accept equality or die.
But for Du Bois, equality was not attained through assimilation. "What we must also do," he said, "is to lay down a line of
thought and action which will accomplish two things: The utter
disappearance of color discrimination in American life and the
preservation of African history and culture as a valuable contribution to modern civilization as it was to medieval and ancient
civilization.
32
Here, Du Bois applied to the Brown decision the theme of
desegregation with retained black identity which he had advocated much earlier. In his 1935 New Creed for American
Negroes, he had written a provision repudiating "all artificial
and hate-engendering deification of race separation as such";
but just as sternly, he urged blacks to "repudiate an enervating
philosophy of Negro escape into an artificially privileged white
race which has long sought to enslave, exploit and tyrannize
over all mankind. 33 In 1919, Du Bois, in a single Crisis editorial,
first condemned segregation as "impolitic, because it is impossible," then urged Negroes to "unite and work with Negroes to
build a new and great Negro ethos. '34 Julius Lester views this
early editorial as "a summary of Du Bois' own political dilem'35
ma, one which he never successfully resolved.
One might, at this point, assert that Du Bois' decision late in
life to join the Communist Party was a silent acknowledgment
that his earlier advice on achieving racial equality in a capital29.
1973).
W. Du Bois, THE EDUCATION OF BLACK PEOPLE 149 (H. Aptheker ed.
30.
Id. at 150.
31.
Id. at 151.
32. Id.
33.
34.
W. Du Bois, DUSK OF DAWN 320 (1940).
I THE SEVENTH SON supra note 19, at 102.
35. Id. But Mr. Lester knows that the integration-separation dilemma is a
strain permeating every discussion about race. In an article urging blacks to
leave America and establish a new nation, Lester muses about the status of
whites in the new country, then asks:
And, there are those blacks, like this writer, who are married to whites
and yet are committed to the liberation of their people ....
It will have
to be decided if those blacks and their white wives, husbands, and mixed
children, will be allowed to be citizens of the nation with all the rights
and privileges thereunto.
Lester, The Necessity for Separation, EBONY, Aug. 1970, at 166, 169.
CREIGHTON LA W REVIEW
[Vol. 11
istic society while retaining black culture, identity, and solidarity was faulty in theory and, because of systemic racism, impossible to achieve in fact.36 But Du Bois must have known that
racism, whatever the country's politics, has appeared around
the world wherever blacks are gathered in substantial numbers.
And he advocated as the antidote for that racism group identification and cooperation in working toward mutually-beneficial
goals.
He did so because, after long years of wrestling with this
issue, he likely concluded it was a mistake to treat the racial
separation of children in the schools as synonomous with rather
than as one of many manifestations of the real evil: racism. For
it is racism, the deeply ingrained sense that whites by virtue of
whiteness are superior to blacks, as this sense is manifested in
school policy, that both deprives black children of a decent
education, and "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their
status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds
'37
in a way unlikely ever to be undone.
It was manifested racism that drove black children out of
those early public schools in Boston; and racism that turned the
vision of successful, separate schools into educational nightmares, launching black parents on an earnest, but misdirected
crusade for integration, both in 1850 and 1950.
Du Bois had not reached this conclusion easily, and early
had fluctuated on the integration-separation issue. In high
school he had urged consideration of a separate black political
party. 38 And in 1916 he advocated bloc voting by blacks as the
best route to political power. 39 His disagreement with Booker T.
Washington was less over Washington's advocacy of voluntary
segregation than the latter's willingness to sacrifice rather than
fight for political, economic, and social rights. 40 During his early
years at the NAACP, Du Bois attacked Jim Crow laws and
36. II THE SEVENTH SON, supra note 19, at 721-22.
37.
38.
39.
40.
Du
347 U.S. at 494.
I THE SEVENTH SON, supra note 19, at 102.
Id.
Id. at 102-03. Professor August Meier reports:
Bois himself has recalled that he was gradually growing more dis-
turbed after 1900-less by the ideological difference between him and
Washington (which he remembered as mainly one of emphasis) than by
the immense power over political appointments, over philanthropic
largess, and over the press wielded by what Du Bois has labeled the
"Tuskegee Machine."
