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ESSAY
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE : DELINQUENCY, DESEGREGATION,
AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF BROWN
Anders Walker *
In 1955, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a controversial film about juvenile delinquency entitled Blackboard Jungle. Georgia Governor Ernest
Vandiver subsequently used the film as a metaphor for what would happen
to southern schools were Brown v. Board of Education enforced, marking
the beginnings of a much larger campaign to articulate southern resistance
to integration in racially neutral, cultural terms. Taking Blackboard
Jungle as a starting point, this Essay recounts the intersection between discourses of delinquency and desegregation at mid-century, showing how both
civil rights groups and segregationists alike drew from popular culture and
developmental psychology to advance their constitutional agendas.
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I. WILD ONES: DISCOURSES OF DELINQUENCY AT
MID-CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
II. THE NAACP RESPONSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
III. THE EXTREMIST RESPONSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IV. THE MODERATE RESPONSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V. DEMONSTRATORS AND DELINQUENTS IN DANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . .
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1911
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INTRODUCTION
In 1955, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a controversial film about
juvenile delinquency entitled Blackboard Jungle.1 Set in an integrated
* Assistant Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law, Ph.D. Yale University
2003; J.D./M.A. Duke University 1998; B.A. Wesleyan University 1994. I would like to
thank Tomiko Brown-Nagin and the participants of 50 Years After the Sit-Ins: Reflecting
on the Role of Protest in Social Movements and Law Reform Conference at the University
of Virginia (Jan. 2830, 2010). I would also like to thank Sarah Barringer Gordon, Ariela
Gross, Carol Rose, Naomi Mezey, Ariela Dubler, and the participants of the 2009 Law &
Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop at the Georgetown Law Center for comments and
criticism. Finally, credit goes to James W. Ely, Jr. for sharing his work on the Danville
demonstrations of 1963, as well as participants in the Washington University in St. Louis
School of Laws Regional Junior Faculty Colloquium and the Saint Louis University School
of Law workshop series, particularly Joel Goldstein, Eric Miller, Matt Bodie, Sam Jordan,
and Michael Korybut. Twanna Hill, Alex Shively, Annemarie Schreiber, Edward Reilly, and
Scott Yackey provided helpful research assistance.
1. Blackboard Jungle (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1955); see also Dan Leopard, Blackboard
Jungle: The Ethnographic Narratives of Education on Film, Cinema J., Summer 2007, at
24, 24 (arguing Blackboard Jungle serves as conceptual template for examination of
otherness and authenticity as expressed through the narrative tropes of the arrival scene);
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slum high school, the picture told the story of Jack Dadier, a returning
World War II veteran assigned the task of transforming a band of unruly,
knife-wielding teenagers into model students.2 Though Dadier succeeds
with the help of a young Sidney Poitier, Georgia Governor Ernest
Vandiver used the movie as a negative symbol of what integrated schools
would become in a speech to state legislators in 1960, arguing that if
schools were forced to integrate as required under Brown, an environment of switchblade knives, marijuana, stabbings, rapes, violence and
blackboard jungles would emerge across the South.3 Interested in proving this to be true, United States Representative and future Mississippi
Governor John Bell Williams organized a formal inquiry into delinquency
in desegregated schools in Washington, D.C., concluding that integration
heightened racial tension and accelerated juvenile crime.4
Though historians have documented the moral panic surrounding
juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, few have chosen to look at intersections between discourses of delinquency and desegregation at midcentury.5 Yet, such intersections cast new light on at least three imporBeth McCoy, Manager, Buddy, Delinquent: Blackboard Jungles Desegregating Triangle,
Cinema J., Fall 1998, at 25, 26 (Blackboard Jungle performed a representational sleight of
hand that enabled a particular vision of integration to emerge.).
2. Blackboard Jungle (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1955). Blackboard Jungle was the first
film to include rock and roll in its soundtrack. James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage:
Americas Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s, at 183 (1986).
3. Bruce Galphin, Vandiver Vows to Stop Atlanta Surrender as 2,000 Cheer at Rally,
Atlanta Const., Feb. 9, 1960, at 11.
4. Subcomm. to Investigate Pub. Sch. Standards and Conditions, and Juvenile
Delinquency in the Dist. of Columbia, H. Comm. on the Dist. of Columbia, 84th Cong.,
Rep. on the Investigation of Public School Conditions 4446 (Comm. Print 1957)
[hereinafter Public School Conditions Report].
5. For representative works on delinquency, see generally Gilbert, supra note 2
(exploring debates over relationship between rise of mass media and juvenile delinquency
in 1950s); Grace Palladino, Teenagers: An American History (1996) (describing rise of
teenagers as a discrete societal entity and adults increasingly acute fears over delinquency
beginning in 1940s); Harrison Salisbury, The Shook-up Generation (1958) (exploring
causes and consequences of rise of violent juvenile activity in mid-twentieth century).
Scholars who mention intersections between delinquency and desegregation in passing
include Susan K. Cahn, Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age 301 (2007)
(arguing desegregation actually discouraged teenagers from breaking the social
conventions that structured their world), Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the
1950s, at 18384 (2000) (discussing ways integration triggered general fear over collapsing
morals of youth), and Allison Graham, Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and
Race During the Civil Rights Struggle 9495 (2001) (discussing resistance to integration
and its effect on inadequate education and antisocial tendencies). Perhaps the foremost
authority on massive resistance to integration, Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive
Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (1969), makes no mention of
delinquency. Nor does Michael J. Klarman discuss delinquency in his magisterial From Jim
Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (2004).
