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Equal Protection and the Urban Majority*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

C. Herman Pritchett
C. Herman Pritchett
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On May 17, 1954, nine judges, sworn to defend a Constitution which guarantees equal protection of the laws, speaking for a country which declared its independence on the proposition that all men are created equal and which is fighting for moral leadership in a world predominantly populated by people whose skin color is other than white—these nine men unanimously concluded that segregated educational facilities are “inherently unequal.”

Most of the members of this audience can probably still recall their feelings when they heard what the Supreme Court had done. Even those who were in full sympathy with the holding must nevertheless have been awed by the responsibility the Supreme Court had undertaken and shaken by some doubts whether the judicial institution could engage in a controversy so charged with emotion and bitterness without running the risk of political defeat and possible permanent impairment of judicial power.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 1964 , pp. 869 - 875
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1964

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References

1 The Constitution and What It Means Today (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1946), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

2 Equality in America: Religion, Race and the Urban Majority (New York, Oxford University Press, 1964), p. xGoogle Scholar.

3 16 Wall. 36 (1873).

4 The Quest for Equality (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1960), p. 59Google Scholar.

5 274 U. S. 200 (1927).

6 347 U. S. 483 (1954).

7 328 U. S. 549 (1946).

8 369 U. S. 186 (1962).

9 372 U. S. 368 (1963).

10 376 U. S. 1 (1964).

11 377 U. S. 533 (1964).

12 In four of these cases, however, Stewart voted to remand for further proceedings.

13 “One Man-One Vote,” The Twentieth Century Fund, 1962, p. 4Google Scholar.

14 H. R. 2836, 88th Cong.

15 New York Times, March 19, 1964.

16 In an effort to delay judicial enforcement of the Supreme Court reapportionment decisions until a constitutional amendment could be considered by Congresa, several legislative measures were considered in the closing days of the 88th Congress. Senator Everett Dirksen sponsored H.R. 11380 as a rider to the Foreign Aid bill, providing that federal courts may not interfere with the election of state legislatures before January 1, 1966, and that they must allow states “a reasonable opportunity” to reapportion their legislative seats in regular legislative sessions, except in “highly unusual circumstances.” Adoption of the rider was prevented by a filibuster, and eventually a compromise was approved in the Senate. It declared the “sense of Congress” that any order of a federal district court concerning apportionment of a state legislature could properly allow the legislature the length of time of its regular session plus thirty days, but no longer than six months, to apportion itself in accordance with the Constitution. House conservatives, angered at the mildness of H.R. 11380 as amended, forced its elimination from the Foreign Aid bill in conference, so the Eighty-eighth Congress adjourned without taking any action relating to the Court's apportionment decisions.

17 341 U. S. 494 (1951).