Meier, The Paradoxof W.E.B. Du Bois, in W.E.B. Du Bois: A PROFILE 75 (R.
Logan ed. 1971).
1977]
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
generally inveighed against the establishment of black schools,
but later, discouraged by the federal government's failure to aid
blacks during the Depression, Du Bois realized that survival
would require black self-help. He deemphasized integration explaining, "no idea is perfect and forever valid. Always to be
living and apposite and timely, it must be modified and adapted
to changing facts."'"
In a series of Crisis editorials, Du Bois urged blacks to
distinguish between segregation, which he argued should not
reflect an unwillingness of blacks to work and live, and cooperate with one another, and discrimination (inferior treatment
based on race). 42 But the NAACP and many blacks could see no
distinction in the two terms. 43 They rejected his contention that
"oppression and insult [had] become so intense and unremitting
union for
that until the world's attitude changes,. . .voluntary
44
self-expression and self-defense" was essential.
III
The commitment of civil rights groups to integration, plus
World War II and competition with Soviet Communism, produced, at last, the Brown decision. 45 It is now more than forty
years since Du Bois' historic clash with the NAACP, played out
in the 1934 issues of The Crisis, culminated in his resignation.
Du Bois lost that battle, but the accuracy of his vision is revealed in the many indications that contemporary reliance on
integration qua integration to provide effective schooling for
black children will work no better today than it did in
nineteenth century Boston.
Today, no more than one quarter of the black children in
this country are receiving a desegregated education by any educationally meaningful definition of that term. 46 It is doubtful
41.
W. Du Bois, DUSK OF DAWN 303 (1940).
42. I THE SEVENTH SON, supra note 19, at 106. The Crisis editorials are
reprinted in W.E.B. Du Bois: THE CRISIS WRITINGS at 421, 423 (D. Walden ed.
1972) and THE EMERGING THOUGHT OF W.E.B. Du Bois at 196,205,211,212,213 (H.
Moon ed. 1972).
43. See, e.g., THE EMERGING THOUGHT OF W.E.B. Du Bois 199, 202 (H. Moon
ed. 1972) (replies to Du Bois editorials by Joel Springarn, Chairman, NAACP
Board of Directors and NAACP Executive Secretary, Walter White).
44. Id. at 205, 211.
45. For a more complete discussion of the contention that foreign affairs
played a large role in effecting domestic social change, see Bell, Racial Remediation:An HistoricalPerspective on CurrentConditions,52 NOTRE DAME LAWYER 5, 11-12 (1976).
46. This estimate is based on the assumption that most of the black students attending predominantly black schools in the North are not receiving an
CREIGHTON LA W REVIEW
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whether a higher percentage of black children now attend desegregated schools than were enrolled in such schools prior to
1954. It is quite certain that more than one-third of the-6.7 mil-
lion black children of school age reside in the twenty largest
urban school districts. The percentage of nonwhite children in
these districts exceeds sixty percent. 47 Civil rights lawyers expected that courts eventually would require such predominantly black urban districts to merge with their mostly white suburban neighbors, but such hopes were dashed by the Supreme
Court's 1974 Detroit decision. 48 Two years later, the Court limited the amount of rebalancing of desegregated schools in
Pasadena, California,
that had become resegregated because of
49
white flight.
During its 1976 Term, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded a number of lower court orders requiring extensive
urban school desegregation.5 0 The Court instructed these courts
to apply more stringent standards of proof, both in determining
whether school officials are responsible for existing racial isolation, and in setting appropriate remedies for ascertained discrimination.
adequate education and at least half of those attending desegregated schools in
the South are similarly deprived.
47. Fairly recent statistics on this rapidly changing subject are printed in
Bell, Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School
DesegregationLitigation, 85 YALE L.J. 470, 478 n. 23-24 (1976).