Perhaps most remarkably, Rebecca de Schweinitz makes no mention of activists being
prosecuted as delinquents, even though she focuses on the pivotal role that minors played
in civil rights protests. See Rebecca de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World: Young
People and Americas Long Struggle for Racial Equality 24248 (2009) (One of the most
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tant aspects of the constitutional history of the period. One, they help
show why Thurgood Marshall decided to focus on arguably dubious sociological arguments about child psychology in Brown v. Board of Education.6
Two, they suggest that popular culture became bound up in the constitutional politics of the time, as both civil rights activists and segregationists
harnessed popular outrage and fear over delinquent youth.7 Three, intersections between delinquency and desegregation indicate that Brown
not only engendered resistance, but also spurred unanticipated transformations in state law, contributing to a more comprehensiveand intrusivejuvenile justice system.8
To illustrate, as fears of delinquency spiked after Brown, segregationists split into two camps. Extremists used delinquency to argue that the
Supreme Court should be met with massive resistance.9 Moderates, by
contrast, sponsored state legislation instituting psychiatric programs, detention centers, and home welfare services to deal with the delinquency
threat.10 Such moderates, like Virginias Kathryn Stone, treated Brown
not as an affront so much as an opportunity, a catalyst for state formation,
independent of civil rights.11 Recovering this aspect of Brown is imporremarkable stories about the movement . . . is that regardless of adult activity and in spite
of adult inactivity, young people identified with and participated in the movement
throughout the South.).
6. Few constitutional scholars questioned the Courts citation to sociological evidence
more forthrightly than Herbert Wechsler. See Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral
Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 3234 (1959) (querying whether
Brown required courts to determine harm caused by school segregation in individual
school districts); see also Jack M. Balkin, Rewriting Brown: A Guide to the Opinions, in
What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said 44, 52 (Jack M. Balkin et al. eds., 2001)
(noting citation to sociological evidence implicitly suggested that if the teachings of
modern psychology were different, so would be the legal outcome). For a discussion of
problems with the evidence cited in Brown, see Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt & Pity:
Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 18801996, at 12324 (1997)
(noting flaws in studies and difficult logical leap required to assert causal link between
segregation and self-hatred).
7. To date, studies of popular culture in the 1950s fail to recognize any constitutional
link between desegregation and popular culture. See generally Daniel, supra note 5
(focusing on ways rock and roll threatened segregation); Robert Gordon, It Came From
Memphis (1995) (describing development of music in Tennessee and its impact on racial
divide); Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock n Roll Music (4th ed.
1997) (exploring rise of musicians such as Elvis in context of racially segregated society).
8. Neither Numan V. Bartley nor Michael J. Klarman, the foremost authorities on the
southern response to Brown, mention antidelinquency measures. See Bartley, supra note
5, at 6781 (describing Southern political efforts to counteract Brown but failing to note
antidelinquency measures); Klarman, supra note 5, at 34464 (exploring Browns direct
and indirect effects but failing to note effect of spurring antidelinquency laws).
9. See infra Part III (describing extremists reaction to use of statistics and evidence in
Brown and subsequent manipulation of statistics by extremists to encourage massive
resistance).
10. See infra Part IV (explaining moderates belief that delinquency was result of
social and cultural factors, best addressed by laws and supportive programs).
11. See infra Part IV (detailing Stones approach to use fear of integration to gain
support for state-sponsored youth projects).
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tant not simply because it has gone unrecognized, but because it provides
us with a new paradigm for understanding the ruling and, perhaps, the
workings of American federalism itself. Rather than simply a civil rights
milestone or hollow hope, as Gerald Rosenberg has bemoaned, Brown
reemerges in the delinquency context as a catalyst for institutional
change unrelated to education, a modernizing trigger that provides clues
about the way American federalism encourages state transformation.12
Indeed, Virginias expansion of reform schools due to fears generated by
Brown indicates that the origins of modern day problems like the schoolto-prison pipeline may lie in the Courts civil rights rulings half a century
ago.
To explain how this is so, this Essay will proceed in five parts. Part I
recounts the moral panic over delinquency in the 1950s, describing how
it manifested itself in popular culture and social science. Part II discusses
the manner in which the NAACP sought to harness popular concerns
over delinquency in its campaign against Jim Crow, revealing a realm of
cultural politics not previously associated with Brown. Part III shows how
southern extremists countered the NAACP by using cultural portrayals
and scientific studies of delinquency as a modality for combating the
moral claims of civil rights groups. Part IV discusses the legislative impact
that the delinquency scare had on the South, focusing on efforts by
moderates to expand and improve state services to children. Part V demonstrates how such responses were used to disrupt the student sit-ins of
1960, showing how well-intentioned measures found themselves in the
service of reactionary trends, a lost chapter in the history of civil rights.
I. WILD ONES: DISCOURSES
OF
DELINQUENCY
AT
MID-CENTURY
Concerns over juvenile delinquency and crime did not begin in the
1950s. As early as the 1920s, parents worried about Americas flaming
youth being corrupted by jazz, liberal attitudes toward sex, and illegal
alcohol.13 While such fears continued into the 1940s, a constellation of
forces aligned to elevate concerns over delinquency in the 1950s.14 The
12. For discussion of Brown as a civil rights milestone, see Jack Greenberg, Crusaders
in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution
197 (1994) (In what may well have been the most important Supreme Court decision of
the century, maybe ever, we won unanimously.). For Brown as a hollow hope, see Gerald
Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? 71 (1993) (In
terms of judicial effects, then, Brown and its progeny stand for the proposition that courts
are impotent to produce significant social reform.).
13. See Gilbert, supra note 2, at 3 (discussing concerns during 1920s that youth would
be corrupted by popular culture). Fears of juvenile delinquency date even further back,
into the early nineteenth century. See, e.g., Thomas J. Bernard, The Cycle of Juvenile
Justice 5880 (1992) (describing establishment of first juvenile institution in New York in
1825).
14. See Gilbert, supra note 2, at 1314 (describing moral panic over juvenile
delinquency in 1950s).
