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BEHIND THE BROWN DECISION: A
CONVERSATION WITH JOHN HOPE
FRANKLIN
John Hope Franklin*
I was born in a village, in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, on the sec- ond of January, 1915. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a lawyer. They had met in Tennessee, where they both were in college, and after a period of time they married and moved to Oklahoma. It was still Indian territory, of course; it be- came a state in 1907. My father sought to practice law in Rentiesville, but in a vil- lage that had not much more than a hundred people, the practice of law was not a very viable and promising profession. And so, in 1921, after consultation with my mother, he decided to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he could perhaps attract more clients and make a decent living for us. He moved there in February
We were to move in June after school was out, after my mother completed her teaching and my sister and I had finished our school year. We were all packed and ready to go, and then we didn’t hear from him. And we didn’t hear. And we didn’t hear. Eventually, after several days, my mother read in the newspaper that there was a terrible race riot raging in Tulsa and that there were many casualties. She was not certain that my father had survived.
- © 2005, John Hope Franklin. All rights reserved. Dr. John Hope Franklin spoke in February 2004 at both a Stetson University College of Law Symposium on Brown v. Board of Education and at a community forum sponsored by the University of South Florida in collaboration with the City of St. Petersburg, Fla., the St. Petersburg Chapter of the NAACP, and the St. Petersburg Bar Association. These comments are a synthesis of his remarks at the two events, including material shared in both presentations and expanded comments from one event or the other. The community forum included an opportunity for members of the audience to ask questions, and some of those questions and Dr. Franklin’s responses are included as well. Dr. Raymond Arsenault, John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, introduced Dr. Franklin at both events and moderated the discussion at the com- munity forum.
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After a few days she heard from him directly, and he said that he was unharmed but that what he had accumulated and used as resources to bring us there—the home, and his money— were gone up in smoke. He could barely find the house—there was no house. He was fortunate in having the good luck not to be harmed himself, but he pointed out that he didn’t have any money at all, and didn’t have any resources. He had his good health. And he was going to spend the next period of time trying to help his clients who had their property destroyed. So he sued the city, he sued the State of Oklahoma, and he sued the insurance compa- nies—all to no avail at that time. But he was steadfast and de- termined—practicing law in a tent for several months. He was able to carry forward a program of trying to get black citizens of the community to rehabilitate themselves, develop their self- respect, self-esteem, so that they could move forward. We didn’t get a chance to move to Tulsa until four years later, 1925, at which time we were once more together, never to be separated except at death. I went to school in Tulsa and finished high school there in
- I then went to Fisk University, determined to become a law- yer and to go back to Tulsa and to assist my father. I did not rec- ognize the fact that I was vulnerable on several accounts, not the least of which was the impression that could be made on me by my teachers. One young, white professor at Fisk University was the chairman of the history department. He was only twelve years older than I was: I was sixteen, and he was twenty-eight. He made an impression on me from which I never recovered. I was so taken up by what he was talking about, that I forgot that I had gone to college to study to become a lawyer, and soon declared that I was going to be a historian. That was the one thing I wanted to do with my life. I’ve never regretted it, and I went on to study history at Fisk. When I graduated from Fisk, we were still virtually bankrupt back in Tulsa, and I didn’t have the money to go to Harvard. And the same white professor, Theodore Currier, went down to the bank in Nashville, Tennessee, and borrowed $500 and put it in my hand and said, “money should not keep you out of Harvard.” With that I took the train and went to Harvard and studied there in due course, and in five years completed my work with a Ph.D. degree.