In new data compiled by Diane Ravitch for a conference on Future Trends
in Education Policy, Sept. 15-16 (1977) (conference sponsored by the Nat'l Institute of Education, under the aegis of the Hudson Institute), it appears that in the
nation's 29 largest cities, only six are less than 50% minority. None of the
districts in this group are less than 30% minority. In the ten largest cities, New
York City is 69.5; Los Angeles, 63; Chicago, 75; Houston, 65.8; Detroit, 81.3;
Philadelphia, 68.2; Miami, 59; Baltimore, 75.6; Dallas, 61.9; and Cleveland, 62.2.
48. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 744-47 (1974). The Court stated:
Specifically, it must be shown that racially discriminatory acts of the
state or local school districts, or of a single school district have been a
substantial cause of interdistrict segregation. Thus an interdistrict remedy might be in order where the racially discriminatory acts of one or
more school districts caused racial segregation in an adjacent district,
or where district lines have been deliberately drawn on the basis of race.
In such circumstances an interdistrict remedy would be appropriate to
eliminate the interdistrict segregation directly caused by the constitutional violation. Conversely, without an interdistrict violation and an
interdistrict effect there is no constitutional wrong calling for an interdistrict remedy.
Id. at 745.
49. Pasadena City Bd. of Educ. v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 436 (1976).
50. See, e.g., Brennan v. Armstrong, 97 S.Ct. 2907 (1977) (Milwaukee);
School Dist. of Omaha v. United States, 97 S.Ct. 2905 (1977); Dayton Bd. of Educ.
v. Brinkman, 97 S.Ct. 2766 (1977); Austin Independent School Dist. v. United
States, 97 S.Ct. 517 (1977).
1977]
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
As to standards of proof, the Court instructed that school
officials are not liable for the natural and foreseeable consequences of their actions in the absence of proof that the dis51
criminatory actions were intended for an invidious purpose.
Even when the necessary intent is shown, the Court warned that
system-wide remedies are inappropriate unless a system-wide
impact is proven. Remedies must be designed to redress only
52
the incremental effect due to the constitutional violation.
The new standards would prove no barrier to obtaining
judicial relief during those years after Brown when school
segregation was mandated by law or explicit policy. Today however, racially separate public schools are usually the result of a
multitude of factors. Discriminatory intent is often one of these
factors, but it is fairly easy to cloak this intent in racially neutral
terms and rational-sounding goals so as to insulate and continue
discriminatory policies.
The federal courts which sparked a revolution with the
Brown decision more than twenty years ago now are fighting a
rear-guard action with the opponents of school desegregation.
The judicial imperative in the Brown opinion has been diluted
from a stirring charge intended to bring about equal educational opportunity to a flourish of legal dogma seemingly designed
to confer constitutional recognition on the neighborhood school,
even if the worst features of segregated schools are maintained.
This is not to deny that black children, in general, have
available better schooling now than prior to 1954. It is to suggest
that the judicial and political support that enabled the elimination of formally segregated schools, has been largely withdrawn
and will not ensure the "equal educational opportunity" promised in the Brown case.
51. See id. where, as in the other remands, lower courts were advised to
reconsider their liability findings in the light of Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S.
229 (1976), and Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 97 S.Ct. 555 (1977). In Village of Arlington Heights, the Court
stated: "[P]roof of racially discriminatory intent or purpose is required to show
a violation of the Equal Protection Clause." Id. at 563.
52. Dayton Bd. of Educ. v. Brinkman, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 2775 (1977). See the
concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Powell, joined by the Chief Justice and Mr.
Justice Rehnquist, in Austin Independent School Dist. v. United States, 97 S.Ct.
517 (1977), expressing the view: "The principal causes of racial and ethnic
imbalance in urban public schools across the country-North and South-is the
imbalance in residential patterns." Id. at 519. Such patterns, Mr. Justice Powell
believed, are beyond the control of school authorities.