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ers to take over movie theaters, dancing in the aisles to rock and roll
soundtracks by artists like Bill Haley and Chuck Berry.35 The National
Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Girl Scouts, and the Daughters of
the American Revolution all denounced Blackboard Jungle. Clare Booth
Luce, Americas ambassador to Italy, became so afraid that Blackboard Jungle might compromise Americas Cold War image that she had it withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival in 1956.36
As Americans recoiled from cinematic portrayals of wild ones and
blackboard jungles, many struggled to understand the causes of youth
revolt.37 To take just a few examples, in 1954, Faber and Faber published
Lord of the Flies, a disturbing novel set on a remote island where a
stranded cohort of English school boys abandon middle class propriety
and devolve into spear-wielding savages.38 Though written by British author William Golding, the book became a bestseller in the United States,
stirring questions about the socialization and psychological development
of youth.39 Two years after the publication of Flies, for example, sociologist Benjamin Fine published 1,000,000 Delinquents, a book predicting a
dramatic spike in juvenile crime in the United States by the end of the
decade.40 That same year, Time magazine dedicated a special issue to the
problem, provocatively entitling it Teenagers on the Rampage.41 In 1957,
Cosmopolitan released an entire issue dedicated to adolescence replete
with articles like Are You Afraid of Your Teenager?.42
35. For a description of Blackboard Jungle and its impact on audiences around the
country, see id. at 18389 and Palladino, supra note 5, at 12627, 160.
36. These reactions are all documented by James Gilbert. Gilbert, supra note 2, at
185.
37. See, e.g., Sheldon & Eleanor Glueck, Delinquents in the Making: Paths to
Prevention 137, 16987 (1952) (Malformation of characterthat human disorder most
difficult to understand and remedyhas all too often been accounted for by simplistic
explanations or professional dogmas or propagandistic enthusiasms.); Negley K. Teeters
& John Otto Reinemann, The Challenge of Delinquency: Causation, Treatment, and
Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency 7 (Herbert Blumer ed., 1950) ([M]any suggestions
[of theories of delinquency causation] are offered that have some merit but that do not
answer the question of delinquency with any degree of finality.).
38. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954).
39. See William Du Bois, Books of the Times, N.Y. Times, Oct. 21, 1955, at 25 (Man,
[Golding] reminds us, is still an animal, though he has long since left the tree tops;
civilization is really less than skin deep; in childhood and youth higher authority is all that
keeps the savage in bounds.); James Stern, English Schoolboys in the Jungle, N.Y. Times,
Oct. 23, 1955, at BR38 (describing book as an allegory on human society today and a
frightening parody on mans return (in a few weeks) to that state of darkness from which
it took him thousands of years to emerge).
40. Benjamin Fine, 1,000,000 Delinquents (1956).
41. See Arlene Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of
Uncertainty 207 (1991) (Teenagers on the Rampage was the title of a Time magazine
report on violence in the nations high schools.).
42. Sumner Ahlbum, Are You Afraid of Your Teenager?, Cosmopolitan, Nov. 1957, at
40, 4045.
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illustrated serial known as the crime comic.57 Crime comics, with titles
like Tales from the Crypt, Reform School Girl, and Crime Detective presented
children with sexually charged accounts of murder, rape, and torture.58
In 1954, they constituted a major portion of the 60 million copies per
month comic book market, leading Wertham to publish a book on the
subject entitled Seduction of the Innocent.59 Wertham wrote:
Even more than crime, juvenile delinquency reflects the social
values current in a society. Both adults and children absorb
these social values in their daily lives, at home, in school, at
work, and also in all the communications imparted as entertainment, instruction or propaganda through the mass media, from
the printed word to television.60
In part due to its emphasis on mass conditioning, Seduction of the
Innocent received widespread acclaim and transformed Wertham into a
popular authority not only on comic books, but on the social psychiatry
of children in general.61 For a nation seized by concern over errant
youth, Wertham gave structure to popular fears by rooting delinquency
not in nebulous forces, but in distinct, controllable causes like print media.62 As he summarized in Seduction: You cannot understand or remedy a social phenomenon like delinquency by redefining it simply as an
individual emotional disorder. It is on the basis of such an approach,
however, that important mass influences on the childs mind have for
years been completely overlooked.63
Because of his interest in the effect that mass influences had on
childrens minds, Wertham attracted the attention of civil rights advocates. Indeed, as the next section will show, Werthams work garnered
him an invitation from NAACP lawyer Jack Greenberg, who hoped that
he might be able to testify in the Delaware portion of Brown v. Board
of Education. The legal system known as Jim Crow, believed Greenberg,
had a much more negative effect on African American children than
southern whites acknowledged, or even realized. To prove this in court,
however, required scientific testimony from experts who understood how
children could be negatively impacted by social phenomena, whether
they be comic books or Jim Crow laws, at a mass level.
57. See, e.g., Beaty, supra note 53, at 125 (noting during 1951 public meeting held to
discuss controlling comic books in New York, Wertham called for public health law to
restrict sale of crime comics to teens over age sixteen).
58. See, e.g., id. at 164 (describing Werthams attack on comic censor, noting censor
himself was a former crime comics publisher, having released titles such as Tales of Horror
that emphasized salaciously, suggestively drawn girls).
59. Wertham, supra note 49, at 14950.
60. Id. at 149.
61. For a description of the popularity and influence of Werthams work, see Gilbert,
supra note 2, at 10304.
62. Id. at 103.
63. Wertham, supra note 49, at 15657.
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of the evening included top stars of the stage and screen, such as
Sammy Davis, Jr., Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitierthe very same actor who had starred in Blackboard Jungle.101
Honorees included Bobby Caine, a young activist who helped protect black high school students from white mobs in Clinton, Tennessee;
Fred Moore, a student expelled from South Carolina State College for
participating in a counter-boycott against the White Citizens Councils;
and Ernest McEwen, expelled from Mississippis Alcorn College for organizing a student protest against a prosegregationist member of the
faculty.102 Open to members of the NAACPs Youth and College
Divisions from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Virginia,
and other states, the rally merged political activism with popular culture,
employing celebrities like Belafonte, Poitier, and Davis to underscore the
heroism of direct action protest in the South.103
Civil rights historians generally do not emphasize that the NAACP
embraced popular culture to raise consciousness over civil rights in the
late 1950s.104 While some scholars do mention the NAACPs attempts to
publicize racial violence, particularly in Mississippi, they tend not to link
those efforts to the media-centric strategies that would come to character-
101. Letter from Herbert L. Wright, NAACP Youth Secy, to Youth Councils and Coll.
Chapters in Region II and Region VII (May 15, 1957), in NAACP Papers, supra note 89, at
Box III E51. For reference to the four hosts, see Coll. & Youth Div. of the NAACP, Public
Service Spot Announcement (May 26, 1957), in NAACP Papers, supra note 89, at Box III
E51.