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groes, who wanted to do some graduate work in history, and so he applied to the University of Kentucky. The University of Ken- tucky responded by first turning him down and refusing to admit him on the ground that he was not eligible, not being a white per- son, and, secondly, suggesting that whatever he wanted in the way of graduate studies he could get at Kentucky State College for Negroes. Well, he had been there. He knew better. So he de- clined to be led into this activity by the officials of the University of Kentucky. And so Lyman Johnson went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and said, “I want your assistance.” Thurgood Marshall grabbed this with great alacrity and said, “I will be happy to take the case.” And he took it. Now, it involved, first, proving that Lyman Johnson was ca- pable of doing graduate work. Secondly, that the graduate work that he was seeking was not at Kentucky State College for Ne- groes. And, thirdly, pointing out that the only place he could get that training in the state of Kentucky was at the University of Kentucky. And so they sued the University of Kentucky. Then Marshall asked me to serve as the expert witness in the case, mainly that person who was trained in the field of history and could very carefully examine the two institutions to see the extent to which the Kentucky State College was not qualified to provide the graduate education that Johnson was requiring. I loved that, because it was in a sense doing something in the legal area, and a chance to do penance and make amends for my ne- glect of the legal profession in the first place. I thought it was go- ing to be wonderful for me to go out there and do the research and to prove that Lyman Johnson ought to be admitted to the Univer- sity of Kentucky and not Kentucky State College, which, after all, was quite an inferior institution by any standards. And so I went to Kentucky. I had friends at the University of Kentucky; some of whom I had met in graduate school, some of whom I met in Raleigh, North Carolina, when I was waiting on my own doctoral dissertation. They were very enthusiastic about our venture, despite the fact that they were teaching at the Uni- versity of Kentucky. They thought it ought to be open to blacks. And so they helped me as much as they could in gathering infor- mation. I cannot tell you how important it was for me to have the association with the members of the faculty at the University of
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Kentucky. And they were saying, “Here’s what we have at the University, and here’s what they don’t have over in the State Col- lege for blacks.” By the time the case opened before Judge H. Church Ford, the federal judge in Frankfort, I was ready. I was loaded. I couldn’t wait to get on the witness stand and say what I thought was the discrepancy between University of Kentucky and Ken- tucky State College for Negroes. Several members of the faculty of the University of Kentucky and several officials, including the president, were put on the witness stand first to show how the University of Kentucky was not all that good anyway. Marshall found they were pleading that they were not nearly as advanced as had been claimed. After all, they were not that much better, and Kentucky State College for Negroes would provide adequate facilities, and Lyman Johnson could do just as well going to Kentucky State College for Negroes. At the recess following the opening of the trial, Marshall said to his colleagues—not to me, I didn’t count, I’m not a lawyer—he said to his legal colleagues, “I am sick and tired of people carrying on like this, and I’m going to go back after recess and I’m going to ask the Judge[—without putting any witnesses on the stand at all he was going to ask the judge—]to order that Lyman Johnson be admitted to the University of Kentucky. We’re just playing, just playing games.” And his colleagues said, “Are you sure you want to do that?” He said, “Yes. I’m certain. That’s what I’m going to do in this case. It’s what I’m going to do in all cases from here on. I’m just sick and tired of this – of this play acting.” And so when he went back into the courtroom when the recess was over and it was Mar- shall’s time to speak, he said,
Your Honor, may I respectfully request you to direct a verdict in favor of my client, Lyman Johnson, and order the University of Kentucky to admit him forthwith? This is because the Uni- versity of Kentucky has not only not made a case, they do not have a case to make. And I’m going to ask you to open the Uni- versity of Kentucky and admit this young man to the Univer- sity of Kentucky. And Judge Ford said, “I’m going to do just that.” And then he said, “I’m ordering the University of Kentucky to admit Lyman Johnson forthwith.” And then he turned to the officials of the
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education. And so they used the experiences that they had accu- mulated in an earlier case, the Maryland case,^4 and in this case— the Lyman Johnson case—to press the University of Oklahoma and later the University of Texas to open their graduate and pro- fessional facilities to African Americans. I make that point because, after all, the Legal Defense Fund had had some question of how direct and how forcefully they could go in the direction of demanding the desegregation of schools. This is before Sweatt against Painter.^5 It’s before Ada Sipuel against the University of Oklahoma.^6 So this is the strat- egy that was developed for Brown^7 and for all the other cases. And it’s, I think, well to understand that this strategy, which would go through Sipuel and through Sweatt against Painter, was developed in Kentucky in 1948. And it would become the strategy that would be used even in the secondary school cases, Brown and the others, in 1953 and ’54. The background of this is very important from the strategy that was developed and that would become the strategy in the ’40s, in the ’50s, and in the ’60s. It’s very important to understand it as developing that early. And so, in the cases of Ada Sipuel against the University of Oklahoma and Heman Sweatt against the University of Texas, the juggernaut began to roll. It rolled most successfully in those two instances. And in 1948 and 1950, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas were open wide to the admission of African Americans. It ought to be said here that there were some efforts to post- pone the inevitable, particularly by trying to establish a separate- but-equal graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas, and various other places for blacks. But they were not successful. And in the Sweatt case, it became quite clear that there could be no substitute for the admission of African Americans to the regular graduate programs, for Marshall was able to establish the fact that it was not merely the training that one got, but what distinguished an institution like the University
- Pearson v. Murray , 182 A. 590 (Md. 1936)
- Sweatt v. Painter , 210 S.W.2d 442 (Tex. Civ. App. 1948), rev’d , 339 U.S. 629 (1950).