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Those committed to school integration have labored long
and suffered much to obtain court orders and federal agency
decisions requiring the reassignment of children to school on a
basis that roughly balances the percentages of blacks and
whites in each school with the racial population of the community as a whole. This process often was accomplished, as in the
1850's, through the closing of black schools, the dismissal and/or
downgrading of black faculty and administrators, and the
transportation mainly of black children from their neighborhoods to predominantly white areas where they felt, and were
treated, like strangers.
I On the other hand, most of those who embarked so full of
hope for alternatives to integrated schools-community control
schools, freedom schools, tuition voucher programs, compensatory education-all those wonderful roads that promised to
lead toward educational excellence have ended in decreased
enrollment, bankruptcy and, because of those failures, a reinforcement of the usually still separate and almost always unequal status quo.
Predictably, the disappointments and setbacks have spawned policy disputes within the black community. Civil rights organizations which litigated most of the school desegregation
cases, have exhibited, perhaps understandably, little tolerance
for even those within those organizations who would stray from
the fixed policy to integrate every school in every district.
Unfortunately, the faith that maintains this unswerving
commitment to racial balance remedies is not supported by a
record of improved achievement by blacks attending desegregated schools. Research studies show that depending on the
circumstances, desegregated schooling may be educationally
advantageous, irrelevant, or even disadvantageous for black
children. Civil rights adherents dispute these studies, and insist
that integration policies should not change even if the research
is accurate. In this view, black children are entitled to integrated
schools without regard to the educational effect of such assignments. 53 Whatever the merit of this policy in school districts
where a substantial white majority makes desegregation possible, it becomes both difficult to understand and impossible to
implement in large, urban districts with majority black school
populations.
53. See Jones, Is Brown Obsolete? No!,
1976, at 29.
INTEGRATEDUCATION, May-June,
19771
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
Even when desegregation is accomplished in majority white
districts, educational improvement for blacks is seriously
undermined by efforts of school officials to gear personnel appointments, curriculum selection, and disciplinary rules to the
interests of white children in the hope, often futile, that their
parents will not flee to the suburbs or to private schools. "The
constitutional objective" in the Boston school case, explained
one of plaintiffs' lawyers, "is to rid this public institution
completely of official segregation and discrimination. . . ." Racial balance, he adds, "is the central indicium of compliancewholly without regard to educational consequences."5 4
IV
Were Dr. Du Bois alive, he would certainly recognize and
probably condemn reliance on integration as an ideology rather
than one among several tactics which might serve to gain effective schooling for black children. It was the NAACP's elevation
of integration to a status deemed synonomous with racial equality that led Du Bois to resign as editor of The Crisis in June,
55
1934.
Du Bois tried to explain that the espousal of separate
schools and other black institutions did not constitute a rejection of integration as the ideal for American society. He had not
embraced black nationalism, and he was aware of the risks
inherent in all-black schools, but his preferences and reservations were factors to be considered in formulating policy. They
were not the policy, and could not be if the educational needs of
black children were to be served.
Perhaps the discouraging Supreme Court school decisions
of recent years 56 reflect a concern similar to Du Bois', rather
than a growing antipathy to the "equal educational opportunity" mandate of Brown. The Warren Court which decided
Brown has been replaced by a Court obviously more conservative on issues of social reform, but also a Court enlightened by
almost a quarter century of experience in school desegregation
jurisprudence. The Court's recent reversals of lower court desegregation orders contain no language repudiating the appropriateness or correctness of Brown. Rather, there is in the tight54.
School
55.
56.
Bell, Serving Two Masters: IntegrationIdeals and Client Interests in
DesegregationLitigation, 85 YALE L. J. 470, 480 n.32.
See note 22 supra.
See notes 48-52 supra.
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ening of standards for both liability and relief an indication that
the Court's majority is no longer convinced that equal educational opportunity can be attained, particularly in large, urban,
mainly nonwhite districts, through plans that rely heavily on
balancing the pupil populations by race in each school. Neither
the growing percentage of nonwhites reflected in demographic
statistics of these areas,57 nor the discouraging lack of achievement progress by black children in desegregated schools,5 8 provides much basis for belief that litigation strategies emphasizing racial balance and busing will receive sympathetic Supreme
Court review.