102. Press Release, NAACP, supra note 100. For more on the individual freedom
fighters honored, see Memorandum from Herbert L. Wright to Mr. Moon, Re: Youth
Freedom Fighters Rally (May 29, 1957), in NAACP Papers, supra note 89, at Box III E51.
103. See Press Release, NAACP, supra note 100 (The idea is to salute young leaders
who have made an outstanding contribution to the fight for freedom in the South.
(quoting Herbert L. Wright)).
104. Legal historians tend to focus almost exclusively on the litigation aspect of the
NAACPs struggle against Jim Crow. See, e.g., Klarman, supra note 5, at 7 (analyzing
litigation as a distinct method of social protest and evaluating its advantages and
disadvantages); Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the
Supreme Court, 19361961, at 619 (1994) (discussing Marshalls experience as lawyer
with NAACP). Civil rights historians tend to focus on the organizing aspect of the
movement, not cultural manipulation. See, e.g., Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC
and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, at 1930 (1995) (discussing initial formation of
SNCC); Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. 2 (1987) (Movement, organization,
or church, SCLC was effective. Its accounts may have been slipshod and its internal
structure chaotic, but SCLC excelled in the area that mattered most in the early 1960s: the
theory and practice of nonviolent direct action.); Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil
Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change 12028 (1984) (discussing
relationships and shared membership between NAACP and SCLC); Charles M. Payne, Ive
Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom
Struggle 23664 (1995) (discussing grassroots movements and overlooked leaders of
those movements).
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ize the movements direct action phase in the 1960s.105 Though that
phase has since gone down in history as a partial reaction to the bureaucratic approach of the NAACP, it is perhaps more accurate to view the
movements strategies in the 1960s as an intensification of the NAACPs
cultural initiatives of the 1950s.106 Long criticized for being bureaucratic
and litigation-centric, in other words, the NAACP actually adopted a culturally focused, mass defense oriented approach to legal change much
earlier, a point documented by legal historian Kenneth W. Mack.107
III. THE EXTREMIST RESPONSE
Much of the NAACPs work on the cultural front escaped white segregationistsexcept its foray into social science. Upon reading Earl
Warrens reference to social science in footnote eleven of Brown, many
white southerners were shocked.108 I submit that white children also
have rights, proclaimed Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland only
105. Although Taylor Branch described attempts by the NAACP to influence mass
culture in the early years of the civil rights movement, he did not focus on the NAACPs
efforts to influence media during the 1960s nor did he draw direct links between efforts to
influence the media in the 1950s and efforts in the 1960s. See Taylor Branch, Parting the
Waters: America in the King Years 195463, at 206, 22526 (1988) [hereinafter Branch,
Waters] (focusing discussion of mass communication use on that of Martin Luther King,
Jr.). By contrast, David J. Garrow does emphasize the movements interest in manipulating
mass media, but begins his analysis with Birmingham in 1963, not Herbert Wright and Roy
Wilkins in the 1950s. See David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 264 (1986) (quoting Andrew Young as
stating we were constantly using the mass media to try to get across to the nation what our
message was and Wyatt Walker as stating [t]here never was any more skillful
manipulation of the news media than there was in Birmingham); David J. Garrow, Protest
at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, at 16178 (1978)
(discussing congressional comments references to and reliance on approximately six
dozen pieces of information from newspapers, television, photos, and radio in Selma
campaign).
106. Historians who stress the rift between the NAACP and younger organizations like
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) include Carson, supra note 104, at 137, Fairclough,
supra note 104, at 6465, and Payne, supra note 104, at 37578.
107. See Kenneth W. Mack, Law and Mass Politics in the Making of the Civil Rights
Lawyer, 19311941, 93 J. Am. Hist. 37, 39 (2006) (describing mass defense strategy that
became controversial during Depression); Kenneth W. Mack, Rethinking Civil Rights
Lawyering in the Era Before Brown, 115 Yale L.J. 256, 352 (2005) (arguing pre-Brown,
lawyers engaged in voluntarist strand of race uplift, emphasizing everyday, practiceoriented work rather than transformative litigation).
108. Daryl Scott suggests that southern whites were, to some extent, right in believing
that the social science evidence in Brown was politically motivated. He shows, for example,
how many of the social psychologists enlisted by the NAACP, and indeed much of the field
at the time, were driven by left-wing politics. Scott observes:
If the case had to be based on the social science literature alone, the
shortcomings would probably have forced the NAACP to reject the intangible
strategy. Yet social science existed not simply as a body of literature but also as a
socially identifiable community whose members were part of the larger political
culture. Much to the good fortune of the integrationists and to the detriment of
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weeks after Brown was handed down.109 [T]ensions and frictions generally found in an interracial school, continued Eastland, certainly will
have a bad effect on a white child, and in my judgment will interfere with
the white childs ability to learn.110 South Carolina journalist William D.
Workman echoed Eastlands concerns in a book defending Jim Crow:
[T]he integrationists, who cry for racial admixture in the cause
of bolstering the personality development of a Negro minority
do not hesitate to compel the mingling of a white minority with
a black majority without any consideration of the inevitable psychological impact upon the personalities of the white children.
Indeed, there has been monumental indifference on the part of
the race-mixers concerning the likelihood of adverse psychological effects upon white children.111
Southern leaders became particularly enraged at the Courts use of
developmental psychology in overturning a legal system that had been in
place for half a century.112 Georgia Attorney General Eugene Cook,
speaking at a segregationist rally of 8,000 people in New Orleans in 1956,
lamented the fact that, in his view, the justices based their decision not
upon any premise or tenet of law, but solely upon sociological and psychological theories.113 South Carolina Senator Olin D. Johnston reiterated this sentiment. When I became a United States Senator, declared
Johnston, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the
United States, but this did not include supporting sociological pronouncements of a Supreme Court that replaced law with arbitrary judicial dictatorship.114
the segregationists, postwar social science was virtually a one-party state in favor of
the racial liberals goal of desegregation.
Scott, supra note 6, at 125.
109. 100 Cong. Rec. 11,523 (1954) (statement of Sen. Eastland).