- Sipuel v. Bd. of Regents of U. of Okla. , 180 P.2d 135 (Okla. 1947), rev’d, 332 U.S. 631 (1948).
- Brown v. Bd. of Educ. of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954), supplemented , 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
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of Texas law school was the experience of rubbing shoulders with persons who would later be your opponents in the courtroom—the persons who would later be your colleagues in the courtroom— nothing was a substitute for that. And so that by 1950 or ’51, it was quite clear that, in higher education, there was no substitute for the integration of races in those institutions. So, Oklahoma and Texas and later Georgia^8 and others be- came open at the level of collegiate and professional education. And so this is the great triumph in the movement—to open up education generally. And there was one very, very important area left. Namely, public schools. Therefore, Thurgood Marshall began to think of the possibility of opening up those schools to everyone. This in- volved the renunciation of the idea of separate but equal and the embracing of the notion that only one kind of school would be equal, and that was one school for all races, and that was a big step. In 1951, ’52, and ’53, Marshall brooded over these subjects. Meanwhile, in various states, individuals were taking the step—at first a tentative step—and then the bold step of pressing their colleges, pressing their states. First, equalize educational opportunity. And then, to equalize it, not by separate schools but by one school for all children. That was a big leap. It was taken very tentatively and with some misgiving and some criticism, really, in some quarters. But, by 1953, Marshall was determined that there was no substitute for integrated schools. That there could be no new equality in separate schools. So he challenged the very powerful argument that had been set forth in the decision of 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson ,^9 before the Supreme Court of the United States. It es- tablished the doctrine that you could have separate facilities and public accommodations and transportation and education without them being the same. As long as they were separate, they could be equal, and as long as they were equal, they could be separate. That was what the doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson , sanctified by the Supreme Court from 1896 when Plessy was decided and in
- Holmes v. Danner , 191 F. Supp. 394 (M.D. Ga. 1961) (opening the University of Georgia to African Americans).
- 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
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were students at the university who were most cordial and acted as though they were interested in my becoming more than a visit- ing professor. But by the time I had finished teaching there and had gone back—was brought back—to Howard University, I real- ized that if I was ready to go to Harvard, Harvard was not ready for me to come there. And so I tried to forget Harvard University. In 1952, I was invited to be the visiting professor at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin at Madison. I went there and taught for a semester and, by the end of the semester, I was sure that Wiscon- sin was not as ready for me as I was ready for Wisconsin. And I went away. In the summer of ’53, I was invited to teach at Cornell Uni- versity, and at Cornell University I walked into my class one day and students were passing among themselves a sheet of paper. I was curious as to what they were doing, but I didn’t ask them. But they were sensing the fact that maybe I was suspicious. And in order to make certain that they were straight with me and that they were not doing something that I would frown upon, one of them came to me at the end of the class and said, “You might be interested in knowing what we were doing when you came in.” He said, “We were circulating a petition asking the Department of History to invite you to be a member of the department.” And I thanked him. And I walked away. And I left knowing that I wasn’t going to be invited to Cornell. They were not interested in having a regular slot filled by an African American. They just weren’t “ready” for it. That’s “ready” in quotation marks, in case you want to know. And it’s about that time—and I’m giving you that background in order for you to see how I might be impatient with these peo- ple—I’m just about sick and tired of going around preaching for a call, as we sometimes call it. And after that I was not going to preach for the cause anymore. And it was at the end of that sum- mer that I got a call from Thurgood Marshall. He asked me what I was going to be doing in the fall. I had been at Guggenheim in the first part of the year; to the University of Madison, Wisconsin, in the second part of the year; and Cornell University in the summer. When he asked me what I was going to be doing in the fall, I told him, “There’s nothing else I’m going to do in the fall except go back to Howard University and teach.” And he said, “You know what else you’re going to be doing?” I said, “Oh, no.”