If the slow withdrawal of judicial support for school remedies relying on racial balance is not to become the transition
point for another ebb tide in black efforts to achieve public
school equity for their children, Du Bois' rational approach
needs to be adopted-and soon. The Supreme Court's second
decision in the Detroit school case 59 offers encouragement that a
new approach oriented more directly toward educational improvement can regain the judicial support needed to implement
the still-unfulfilled mandate in Brown.
In 1974, the Court had refused to approve lower court orders calling for the consolidation of fifty three suburban school
systems which surround Detroit's predominantly black school
district.6 0 The Court found no constitutional violations attributable to the suburban districts that would justify a metropolitanwide remedy, but did make clear that Detroit could be required
to desegregate its predominantly black schools. 6 1 The Court
conveniently failed to specify how the over seventy percent of
the students who are black could be divided effectively-and
more than temporarily-into the thirty percent of the students
who are white.
Upon remand, the district judge immediately grasped the
problem. Seeing no value in transporting large numbers of children from one predominantly black school to another,62 he refused plaintiffs' requests that he attempt to racially balance the
system's schools. 63 The court agreed that no school should be
57. See note 47 supra.
58. See note 63 infra.
59. See, e.g., Milliken v. Bradley, 97 S.Ct. 2749 (1977).
60. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 752 (1974).
61. See note 48 supra.
62. See, e.g., Bradley v. Milliken, 402 F. Supp. 1096, 1101 (E.D. Mich. 1975).
63. Id. In the court's view, "rigid and inflexible desegregation plans too
often neglect to treat school children as individuals, instead treating them as
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PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
less than thirty percent black, then approved the concept of
programs suggested by the Board and interded to improve educational quality in what would remain predominantly black
schools. 64 The programs, all of which the district court found
necessary to remedy the constitutional violations of state and
local officials, and to enable desegregation to work, covered
reading and communication skills, in-service training, vocational education, testing, students' rights and responsibilities, cocurricular activities, school-community relations, counseling
and career guidance, bilingual and ethnic studies, and citizen's
group monitoring. 65 Subsequently, the district court noted that
the state of Michigan had been held partially responsible for the
segregation in Detroit's schools, and ordered the state to help
66
pay the costs of the educational components.
Speaking for the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Burger went
to some lengths to convey the view that in approving the Detroit
plan, it was doing nothing new. 67 He noted that lower courts had
frequently included educational components in school desegregation plans where such remedies were necessary to restore
victims of discrimination to positions they would have achieved
but for the discrimination. 68 There was no concession that the
educational components, as far as most of Detroit's black children were concerned, were being ordered instead of rather than
in addition to desegregation. 69 But that, of course, was what was
happening. By the time the Supreme Court's mandate in Milliken 11 was returned to Detroit during the summer of 1977, that
city's public schools were 81.3% black, 70 an increase of almost
ten percent over the 71.5% figure in September 1974. 71 It is unlikely to decrease soon. Thus, while the Milliken II Court juspigmented pawns to be shuffled about and counted solely to achieve an abstraction called 'racial mix.'" Id.
64. Id. at 1132-35.
65. Id. at 1132-45.
66. Nine months later, the district court entered its final order, requiring
the State of Michigan and the Detroit Board of Education to share the costs of
four educational programs. See discussion in Bradley v. Milliken, 540 F.2d 229,
245-46 (6th Cir. 1976), aff'd, 97 S.Ct. 2749, 2761-62 (1977).
67. Milliken v. Bradley, 97 S.Ct. at 2760. Significantly, the decision is one of
the few school desegregation cases in recent years without a dissent, although
Mr. Justice Powell concurred in only the judgment, and is virtually the only
school case heard and decided during the Court's 1976 Term that affirmed a
plan approved by the lower courts. See notes 50-52 supra.
68. 97 S. Ct. at 2759-60.
69. Id. at 2760-61.
70. See note 47 supra.
71. 97 S.Ct. at 2753 n. 4.
