The Path and the Promised Land: School Desegregation
![handle is hein.journals/aulr21 and id is 652 raw text is: THE PATH AND THE PROMISED
LAND:
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION
O'NEAL SMALLS*
. . . We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't
matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountain top...
I just want to do God's will. . . And He's allowed me to go up to
the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised
land . . . I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get
to the promised land . .. .
Some seventeen years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States,
from its mountain top, surveyed . . . perhaps the most important
function of state and local government.. ., namely, to provide educa-
tion. The question before the Court was . . . [d]oes 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? The
answer followed quickly: [w]e believe that it does.3 And thus the
Supreme Court announced what undoubtedly is one of the most impor-
tant and far reaching decisions in the history of this country.4 Now some
seventeen years later, we are still confronted with the task of defining
* B.S., Tuskegee Institute; J.D., Harvard University; Assistant Professor of Law,
Washington College of Law, The American University.
1. From final speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4,
1968, in N.Y. Times, April 5, 1968, at 24L, col. 6. For the biblical source of this
metaphor (Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt), see Exodus 3;
Deuteronomy 34.
2. Brown v. Board of Educ. of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954) [hereinafter cited
as Brown I].
3. Id.
4. Perhaps Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), is Brown's only
equal. In the Dred Scott case, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of the
Supreme Court, it was announced that persons of African descent were not citizens
of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal courts. In explaining why
that was so, Taney stated that Europeans regard Blacks as being of an inferior order,
. . altogether unfit to associate with the White race, either social or political relations;
and so far inferior that they had no rights which the White men was bound to re-
spect . I. ld. at 407. This was the view held by the Thirteen Colonies, said Taney.
636](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/aulr21&div=37&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Path and the Promised Land: School Desegregation
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