Sumner Elementary School National Historic Landmark Dedication

On May 17, 1988. 34 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision, Dr. Harry Butowsky, a National Park Service historian, dedicated the Sumner School of Topeka, Kansas as a National Historic Landmark, commemorating the role it played in the Constitutional history of the United States. Linda Brown was denied the right to attend Sumner an all white school, under the 'separate but equal' doctrine of the Supreme Court. Linda's father and other concerned parents sued and the decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was the result. Linda's mother, Leola Brown Montgomery said the designation of the school as a National Historic Landmark was appropriate action to mark the benefits brought about for all children because of the history of the school, About 200 people, as well as, students, faculty and parents were in attendance. The event was reported in the Topeka Capital-Journal for May 18, 1988. Dr. Butowsky's remarks follow. Ed

It pleasure to be here today to speak at the dedication of the Sumner Elementary School as a National Historic Landmark. With this recognition, the Summer School joins a select group of properties that over the past 28 years have been determined by the Secretary of the Interior to be nationally significant in the history of the United States America.

National Historic Landmarks illustrate our history and culture — they are by definition nationally significant properties that rank in importance with any historical unit within the National Park System. However, unlike the national parks, most National Historic Landmarks remain in state, local or private ownership.

In the years since the inception of the National Historic Landmarks program only a limited number of properties have been so designated. They are identified by theme or special studies prepared by professional historians, they are recommended by the National Park System advisory board, and are designated by the Secretary of the Interior under the authority of the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

In the case today, the Summer Elementary School is a property that has been determined, through a process of study and review, to be important in the constitutional history of the United States of America.

Miracle in Philadelphia

The Constitution of the United States was conceived during the summer of 1787, when 55 delegates from the young United States of America met in the State House of Philadelphia, the same building in which some of them had approved the Declaration of Independence 11 years before. Their inspired labors, through four months of debate behind closed doors, produced the U.S. Constitution, a document calculated "To form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Experience and Mistakes

As the delegates left Philadelphia and the ratification process began, Tench Cox, an observer of the proceedings and an early supporter of the Constitution wrote, "There is no spirit of arrogance in the new federal Constitution. When experience has taught us its mistakes, the people whom it preserves, absolutes all powerful, can reform and amend them."

What Tench Cox was telling us was that the constitution as written in 1787 was not a perfect document. The preservation or our liberties was the responsibility of each new generation of Americans through the continual interpretation and if necessary, revision, of the basic document. In the 200 years since 1787, the U.S. constitution has proven to be the most successful blueprint for popular sovereignty in human history. During these years the United States has evolved from a small agricultural nation of some five million people situated on the fringe of the western world to an industrial giant of more than 230 million people that is the center of the western world. In these years the Constitution has changed and evolved to meet new demands and conditions never foreseen by early supporters like Tench Cox.

The Evolution of the Constitution

The evolution of Constitutional doctrine, as foreseen by Tench Cox in 1787, took place many times in American history. The most significant changes occurred in the years after the Civil War, when reform minded Americans sought to insure that the newly freed slaves enjoyed the same measure of equality and opportunity that white Americans enjoyed. Through its control of the Congress, the Republican Party initiated programs designed to accomplish these ends. In 1865 and 1866, congress funded the Freedman's Bureau to feed, cloth, and protect the ex-slaves and passed civil rights acts to outlaw varied forms of discrimination. In addition, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) to outlaw slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) to extend federal citizenship to blacks, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to protect the black man's right to vote. Congress backed up these efforts with the passage of a more comprehensive Civil Rights Act in 1875.

Laws Change; People's Attitudes Don't

However, while it was relatively easy to pass civil rights laws and to even change the Constitution, it was more difficult to change the hearts and minds of white Americans toward their newly enfranchised black neighbors. As the years went by, the tide of events began to run against the effort to secure full civil equality for the ex-slaves. In state after state in the South, the conservative white leadership of the Democratic Party retained control of the political machinery, and through a process combining repressive legislation and intimidation, eliminated black participation in the political process and instituted a policy of racial segregation. After 1877, support for civil rights from the congressional and executive branches of government waned and black Americans turned to the courts to fight for and secure their civil rights.

Privileges and Immunities

The key to this effort rested squarely on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, stated, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The author of this clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Representative John Bingham of Ohio, fully intended that the Bill of Rights should limit the power of the individual states as well as that of the federal government. Only the federal government, acting under the authority of the Fourteenth Amendment and the various civil rights acts, could guarantee the full civil and political equality of the ex-slaves. From time to time, before the Civil War, the states had denied the equal protection of the laws to citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment, Bingham believed, changed all that and nationalized civil rights, but it did so in a way that respected the traditional Federal - state relationship. Although the states would continue to be the principal regulators of personal liberty and civil rights, they would now do so under the supervision of the federal government.