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tifies its approval of the Detroit plan's educational components
on the grounds that "[p]upil assignment alone does not automatically remedy the impact of previous, unlawful education isolation", 72 it is unlikely that many inner-city black children will
obtain much of their schooling in other than racially-isolated
schools.
The Chief Justice suggests "independent measures" other
than desegregated assignments are needed by "[c]hildren who
have been ... educationally and culturally set apart from the
larger community [and who] will inevitably acquire habits of
speech, conduct, and attitudes reflecting their cultural isolation."73 The recognition is welcome, if tardy, and should be no
less applicable to those thousands of black children in systems
other than Detroit who never receive desegregated assignments.74 The educational success achieved in some black
schools before Brown 75 and in other black schools more recently 76 refutes any contention that the problems of inferior education can only be cured in integrated classrooms.
Milliken II is not the strongest authority for shifting the
77
focus of desegregation relief from integration to education.
72. Id. at 2761.
73. Id.
74. Mr. Justice Marshall, in concurring, argued that Detroit's situation "is
in no way unique." Id. at 2763. He continued to view pupil assignment as the
primary remedy, but agreed that a program of remediation is necessary to
repair the academic development of black children caused by the school board's
discriminatory acts. Id.
75. See, e.g., Sowell, Black Excellence-The Case of DunbarHigh School,
35 PUB. INTEREST 3 (1974). See generally C. WOODSON, THE EDUCATION OF THE
NEGRO PRIOR TO 1861 (1919); H.
BOND, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE
AMERICAN SOCIAL ORDER (1934).
76. See writings summarized in D. BELL, RACE, RACISM AND AMERICAN LAW
579-83 (1973).
77. Mr. Justice Powell, in concurring, expressed concern that as Milliken
I reached the Court, both black representatives and the school board, the
traditional antagonists in school desegregation litigation, were now arrayed on
one side in a friendly suit "apparently for the purpose of extracting funds
[almost six million dollars] from the state treasury." 97 S.Ct. at 2763. He noted
that since the state does not oppose integration, the sole issue in the suit was
money, an important issue (citing San Antonio Independent School Dist. v.
Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973) and National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833
(1976)), not easily argued by the state in that its liability -for Detroit's segregated
schools had been ascertained in Milliken I. In addition, the state's argument
that no proven constitutional violation in the operation of the system's educational programs preceded the lower court's orders for educational components
(citing inter alia the liability-remedy test of Milliken I, note 48 supra)was not,
according to Mr. Justice Powell, "a frivolous one." 97 S.Ct. at 2765. But the party
primarily concerned, the school board, both favored and had suggested the
educational relief. Mr. Justice Powell would have dismissed the writ as improvi-
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PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
But it clearly offers an alternative which should prove welcome
to many black parents and all those who would restore some
much needed rationality to what has become an almost otherworldly ideological struggle.
Even so, survivors of the separate-but-equal era may fail to
discern any difference in the Milliken II relief, and that to
which blacks were entitled during the "separate but equal" era
prior to Brown.78 But Dr. Du Bois would have recognized the
distinction. The Court in Detroit faced up to the reality that
racial balance remedies were not possible and, although it
did not cite the studies, may have been influenced by the disappointing achievement scores earned by blacks in desegregated
school districts. 79 Moreover, some desegregation was ordered in
Detroit and all students are entitled to reassignment to schools
80
where their race is in the minority.
If through court orders and judicial oversight, the educational quality of Detroit's schools can be improved substantially, the basic goal of black parents, equal educational opportunidently granted, but conceded that such action would simply prolong the disruption of education in Detroit. Id. at 2765-66.
In subsequent cases, particularly those where school boards are less enthusiastic than Detroit's about federal court orders that significantly involved
educational policies, plaintiffs' representatives will need to develop proof that
board policies are responsible for poor pupil performance in black schools. The
task should prove no more difficult than showing that school board policies
caused the initial segregation in those schools.