110. Id.
111. William D. Workman, Jr., The Case for the South 241 (1960).
112. Even northern sources commented on the Courts reliance on social psychology.
Relying more on the social scientists than on legal precedentsa procedure often in
controversy in the past, noted a reporter from the New York Times, the court insisted on
equality of the mind and heart rather than on equal school facilities. James Reston, A
Sociological Decision: Court Founded Its Segregation Ruling on Hearts and Minds Rather
than Laws, N.Y. Times, May 18, 1954, at 14-L. The courts opinion read more like an
expert paper on sociology than a Supreme Court opinion, continued Reston. [I]t
sustained the argument of experts in education, sociology, psychology, psychiatry and
anthropology. Id.
113. 53 NAACP Heads Reds, Says Cook: Georgia Attorney General Talks at N.O.
Rally, Times-Picayune (New Orleans), Mar. 21, 1956, at 3.
114. Centralization Hit by SC Solons: Lawmakers Issue Warnings in Both Senate,
House, The State (Columbia, SC), Mar. 2, 1956, at 1-D. Even moderate Florida protested.
According to the Florida legislature, the Supreme Court:
[C]ited as authority for the assumed and asserted facts the unsworn writings of
men, one of whom was the hireling of an active participant in the litigation.
Others were affiliated with organizations declared by the attorney general of the
United States to be subversive, and one of whom, in the same writing which the
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Outrage at the Courts reliance on social psychiatry joined other objections, among them that the Court had overstepped its bounds and
transgressed states rights.115 The end result of this anger was nothing
less than a region-wide political backlash that culminated in a political
program of massive resistance.116 Coined by Virginia Senator Harry
Flood Byrd, massive resistance referred to a policy of total defiance of the
Court.117 Its centerpiece was interposition, a theory recovered by
Virginian James Jackson Kilpatrick from the annals of American constitutional history, first articulated by James Madison and John C. Calhoun,
declaring that states possessed the right to nullify interpretations of the
Constitution handed down by the Supreme Court.118 Much as Georgia
had ignored the Supreme Courts ruling in favor of Cherokee Indians in
Worcester v. Georgia 119 in 1832, so too did Kilpatrick believe that southern
states could simply ignore Brown, declaring such a rejection an intrinsic
part of their sovereignty.120
While outrage at the Courts reliance on social science contributed
to massive resistance, it also triggered a more discursive move aimed at
articulating why, precisely, southerners opposed integration. This move,
pioneered by moderates and conservatives alike, borrowed from the
NAACPs own strategies in Brown and attempted to communicate with
white Americans outside the South. Our only hope at present, announced Emory Rogers, one of the attorneys who had represented South
Carolina in Brown, lies not in the carrying on of the battle in the courts
but rather in taking the battle to the people and using the same psychological and sociological warfare that has been so successfully carried on
against us.121
court cited as authority for its decision stated that the [C]onstitution of the
United States is impractical and unsuited to modern conditions.
S. Con. Res. 17-XX, 19551956 Leg., Extraordinary Sess. (Fla. 1956) (internal quotation
marks omitted).
115. James Jackson Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States: Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
286 (1957); see also Bartley, supra note 5, at 184 (discussing southern propagandists
arguments that Brown unconstitutionally violated states rights).
116. For a detailed account of massive resistance, see generally Bartley, supra note 5,
and Francis M. Wilhoit, The Politics of Massive Resistance (1973).
117. Bartley, supra note 5, at 10915.
118. See, e.g., Klarman, supra note 5, at 320 (using interposition to describe state
resolutions attempting to nullify Brown as illegal encroachment).
119. 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832).
120. See Bartley, supra note 5, at 12829 (describing interposition as deriving from
view of United States as a federatedalmost a confederatedUnion composed of
sovereign states, their powers protected by a static Constitution); Editorial, Interposition:
Yesterday and Today, Richmond News Leader, Feb. 2, 1956, reprinted in Interposition:
Editorials and Editorial Page Presentations 50, 50 (James Jackson Kilpatrick ed., 1956)
(The whole concept of this Union, the greatest feature of its architecture, was the concept
of dual sovereignty . . . .).
121. Rogers Gives Views on Segregation Fight, News & Courier (Charleston, S.C.),
Aug. 23, 1955, at 1-B.
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Two months later, Williams went into more depth, openly blasting
the Court for not acknowledging racial difference. As Williams asserted
in a speech entitled Where is the Reign of Terror?:
Those who are farthest removed from the segregation problem,
are the first to come forward with solutions to it, none of which
suggest that those who must live with the problem should be
consulted . . . . The time has come for the light of truth to penetrate the iron curtain that has been thrown around the facts regarding racial differences and distinctions.130
Such facts, continued Williams, had been obfuscated by the northern
presswhich was intent on excoriating the South for wrong-doingyet
could be found in the Annual Report of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.131
Williams argued that, according to the report:
Negroes comprise 10 percent of the total population of the
United States. Yet, as the above table shows, Negroes committed
more than half the homicides, both murder and manslaughter,
in our country in 1950. This 10 percent of our population is
also responsible as this table shows, for a disproportionate share
of crimes committed.132
Implicit in Williamss remarks lurked a sleight of hand. By citing
statistics, he sought to bolster the Souths position with the rational discourse of social science. Williams attempted to prove that white
southerners adhered to their policies because of scientifically supportable
differences in black behavior. This move, which reframed southern racism in terms of seemingly objective data rather than irrational prejudice,
carefully avoided the possibility that black crime and illegitimacy rates
may have been symptomatic of factors other than race. That they may
have been more linked to institutional racism, structural inequality, or
economic class, rather than race, was not something that Williams
mentioned.133
To impress upon America the consequences that integration might
have on white children and to rearticulate the southern defense of segregation in rational terms, Williams initiated a study of integrated schools
in Washington, D.C. This study, sponsored by the House Subcommittee
to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions, and Juvenile
Delinquency in D.C., was authored by Williams and three other white
southern congressmen: Joel T. Broyhill of Virginia, Woodrow Jones of
North Carolina, and James C. Davis of Georgia.134
130. 102 Cong. Rec. 5690 (1956) (remarks of Rep. John Bell Williams).