The Narrowing of the Constitution

In the late nineteenth century, the Supreme Court began to narrowly interpret the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts. The combined impact of the Court's decision in these cases was devastating for the black Americans. Having been abandoned by the Legislative and Executive branches of the Federal Government, black Americans found no help in the Courts. For all practical purposes the question of civil rights was dropped from the national agenda in 1896, with the case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme court found no constitutional objection to a Louisiana law requiring separate railway coaches for whites and blacks, provided that blacks were furnished accommodations equal to whites. Formal racial classification, which the court had earlier condemned, was thus legitimized.

Exparte Virginia

However, while the courts could narrowly define the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, they could not eliminate it or deny its validity. Years before the Plessy decision in 1896, the Supreme Court recognized this fact in another case, Ex parte Virginia. The case of Exparte Virginia represented one of the few victories for blacks in the federal courts in the generation after 1865, because the issue involved the clear attempt by a state official, in Virginia, to deny citizens within his jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. In this specific instance, a judge had tried to prevent the black citizens of his community from serving on grand juries—a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The resolution of this case before the Supreme Court clearly illustrated the fact that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, after all, had resulted in the extension of national power behind the personal liberty and civil rights of Americans. While the states retained their primary responsibility and power to regulate civil rights they were no longer autonomous. Ex parte Virginia showed that the federal government now had a qualified but potentially effective power to protect the rights of American citizens. Ex parte Virginia represented the promise of the future.

The achievement of Civil Rights for black Americans in the twentieth century thus did not require a change in the Constitution as much as the fulfillment of the original intention of the framers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Separate but Equal

At the center of the struggle for equal civil rights was the case of Plessy v Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal in the use of public transportation facilities. While the Plessy decision itself did not involve the issue of schools, the principle carried over. The segregation of whites and blacks was valid, if the facilities were equal, since it is the "equal" protection of the laws that is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

At first, the Supreme Court was extremely lenient in construing what this "equality" required when it held in Cummings v. County Board of Education (1899) that there was no denial of "equal" protection of the laws in the failure of a southern county to provide a high school for sixty black children, although it maintained a high school for white children. The court was satisfied with the county's defense that it could not afford to build a high school for black children. In other cases dealing with Negro segregation reached the Supreme court after Plessy, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was followed and never reexamined.

However, after 1914, the court, applying ever more rigid standards of equality, began to find that black plaintiffs were being denied equality of treatment. In case after case that came before the Supreme Court the "separate but equal" standard declared in Plessy was applied in an even more stringent manner.

By the fall of 1952 the Supreme court had on its docket cases from four states, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and from the District of Columbia, challenging the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools. in all of these cases the facts showed that both the black and white schools were as equal with respect to buildings, salaries, teachers and other tangible factors as could be expected. The issue before the Court was the constitutionality of segregation per se — the question whether the doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson should be affirmed or reversed.

Linda Brown

On May 17, 1954, just 34 years ago today, the Court issued its historic decision in which concluded that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." After sixty years, Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned.

This decision, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, written by Justice Earl Warren, was momentous. The social and ideological impact of the case can not be overestimated. The decision was unanimous with only a single opinion of the Court. The issue of the legal separation of the races was settled. Segregation was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and was unconstitutional.

By denying Linda Brown the right to enroll in the Sumner Elementary School, the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, started the chain of events that led to the Supreme Court and the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Sumner Elementary School symbolizes both the harsh reality of discrimination permitted by the Plessy decision in 1896, and the promise of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution that was realized after 1954.

Tench Cox was Right

The Sumner Elementary School, as the symbol for the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka also stands as a monument to the generations of Americans who refused to accept the denial of basic civil rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Tench Cox, was correct in his observations of the Constitution in 1787. It is the responsibility of each new generation of Americans to interpret and if necessary to amend the Constitution to see that the basic civil liberties guaranteed to all Americans are safeguarded and preserved.

So today, as we dedicate the Sumner Elementary School as a National Historic Landmark, let us keep in mind the constitutional principles for which it stands and remember the greatness of our Constitution and the need to be ever vigilant in the preservation of our liberties.

... Harry Butowsky ...

© Copyright 1989
Institute for domestic Tranquility