It is also worth noting that while the result in San Antonio Independent
School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973) accurately reflects the Court's trepidation about constitutionalizing the right to "quality education," Rodriguez was
not a school desegregation case, and especially not a case like Milliken where
the alternatives to a court-ordered educational remedy are to do nothing, or
attempt desegregation of over 50 school districts throughout the metropolitan
area. Given those choices, the result in Milliken II was almost predictable, and
should prove replicable.
78. "Plaintiffs originally favored a desegregation plan that would have
required more extensive transportation of pupils, and they did not initially
propose or endorse the educational components." Milliken v. Bradley, 97 S.Ct.
2749, 2764 (Powell, J., concurring). When the district court issued its order in the
Detroit case limiting busing and emphasizing educational components, the
NAACP General Counsel reportedly condemned the decision as "an abomination" and "a rape of the constitutional rights of black children." See N.Y. Times,
Aug. 17, 1975, at 1, col. 1. But the same official indicated support for the educational plans approved by the Supreme Court. Jones, Correspondenceon School
Desegregation, 86 YALE L. J. 378, 379 n. 11 (1976).
79. See, e.g., N. ST. JOHN, SCHOOL DESEGREGATION OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN
136 (1975), who writes, "During the past 20 years considerable racial mixing has
taken place in schools, but research has produced little evidence of dramatic
gains for children and some evidence of genuine stress for them." Id.
80. See, e.g., Bradley v. Milliken, 402 F.Supp. 1096 (E.D. Mich. 1975), aff'd,
540 F.2d 229 (6th Cir. 1976).
CREIGHTON LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 11
ty, can be realized. The benefits of interracial contact are real,
but are far less important than providing black children with
effective instruction in those basic skills without which the integration ideal is both irrelevant and impossible.
Milliken II then is a step in the right direction, but the
educational components approved there would justify even
more optimism if the Court had recognized that their effectiveness too can be seriously diluted by subtle forms of racial discrimination. Using these components as a vehicle for providing
ongoing supervision, the courts must both monitor administration of the programs for indications of discrimination, and must
assist relatively powerless black parents to understand the
necessity of ongoing participation in the educational process. In
short, courts in supervising compliance in desegregated schools
that remain all or predominantly black have the same responsibility as that in districts where racial balance is attainable: to
eliminate racism in the educational process. In carrying out this
task, a final look at Dr. Du Bois' rational approach to the education of black children should prove helpful.
First, it is worth reiterating that Dr. Du Bois did not oppose
integration. Indeed, he saw as a duty the black man's opposition
to any school from which his child was excluded on the basis of
race. But Du Bois warned against punishing "our own children
under the curious impression that we are punishing our white
oppressors. '"81 In other words, he, like the district judge in Milliken, would oppose treating black children as "pigmented
' 82
pawns.
Second, as to the black schools located in heavily black
school districts, Du Bois' admonition to make education the
priority carries a pragmatic, almost fatalistic, tone. The duty to
end discrimination in those schools would remain, but in virtually all of the urban school districts, he might well counsel, as he
did in 1935, the acceptance of black schools, not simply because
they have educational potential, but also because of the realities
of minority status that even the compulsion of law cannot alter.
In his view, "[a]ny agitation and action aimed at compelling a
rich and powerful majority of the citizens to do what they will
not do, is useless. '83
81.
W.E.B. Du Bois: THE CRISIS WRITINGS 423, 424 (D. Walden ed. 1972).
82. See note 63 supra.
83. Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?, supra note 20, at 329. The
Black educator, Horace Mann Bond, reached a similar conclusion. "Even if the
separate school is wrong in principle, no amount of 'protest' from Negroes will
1977]
PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
Third, Du Bois would almost certainly support the efforts of
local black leaders in Detroit and elsewhere who favor using the
Brown mandate to obtain court-improved educational resources and greater black involvement in black urban schools.