131. Id. at 569094.
132. Id. at 5692.
133. For a discussion of alternative explanations for black crime and illegitimacy rates,
see generally Kenneth B. Clark, Color, Class, Personality and Juvenile Delinquency, 28 J.
Negro Educ. 240 (1959).
134. Two other congressmen, DeWitt Hyde of Maryland and A.L. Miller of Nebraska,
also belonged to the committee, but refused to sign the report. Public School Conditions
Report, supra note 4, at 4748.
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The Subcommittees report was a segregationist masterpiece, documenting rampant delinquency among black students, some of it violent
and most of it sexual.135 Discipline problems and delinquency resulting
from the integration of the schools have been appalling, asserted the
report.136 Prior to the integration of the schools in the District of
Columbia there were very few unusual disciplinary problems in either of
the school systems, continued the Subcommittee. Since the integration
of the schools there have been very few unusual disciplinary problems in
the predominately segregated schools. By contrast, [d]isciplinary
problems in the predominately integrated schools have been described as
appalling, demoralizing, intolerable, and disgraceful.137
Among the problems cited in the report were fighting, lying, stealing, vandalism, obscene writing, vulgar talking, absenteeism, tardiness,
and truancy, as well as more serious offenses.138 Of particular concern
were offenses revolving around sex. [S]ex problems in the predominately integrated schools have become a matter of vital concern to the
parents, announced the report, suddenly turning to statistics:
One out of every four Negro children born in the District of
Columbia is illegitimate. The number of cases of venereal disease among Negroes of school age has been found to be astounding and tragic. The Negro has demonstrated a sex attitude from the primary to high school grades that has greatly
alarmed white parents and is a contributing cause of the exodus
of the white residents of the District of Columbia.139
The report continued by citing statistics on black arrest records, test
scores, and venereal disease rates:
The evidence, taken as a whole, points to a definite impairment
of educational opportunities for members of both white and
Negro races as a result of integration, with little prospect for
remedy in the future. Therefore, we recommend that racially
separate public schools be reestablished for the education of
white and Negro pupils in the District of Columbia, and that
such schools be maintained on a completely separate and equal
basis.140
DeWitt Hyde and A.L. Miller, both of whom refused to sign the final
report, disagreed.141 Since we have not signed the majority report submitted by the staff of the subcommittee, we desire to offer the following
observations, noted the two non-Southerners in an addendum.142 We
have carefully read the hearings, report, and the recommendations made
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.
142.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
at 4446.
at 45.
at 24.
at 45.
at 47.
at 48.
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by the staff and the subcommittee, they wrote, and yet [w]e have a feeling that a more objective approach would uncover some good things in
the educational and social life of the District schools.143 Although acknowledging that the statistics cited in the report were true, both representatives questioned the underlying motivations of their southern counterparts. The report seems to blame all of the educational deficiencies
in our school system entirely on the efforts toward integration, they lamented. We cannot believe that everything that is wrong with the educational system can be blamed on integration. Further:
[I]n a close reading of the hearings, we must come to the conclusion that the technical staff presented leading questions to a
selected group of witnesses. While we do not doubt the honesty
or sincerity of the witnesses who testified, the testimony does not
appear to be well-balanced, or objective, since persons with
views not in accord with those of the counsel were not given full
and fair opportunity to testify.144
Despite the caveat provided by Hyde and Miller, the 1957 report on
integrated schools in D.C. represented one of the most sophisticated attempts to rearticulate the Souths position on integration. John Bell
Williams, the instigator of the study, effectively linked the Souths fight
against integration with concerns over health and morals that could be
understood by white parents nationwide. One of these concerns was that
white children would be harmed if enrolled in school with blacks.145 Another was that contact with black children would not simply harm white
children but corrupt themleading invariably to promiscuous, premarital, interracial sex.146 This was the implicit message that Williams delivered when he assigned his committee to study delinquency and not race
in D.C. public schools.
Initiated one year after the release of Blackboard Jungle, Williamss
study capitalized on national fears of teen rebellion in schools by linking
them to racial integration. It presented the subtleif unprovenclaim
that black delinquency might have a negative mass influence on white
children, transforming them into delinquents as well. Just as social psychiatry aided proponents of integration, so too could it be used to legitimize concerns of southern segregationists like John Bell Williams. It
helped Williams and others explain the consequences that integration
would have on white children in terms that white parents across the country might understand. And, it also helped them turn the NAACPs claims
about black youth that had been legitimated in Brown upon themselves.
Segregationists like Williams were well aware, for example, that African
Americans working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund understood the
role that developmental psychology could play in promoting black politi143.
144.
145.
146.
Id.
Id.
Cahn, supra note 5, at 280.
Id. at 281.
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cal interests.147 Indeed, this awareness had led Thurgood Marshall and
others to seek out the psychological experts cited by the Supreme Court
in Brown.
And yet, the sociological sword proved double-edged. As John Bell
Williamss study of juvenile delinquency in Washington, D.C. schools indicates, the discourse of developmental psychology could be turned
against the black struggle for civil rights as well. Indeed, even as national
hysteria over juvenile delinquency created opportunities for the NAACP,
so too did it reinscribe notions of racial difference popular in American
thought at the time. Not surprisingly, segregationist organizations like
the Mississippi Citizens Council proceeded to adopt Williamss report on
D.C. schools as evidence bolstering the ideological platform of massive
resistance.148 In 1956, the monthly Citizens Council cited the hearings
conducted in the House of Representatives. [T]he facts about the mess
in Washingtons schools are on the record, and here are some of them,
lamented the paper, proceeding to cite the testimony of public school
principal John Paul Collins. The problem of discipline was tremendous.
