Brown and Backlash Notes

The Supreme Court anticipated a negative reaction to the Brown decision.
In Brown II, the justices aimed to avoid undermining Southern moderates and favored a gradualist approach.
They trusted in the influence of moderates, as had previous presidents.
Hugo Black cautioned about potential violence in the South, predicting it would eliminate moderate politicians like Lister Hill and John Sparkman.
Felix Frankfurter advocated for implementation decrees that would encourage moderate leadership, particularly Southern lawyers he had trained.
Former South Carolina governor Jimmy Byrnes supported this viewpoint.
Law clerks considered warnings from moderate Southern newspapermen like Harry Ashmore and Hodding Carter, which led them to believe gradualism was the best approach.

The hopes for peaceful compliance were dashed, leading to mob violence and school closures.
Some historians attribute the failure to the Brown decision itself.
There is debate over whether desegregated schools improved education, if harm to Black colleges was offset by gains, and whether desegregation should take priority over quality education.

Historians argue that the Brown decision wasn't as crucial as long-term social and economic shifts, such as Southern prosperity, urbanization, and industrialization.
The decision resulted in minimal school desegregation; legislative and executive actions in the 1960s had a greater impact.
The decision negatively impacted the South by halting improvements in Jim Crow practices from the late 1940s to early 1950s.
The white backlash damaged liberal and racially moderate politicians.
Activists challenging white supremacy by targeting schools was seen as a strategic error.
Addressing voting rights or economic goals of the civil rights movement might have been less provocative.
The Brown decision indirectly led to federal intervention in the 1960s, ending Jim Crow.

Before Brown, racial moderates were thought to generally control Southern politics.
Liberal politicians, referred to as "TVA liberals," were being elected who believed in federal investment in infrastructure and mass purchasing power.
They thought economic progress would reduce racial tensions and favored gradualism on racial issues, avoiding direct challenges to segregation.
Caution was partly to avoid alienating lower-income white supporters, and partly ideological, struggling to imagine a non-segregated society, with genuine faith in economic progress.

Southern states were battlegrounds between conservatives and moderates; conservatives often prevailed.
Postwar Southern liberal politicians faced obstacles.
Veterans supported segregationist candidates like Strom Thurmond and Herman Talmadge.
Groups like the Mississippi Women for Constitutional Government opposed interracial cooperation.
White workers defended the "wages of whiteness."
The disorganized nature of Southern politics hindered liberals.
Politicians like Lister Hill, John Sparkman, and Jim Folsom couldn't prevent Alabama's Dixiecrat shift or the Boswell amendment.
Kerr Scott and Earl Long couldn't ensure racially moderate successors.
Sid McMath lost his bid for a third term in Arkansas in 1952.

Klarman posited that economic modernization would inevitably lead to racial change.
Some Southern businessmen accepted the need for racial change to attract investment.
In Birmingham, business leaders ousted Bull Connor.
They revised ordinances against interracial sports before Brown, but after Brown, Connor was reelected and sports segregation was retained via referendum.
In Baton Rouge before Brown, authorities addressed an African American bus boycott by reinstating first-come, first-served seating within segregation.
Post-Brown, Montgomery rejected similar demands and faced a year-long boycott.
The Southern Regional Council documented appointments of African American officials due to black voting in cities like Atlanta and Raleigh.
African Americans served on juries, were admitted to graduate schools, and were elected to city councils.

Segregation's core was largely untouched despite some changes.
Limited integration occurred in places like a library in Austin, Catholic schools in St. Louis, and a Miami Beach hospital.
Journalists like Ralph McGill overstated the crumbling of segregation to reassure Northern audiences.
Evidence of Southern businessmen accepting desegregation largely emerged in the 1960s.
Many Southern businessmen believed economic growth was compatible with traditional race relations.
Events like Little Rock and the assault on Freedom Riders raised awareness of the economic costs of segregation.
In South Carolina, textile leaders began to worry in 1962, and the University of Mississippi confrontation convinced the state to cease resistance.

The Southern Regional Council tracked the hiring of black policemen and firemen but also noted the decline of biracial committees formed after the war.
Robert Corley highlighted the breakdown of interracial dialogue in Birmingham.
Connor's downfall in Birmingham was due to corruption, not racial change.
While businessmen sanctioned interracial sports in 1954, the ban had only been introduced in 1951.

In Baton Rouge, the 1953 compromise delayed bus desegregation until 1962.
African Americans were admitted to Louisiana State University graduate schools, but undergraduate desegregation didn't occur until 1964.
Parks and golf courses remained segregated.
African Americans funded their swimming pool despite paying taxes that supported white pools.
The boycott settlement intensified white authorities' determination to resist further concessions.

In New Orleans, Tulane University trustees opposed desegregation, despite the president and faculty's wishes and the risk of losing accreditation and foundation grants.

Even in cities like Greensboro, North Carolina, racial progress in employment and public facilities was limited.
In Little Rock, public libraries and the zoo were desegregated quietly, but black parks were built in undesirable locations.
Whitney Young's