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He said, “You’re going to be working for me.” And I said, “Doing what?” He said, “Doing what you’ve done before. You’ve got to work and help to shape the argument in a case.” And then he told me of the re-argument in Brown and what I had to do. And then, as only Thurgood Marshall could put it, he threat- ened me in a way that I knew that I was going to be in danger if I didn’t accept his invitation or his command. So I said, “All right,” and I decided to join forces with him. I joined Thurgood Marshall in the late summer of 1953, as sort of the director of the nonlegal-research program, trying to provide answers to questions that had been raised by the United States Supreme Court.^15 These five cases had been argued earlier
- The Court asked for briefs and oral argument addressing the following questions:
- What evidence is there that the Congress which submitted and the State legisla- tures and conventions which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment contemplated or did not contemplate, understood or did not understand, that it would abolish segre- gation in public schools?
- If neither the Congress in submitting nor the States in ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment understood that compliance with it would require the immediate aboli- tion of segregation in public schools, was it nevertheless the understanding of the framers of the Amendment (a) that future Congresses might, in the exercise of their power under section 5 of the Amendment, abolish such segregation, or (b) that it would be within the judicial power, in light of future conditions, to con- strue the Amendment as abolishing such segregation of its own force?
- On the assumption that the answers to questions 2(a) and (b) do not dispose of the issue, is it within the judicial power, in construing the Amendment, to abolish segre- gation in public schools?
- Assuming it is decided that segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment (a) would a decree necessarily follow providing that, within the limits set by normal geographic school districting, Negro children should forthwith be admit- ted to schools of their choice, or (b) may this Court, in the exercise of its equity powers, permit an effective grad- ual adjustment to be brought about from existing segregated systems to a system not based on color distinctions?
- On the assumption on which questions 4(a) and (b) are based, and assuming fur- ther that this Court will exercise its equity powers to the end described in question 4(b), (a) should this Court formulate detailed decrees in this case; (b) if so what specific issues should the decrees reach; (c) should this Court appoint a special master to hear evidence with a view to recommending specific terms for such decrees; (d) should this Court remand to the courts of first instance with directions to frame decrees in this case, and if so what general directions should the decrees of this Court include and what procedures should the courts of first instance follow in arriving at the specific terms of more detailed decrees? Gebhart v. Belton , 345 U.S. 972, 972–973 (1953).
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had been Attorney General and Governor of the State of Califor- nia, but not a judge. He had no legal—no judicial—training at all. That was Earl Warren, who now became the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Warren was anxious to bring Brown to some kind of resolu- tion, and so the case was to be reargued. This is when I entered and tried to do something, along with a large number of nonlegal researchers. From students from Yale to Alfred Kelly of Wayne State University to Herbert Gutman to Kenneth Clark, the psy- chologist, to John Davis, the political scientist at City College. And so forth. We were all to work on these questions and try to provide the answers for them.
DR. ARSENAULT: If you could, please talk about what it was like to work with Thurgood Marshall and maybe also talk about Earl Warren on the unanimity question.
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: All right. So I’m on the job to work for Thurgood Marshall. I started in late August. And despite the fact that I had a full teaching load at Howard University, the chair of the department was gracious enough to arrange my teaching load so that I was free by noon on Wednesdays every week. So I had from Wednesday until Sunday to serve my second master, namely, Thurgood Marshall. And I would leave on the train—no flying in those days. I would leave on the train shortly after noon on Wednesday and get up to New York and be there shortly after dinnertime. Then I would check in at the hotel; we had regular reservations. And I would go around the corner to Thurgood’s office, where there would always be a number of other people. Lawyers were there. Nonlawyers were there. All working—trying to answer these questions. As an aside, I observed something. On one of the trips up to New York I went on a Friday. This was before Pope John XXII had, through the Vatican Council, suspended certain rules with respect to the observance of Friday as a fast day. I knew by that time to go to the dining car at the time it opened, and I was ready to move in and be seated. Well, those of you who can remember back in the days when there were diners, you know that there were four seats at each table. And I would go over and sit at one of those tables. The din-
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ing car would fill up, and people would be standing. No one would come and sit at my table. No one. I didn’t worry about that. If they wanted to fast by standing up, that was their problem. And it interested me that at times they would come in and, well, I didn’t rush to eat. I took my time. And then some people would be eating and then leaving. They would vacate the tables across from me. And then I would hear the conversations that ran something like this on this Friday afternoon. The waiter would come, show the menu, and ask them what they wanted. And I re- member one person said, “Well, I can’t have meat. This is Friday.” This person was fasting. This great Christian was fasting in com- memoration of the crucifixion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. But he couldn’t sit by me. You see, he wasn’t that much of a Christian. He just was observing the fact that he couldn’t eat meat. And I suppose that he couldn’t sit by black meat anyway. Well, that showed me, told me a lot about where we were and how far we had to go. People were that particular about their own lives and were that deep in the most remarkable manifestation of prejudice. But I didn’t worry about it then. I worried about what I had to do when I got to New York. When I’d arrive in New York, either that day or any day, Thurgood Marshall was in his office working. I never saw a man work as hard as he worked. He was always there. I don’t care what time I arrived. When I went the next morning, he was there. And he sometimes, most of the time, ate a snack at his desk and worked in the afternoon, worked into the night. And there were people around him, like Spottswood Robinson,^16 Oliver Hill,^17 Con- stance Motley,^18 and other lawyers. And there we were—the nonlegal research staff in the room—working on papers and pre- paring seminars to conduct for other lawyers.
- Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’ s Struggle for Equality 197, 575–578 (Vintage Books 1975) (noting that Robinson later became a federal judge, and describing his participation in arguing Brown before the Supreme Court).
- Id. at 128 (describing Hill as a leader of the NAACP legal fight in Virginia and his role as the first African-American to serve on the Richmond, Virginia city council).
- Id. at 273, 638, 760 (describing her as having joined the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1945 as a law clerk, passing the bar in 1948, and staying at the LDF for twenty-four years; she was a member of Marshall’s “inner circle,” and later became the first African-American woman to serve as a federal judge).
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deus Stevens^19 on the floor of the House of Representatives. Or they could quote Charles Sumner^20 on the floor of the Senate. And they could improvise— at least improvise—what these members were thinking and saying and doing. And so we had the feeling that, even if we didn’t find the smoking gun, as it were, with re- spect to intent, we gave the lawyers a sense of confidence that made them stand up tall when they got to the arguments in the Supreme Court. And that they would be able to do as well as the opposition, the defendants. Meanwhile, not only were we trying to find information on these subjects, but we were also trying to find out whether or not the opposition was doing any kind of research and studying what we were doing. And we didn’t find that they were doing it. We even had the notion that, if there were papers or maga- zines or volumes in the Archives or in the Library of Congress or in the State Department, that we might just check them out and keep them—just in case the other side might want the same ma- terials. The astounding thing is that we never found that the opposi- tion requested any materials that we knew they would need to discuss these questions of intent or whatever the legislatures and the Congress were thinking and doing and saying about these matters. They never did. And that persuaded us—and this is the thing Marshall would never let us do—to think that they weren’t working the way we were working, and that we could mow them down with information that we had and they didn’t have, and that we had and we were going to try to keep them from getting. But we later realized that they were not interested in that kind of research and effort. That John W. Davis^21 and his team were going to “wing” it, as it were. They were going to make these eloquent statements—he would even shed a few tears in his ar- guments. But he was not going to bother with the kind of research
- Id. at 46–47 (describing Stevens as a founder of the Republican Party and a driv- ing force behind Reconstruction legislation in Congress in 1866).
- Id. at 50 (referring to Sumner as “Thaddeus Stevens’ comrade-in-arms through the early stages of the Reconstruction drive,” and as the director of the legislative fight leading up to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875).
- Id. at 525–529 (describing Davis’s background as a lawyer and statesman, includ- ing service as Solicitor General of the United States, Ambassador to England, and as hav- ing participated in more cases heard by the Supreme Court than any other lawyer in the twentieth century).
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that we were doing. And so it was sort of one-sided in that re- spect. But what is, I think, important here is to recognize the fact that the strategies in this case as well as in succeeding cases would be shaped by—not so much by the law as by the prospect of—being able to extend the law beyond the courtroom and into the community. So that, all along, I think the Court was thinking about the consequences of Brown. And, all along, the legal staff had to think more in terms of the consequences of Brown. As we shaped the case, we were shaping the post- Brown strategies and approaches. And in that sense I think that the Legal Defense Fund was in a position to proceed—to participate in—not only in Brown I^22 but in Brown II^23 and in subsequent years.
DR. ARSENAULT: I wonder if you could tell the story of your reaction when the decision came down on May 17, 1954. Do you remember the specifics of that period?