Colored girls used language worse than any I ever heard in the Marine
Corps. Knifings became more or less commonplace, and many sex
problems were reported during the first year following integration.149
One year later, Mississippi judge and Citizens Council leader Tom
Brady used some of Williamss statistics when he traveled to California to
make the Souths case to an influential group of conservatives in San
Francisco. An exhaustive study of the program and results of integration
in the schools of Washington, D.C. which the NAACP and other left wing
groups fostering integration said would be a model for the rest of the
United States to follow, explained Brady to the prestigious
Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, clearly reveals that the average
white student who was integrated in the class room with the Negro has
been retarded two to three years in his educational progress.150 Appropriating the neutral tone of the sociologist, Brady continued that it is not
to the best interest of America that the white children, particularly in
certain congested sections, be retarded three years in their educational
advancement.151
Such dispassionate pleas fared better than hysterical cries of massive
resistance to the Supreme Court, hinting that the segregationist South
was beginning to look for common ground with the rest of the country.
147. See 102 Cong. Rec. 5690 (1956) (statement of Rep. John Bell Williams)
(rebutting NAACPs unceasing propaganda campaign . . . [in which] facts are being
deliberately concealed and distorted).
148. Frank van der Linden, Sordid Facts Revealed by D.C. School Probe, Citizens
Council, Oct. 1956, at 1, 3.
149. Id.
150. Judge Tom P. Brady, Segregation and the South, Address to the Commonwealth
Club of California at San Francisco 67 (Oct. 4, 1957), in Gov. Luther Hodges Papers,
North Carolina State Archives, at Box 312.
151. Id. at 7.
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At roughly the same time that Brady delivered his address in San
Francisco, white parents in Brooklyn publicly resisted an attempt by the
NAACP to have a school district in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a predominantly
black neighborhood, rezoned to incorporate white students.152 Part of
the hesitation resulted from increasing violence at integrated schools in
the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods.153 In November
1957, a special grand jury to investigate violence in New York Citys public
schools called for the assignment of police officers to patrol hallways after
reports of fights between students during class time.154 In January 1958,
the principal of John Marshall Junior High Schoolan integrated
Brooklyn school that had become the site of increasing disorder, including the rape of a female student in the schools basementcommitted
suicide by jumping off the roof of his apartment building before being
scheduled to testify before a Kings County grand jury investigating
school violence.155
Southern voices were quick to point to New Yorks problems as a sign
that integration was poor policy. [I] would hate to think what the metropolitan press would have done to us if the Brooklyn school violence
had happened in Little Rock, exclaimed Arkansas Governor Orval
Faubus.156 [P]eople are not being told one-tenth of the trouble about
racial problems going on outside the South.157 On February 5, 1958,
Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge announced that the citizens of
Georgia were deeply sympathetic with the citizens of Brooklyn in the
difficulties they are experiencing in maintaining the integrity and independence of their public schools.158 Talmadge even went so far as to
suggest that the President of the United States send Federal troops to
Brooklyn to preserve order in the public schools there in the same manner that he did to force a new social order upon the public schools of
Little Rock, Arkansas.159 As early as 1954, Senator James O. Eastland
had asserted the importance of making the Souths case to the nation, of
rearticulating southern racial views and presenting them at the foot of
national opinion.160 Now this was happening, not only through vehicles
152. Benjamin Fine, City to Spur Integration by Building of 60 Schools, N.Y. Times,
Oct. 31, 1957, at 1.
153. See Lawrence Fellows, Policeman for Each City School Urged by Brooklyn Grand
Jury, N.Y. Times, Nov. 26, 1957, at 1 (discussing possible response to lawlessness in
Brooklyns public schools).
154. Id.
155. Emanuel Perlmutter, Head of School Beset by Crime Leaps to Death, N.Y.
Times, Jan. 29, 1958, at 1.
156. Faubus Scores School Violence, N.Y. Times, Feb. 1, 1958, at 10.
157. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
158. 2 Senators Clash on Citys Schools, N.Y. Times, Feb. 5, 1958, at 16 (internal
quotation mark omitted).
159. Id. (internal quotation mark omitted).
160. 100 Cong. Rec. 11,523 (1954) (statement of Sen. Eastland) (urging colleagues to
bring fight for racial segregation to northern court of public opinion).
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quently, the Georgia House passed a parental responsibility bill making parents liable for up to $500 of damage caused by their children.164
Other states targeted individuals who contributed to the delinquency of minors, particularly individuals who challenged racial boundaries.165 For example, South Carolina established penalties for adults who
encouraged delinquency in 1957,166 not long after police officers found
a Negro youth sleeping at the house of a 38 year-old white woman
who held dancing and drinking parties for minors in Richland
County.167 Meanwhile, Alabama punished teachers for encouraging students to engage in mass truancy, including any extra-curricular
demonstration.168
More elaborate responses emerged in states where moderates tried
to counter extremist claims that desegregation invited youth crimea
strategy that assumed a particularly stark profile in Virginia, the home of
massive resistance.169 In 1954, Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley appointed Arlington County Delegate Kathryn Stone to the General
Assembly as Chairman of the Governors Commission on Juvenile
Delinquency.170 At that time, Stone enjoyed a reputation as one of
Virginias more moderate, perhaps even progressive, leaders, voting
against Harry F. Byrds program of massive resistance and serving as a
plaintiff in a case suing for fair reapportionment in Virginia.171 Following the Supreme Courts 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, Stone urged citizens and legislators alike to take action with regard to the malapportionment of Virginias legislature, arguing that northern counties with
greater populations should have a greater voice in the legislature than
the less populated Southside counties.172 Stone was also active in the
League of Women Voters as its first vice president and in the Governors
164. Ashworth, supra note 163, at 1. For other states that made parents liable for the
crimes of their children, see Act of Aug. 6, 1956, ch. 31400, 1956 Fla. Laws 55 (holding
parents liable for actual damages of children not to exceed $300); Act of May 31, 1957, ch.
320, 1957 Tex. Gen. Laws 783 (entitling property owners to collect civil damages up to
$300 from parents of minors who maliciously and willfully damage property).
165. See, e.g., Act of July 12, 1957, 1957 S.C. Acts 572 (making it unlawful to
contribute to delinquency of minor).
166. Id.
167. Bob Ackerman, Biggest Juvenile Theft Ring Described, The State (Columbia,
S.C.), May 21, 1957, at 1.
168. James E. Starrs, A Sense of Irony in Southern Juvenile Courts, 1 Portia L.J. 107,
11718 (1966) (citation omitted).