The danger, as he saw it in 1935, is that blacks will "fight frenziedly" to end formally segregated schools, but if the schools
remain all-black, their tendency is to simply accept their last
argument that nothing of educational value can take place in
black schools. Such attitudes become a self-fulfilling prophesy
where blacks "lose interest and scarcely raise a finger to see
that the resultant Negro schools get a fair share of the public
funds so as to have adequate equipment and housing; [and] to
84
see that real teachers are appointed.
Finally, Du Bois predicted with an accuracy no less sharp
after forty years that the advocacy of black schools "will forthwith be interpreted by certain illiterate 'nitwits' as a plea for
segregated Negro schools and colleges. ' 85 Du Bois' denial of
such charges in 1935 is no less appropriate today. As always his
standard was the schools' educational competence, which he
refused to assume based on its racial composition. Even under a
formally segregated system, he would choose black schools
"where children are treated like human beings, trained by
teachers of their own race, who know what it means to be
black," viewing them as "infinitely better than making our boys
and girls doormats to be spit and trampled upon and lied to by
ignorant social climbers, whose sole claim to superiority is the
ability to kick niggers when they are down. '86
avail to prevent it, in the long run, if the majority wishes to have separation." H.
BOND, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN SOCIAL ORDER 383 (1935).
84. Does the Negro Need SeparateSchools?, supranote 20, at 332. See also
Du Bois, Education,in 1922 Crisis, reprinted in W. Du Bois, AN ABC OF COLOR
125-26 (1963), where black parents are urged to "fight segregation by wealth,
class or race or color, not by yielding to it but by watching, visiting, and voting in
all school matters, organizing parents and children and bringing every outside
aid and influence to cooperate with teachers and authorities."
85. Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?, supra note 20, at 335. More
recently, Professor Charles Hamilton acknowledged that his support of alternatives to racial balance plans would be viewed by those to whom integration is
virtually synonomous with quality "as having given up the fight, as having
joined the white racists, and indeed, as having become black racists and advocates of 'Black Power separatism'." Hamilton, Race and Education:A Search
For Legitimacy, 38 HARV. ED. REV. 671, - (1968).
86. Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?, supra note 20, at 335.
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CONCLUSION
Du Bois was aware of the separation-integration dilemma
which made rational as opposed to ideological approaches to
racial problems so difficult. In The Souls of Black Folk, he
discussed how the conflict split his personality: "One ever feels
his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,
two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn
87
asunder."
Du Bois' achievement is that he survived his internal emotional conflict to establish a standard that offers a rational solution and a strategy for future action. The fortunes of a seldom
accepted and often despised black minority in a country
committed to whiteness depend less on the law or an ideology
than on factors beyond their control: economic conditions, political stresses, foreign threats. Du Bois recognized the source of
the tides that periodically elevated then swamped black people.
He could not alter the source, but was ever ready to change
tactics as conditions around him changed. Today's civil rights
representatives must do the same if black children in the 1980's
are to be spared the fate of so many doomed by school systems
oriented to serve whites both before and after the Brown decision.
What remained constant for Du Bois was his principles.
These as he has bequeathed them to us, are clear, concise, and
graced with a vision which can, if we permit them, enlighten our
actions, strengthen our ideals, and perhaps, help a society that
at times seems willing to destroy itself to maintain dominion
over those in its midst who are not white. In this regard too, Dr.
Du Bois proved himself both prophet and humanist.
[T]he majority of men do not usually act in accord with
reason, but follow social pressures, inherited customs
and long-established, often sub-conscious, patterns of
87. W. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK 3 (1903). Du Bois continues in
this vein:
The history of the American Negro, is the history of this strife,-this
longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a
better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older
selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too
much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul
in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a
message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to
be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon
by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly
in his face.
Id. at 4.
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PUBLIC SCHOOL EQUITY
action. Consequently, race prejudice in America will
linger long and may even increase. It is the duty of the
black race to maintain its cultural advance, not for itself
alone, but for the emancipation of mankind, the realization of democracy and the progress of civilization."s
88.
Du Bois, My Evolving Program For Negro Freedom, in
NEGRO WANTS
31, 70 (R. Logan ed. 1944).
WHAT THE