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Well, we were not able—that is, the nonlegal research staff was not able—to hear the arguments be- fore the Court. We didn’t rate that high. You can imagine the demand for tickets for the people who wanted to hear the arguments. The lawyers, of course, got tickets, and their associates got tickets. But we didn’t rate high enough to get tickets. And so we didn’t get to hear the arguments. They gave us copies of the briefs, and we were pleased, espe- cially if they had a footnote in one of the briefs or some reference that might have indicated that we had contributed something to the writing of the briefs. But we didn’t hear the arguments. When the arguments were made in December of 1953, the lawyers were just told, rest assuredly, that the only thing they could do was to wait until the spring of 1954. Perhaps toward the end of that term of the Supreme Court. And so I suppose we thought perhaps the Court was going to hand down the decision in June. That’s the last week before the Court breaks—before it takes the holiday—from July 1st to Octo- ber 1st. And so we really weren’t ready for the decision. And on the afternoon of May 17, 1954, I was sitting in my office. My wife,
- 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
- 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
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on, that sort of thing, we all guessed. Maybe it would be Felix Frankfurter. He was so technical and so particular, we thought he’s just got to be cranky and he wouldn’t go along. As a graduate student at Harvard, I audited some of Frank- furter’s courses. And when he was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, there were a bunch of us who wanted to see him on his last day lecturing. We were going to be there witnessing history. And, sure enough, we were there when Professor Warren came down and informed him. Frankfurter was sitting in the front row. He was harassing a student who was trying to make a report. He wouldn’t let the stu- dent say two words before he would interrupt him. Frankfurter was short and very feisty and an extraordinary genius. But he was hard on the students. And then when Warren came down—we saw Dr. Warren come in the door in this amphitheater. And he was looking around. He was looking for Frankfurter. We suspected that he was coming with a message that Frankfurter had been confirmed by the United States Senate to be on the Supreme Court. And so we just—we held our breath, really. And finally Warren got down to him and handed him a note. And after that, Frankfurter really didn’t bother that student anymore. He just sat there. And then when the student finished, he got up to make his farewell ad- dress. We were all sitting there listening to his farewell address. That’s a long way of saying that we already knew something about Justice Frankfurter. And we were fairly certain that he was not going to go along. Not that he was in favor of segregation, but he was just that technical, you know. We knew that he was. We didn’t think it would be unanimous. But it was. And I didn’t know anything about the effort, the very careful effort that Chief Justice Warren was making to persuade his col- leagues that the decision had to be unanimous. I would learn that much later. And I think he was right; it had to be unanimous. You couldn’t have a divided court on something so momentous and so delicate and serious. It would be hard enough with a unanimous decision. And to have one that was split would be disastrous. Tragic. And so we just celebrated and were awed by the unanimity of the Court. But we did not know that unanimity would not be
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enough, and that the decision would be attacked before it was fin- ished. And it was attacked every day in every way by such large numbers of people. Not all of them in the South, but most of them in the South, condemning the United States Supreme Court and calling for utter and complete resistance. Those of you who are old enough to remember the late 1950s know how difficult it was to open up even one all white schoolhouse even to one young, black person. And so the decision was a great one, but it was not univer- sally well-received. And that happened on the 17th of May, 1954. And I’m afraid that it continued for decades and decades and dec- ades.
DR. ARSENAULT: I don’t want us to end before you talk for just a minute or two about the relationship between Brown I , the deci- sion of May 17, 1954, and what we sometimes call Brown II , the implementation decision which came more than a year later on May 31, 1955. Can you recall your sense of things? Did you expect an implementation decision that would define what the first deci- sion really meant and what the timetable would be? And when the decision came down, did you think that perhaps in a year or two there might actually be a desegregation of the public schools in the South, particularly in the Deep South?
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Well, I can only say that I thought that the Supreme Court decision was a Supreme Court decision. It had to be obeyed. I didn’t know— I didn’t know —you could defy the highest court in the land. I didn’t know you could turn your back on the Chief Justice and tell him to go jump off the pole or something. I didn’t know that. I thought you had to obey the law. And that was not merely because I was the son of a lawyer, but also because I had studied constitutional law myself. I thought judge-made law was as good as any other kind of law, and that you wouldn’t dare—you wouldn’t dare defy the United States Supreme Court. I was mistaken. Bitterly mistaken. Tragically mistaken. Completely mistaken. And I stood in awe when the Southern Manifesto was issued that year. That the other expressions of defiance and rejection could be so absolute and so disrespectful. So I didn’t expect there to be this kind of resistance. Not because I thought they were in-
