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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 24, 12 June 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Supreme Court last week dealt telling legal blows at Jim Crow practices in education and public transportation in the South in three major decisions.
In the case of G.W. McLaurin, a Negro attending the University of Oklahoma, the court ruled that he and 23 other Negro students, who are seated apart from their white classmates, must be admitted to regular classes with white students.
Similarly, in the Texas case where Hemon Marion Sweatt of Houston demanded admission to the “white” law school in Austin, the court ruled that the Negro law school there is not the equivalent of the school provided for whites and that Sweatt may rightfully claim a “legal education equivalent to that offered by the state to students of other races.” The third case was that of Jim Crow practices in the dining cars of railroads. Elmer W. Henderson, director of the American Council of Human Rights, was plaintiff against the Southern. Railway Company. In writing the decision, on this case, Justice Burton said: “Where a dining car is available to passengers holding tickets entitling them to use it, each such passenger is equally entitled to its facilities in accordance with reasonable regulations.”
In rendering these decisions the Supreme Court avoided committing itself on the principle that it is legal for Southern states to give Negroes “separate but equal facilities” laid down by the court in 1896. Instead the justices simply chose to recognize for the first time something which has been known to everyone, that the Jim Crow facilities offered Negroes are never “equal” to those provided for whites, and cannot, in the nature of the situation, be equal.
These decisions have struck one more legal blow at Jim Crow, and it is a powerful one. It is clear that the Supreme Court took into account the political and economic realities which face the government. The failure of Congress to pass a fair employment practices law, despite the fact that both major parties are committed to such legislation, is leading to increasing unrest among the Negroes with the present political setup in the country. It was necessary to do something to alleviate their situation.
And the way in which the court chose to do it is designed to accomplish the job while creating a minimum of friction between Dixiecrats and the other capitalist parties.
Of course, the court's refusal to rule on the principle of “separate but equal” facilities is, like most political compromises, a deal made at the expense of the Negroes. While giving them elementary legal equality in the specific cases dealt with, it leaves vast areas of segregation untouched.
The Supreme Court no doubt feels strongly its responsibility at the bar of world public opinion. American Jim Crow practices must be ameliorated or it will be extremely difficult to combat Stalinist propaganda directed at American discriminatory practices, especially among the millions of non-whites in the East.
Although these decisions are rightly celebrated by all who oppose discrimination of any kind, they are simply another step TOWARD legal equality in the midst of a sea of Jim Crow practices which neither the court nor the Republican or Democratic Parties have been willing to touch.
On the very day when the three decisions of the court were reported in the newspapers, there was also a story of a Negro minister in Little Rock, Ark., whose petition to become a candidate for city aiderman was refused by the election board of that city. In the words of the Rev. J.H. Gatlin, the minister involved: “This kind of changes things a little. I know the folks in my congregation were stunned about it. They thought things were looking up.”
On the very same day, A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds, co-chairman of the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, denounced the Jim Crow provisions of the conscription bill proposed by the military.
They charged that the army brass “has bucked all attempts to change the pattern of segregation. Only a handful of Negro enlistees and officers have benefited from the few grudging changes already made.” (This in face of the fact that Truman recently congratulated the military for the rapid advance made in eliminating Jim Crow.)
The committee recommends some elementary clauses in the draft bill such as outlawing segregation in interstate travel for draftees in uniform; making mob violence against draftees a federal offiense; giving all draftees the option not to serve in states with Jim Crow laws; and forbidding federal dictation of segregation in the National Guard. These clauses have almost no chance of being adopted in the forthcoming bill.
The Supreme Court decisions are an advance. This situation can and should be used by the Negroes and all enemies of discrimination to drive hard for FERC and against all prejudice.
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