169. See Bartley, supra note 5, at 109 (discussing Senator Harry F. Byrds
encouragement of massive southern resistance under Virginias leadership).
170. Elsie Carper, A Lonely Voice at Richmond, Wash. Post, Aug. 8, 1965, at E2.
171. Id. ([Stone] warned the General Assembly that massive resistance to school
desegregation was producing a spirit of lawlessness and disrespect for constitutional
government.).
172. Mrs. Kathryn Stone: Biographical Notes (1977), in Papers of Kathryn H. Stone,
University of Virginia Special Collections, at Series 10555-c [hereinafter Stone Papers].
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Committee for Youth in Virginia.173 During the height of civil rights unrest, Stones was the only voice opposing a package of bills aimed at
keeping the NAACP from bringing desegregation suits to court.174
Stones moderation stemmed from the political leanings of her constituents: affluent, cosmopolitan denizens of Arlington, a wealthy suburb
of Washington, D.C.175 Unlike Virginias rural southern counties,
Arlington boasted a relatively cosmopolitan population with many inhabitants drawn from other parts of the country.176 At the same time, Arlington also bordered the D.C. school system, one of the first in the country
to be publicized by segregationists intent on stopping Brown.177
In the 1955 race for Arlington County School Board, echoes of concerns voiced in the Deep South emerged in metropolitan Virginia.
Therman M. Lloyd, in a letter dated November 1, 1955, encouraged voters to elect L.H. Blevins, Willis F. Kern, and Susan OHara to the
Arlington County School Board, warning that:
Your childs future welfare can be undermined by close association with children of the opposite color. At an age of unawareness of racial and social differences, unwise attachments can be
and often are formed during school years that can result in
mixed marriages or worse. Is this risk fair to your child? People
of both races are concerned.178
When Kathryn Stone appeared before the Governors Commission
on Public Education on November 15, 1954, she articulated a rationale
for resistance slightly softer than extremist diatribes against the integra173. Carper, supra note 170; Isabelle Shelton, Two Women Brighten Virginia Politics,
The Sunday Star (D.C.), Oct. 4, 1953, at D-4.
174. Carper, supra note 170.
175. See James W. Ely, Jr., The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization
and the Politics of Massive Resistance 36, 76 (1976) [hereinafter Ely, Crisis] (explaining
Arlingtons white majoritys lack of enthusiasm for resistance campaigns); Matthew D.
Lassiter & Andrew B. Lewis, Massive Resistance Revisited: Virginias White Moderates and
the Byrd Organization, in The Moderates Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School
Desegregation in Virginia 1, 16 (Matthew D. Lassiter & Andrew B. Lewis eds., 1998)
(describing Arlingtons predominantly white populations eventual call for peaceful
desegregation).
176. See Ely, Crisis, supra note 175, at 21 (describing population of D.C. suburbs
including Arlington as made up of federal employees, transients, and newcomers).
177. Lassiter & Lewis, supra note 175, at 36 (detailing initial reaction to Brown in
South).
178. Letter from Therman M. Lloyd to voters (Nov. 1, 1955), in Stone Papers, supra
note 172, at Series 10555-b. Fears of the effect that black children would have on white
students led to extensive looks at the academic performance rates of blacks and illegitimate
birth rates, as well as crime statistics and juvenile delinquency statistics in D.C. In a speech
entitled Where is the Reign of Terror? delivered before the U.S. House of
Representatives on March 27, 1956, Rep. John Bell Williams of Mississippi cited statistics on
Washington, D.C.s crime, illegitimacy, and venereal disease rates. 102 Cong. Rec. 5690,
569294 (1956) (remarks of Rep. John Bell Williams). One year later, Williams joined
Woodrow Jones of North Carolina and Joel T. Broyhill of Virginia in issuing a devastating
report on integrated conditions in D.C. schools for a House subcommittee. Public School
Conditions Report, supra note 4, at 47.
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facility had begun in the 40s, nothing was actually done about it until
Stone recommended it in her report for the Commission on Juvenile
Delinquency in 1955.213
The success of Stones report, together with her success at leading
the expansion of juvenile justice in Virginia, underscores the manner in
which fears of delinquency exacerbated by Brown influenced southern
state formation. Though not a staunch segregationist, Stone nevertheless
took public fears over integration and channeled them into money for
youth services.
Of course, the dark lining to this silver cloud was that, despite her
success in expanding Virginias social safety net, Stone proved unable to
stop a reactionary movement based in the rural, southern counties of the
state that called for massive resistance to the Supreme Court. In 1956, for
example, a special commission boasting heavy representation from
Southside areasparticularly the Fourth, Fifth and First congressional
districtswhere Negro populations are relatively heavy, succeeded in
thwarting moderate plans to end segregation by race and impose pupil
placement or assignment plans.214
By 1959, however, Governor J. Lindsay Almond argued that massive
resistance had run its course, signaling a decline in the power of southside extremists like Senator Harry Flood Byrd to dominate the state.215
Moderates like Kathryn Stone moved quickly to fill the void, emphasizing
the development of higher education, particularly community colleges.216 The development of higher education will be the most important issue well handle, announced Stone in 1962.217 But, she warned,
the state would no longer pursue education for educations sake, and
would instead work to develop technical education, a necessary goal if
Virginia wanted to attract more developing industries to the state.218
The ways to attain that end, according to Stone, were to strengthen the
public schools, offer technical training at a post-high school level, and
expand the community college program.219 We need to keep youngsters in school longer, anyway, she asserted, noting that [w]e must start
right now to develop a full youth program. For example, hundreds of
boys between ages 16 and 21 are out of school and out of work.220
For idle children who got in trouble with the law, the Virginia legislature approved more than $1,000,000 for the operation of a new Virginia
213. Id.
214. L.M. Wright Jr., Stanleys Fund Plan Backed by Gray Group: Unit Votes, 1912,
to Drop Pupil Assignment Formula, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Aug. 23, 1956, at 1.
215. Lassiter & Lewis, supra note 175, at 11.
216. Rose Bennett, Homey Chores Occupy Lone Distaff Delegate, Richmond NewsLeader, Jan. 11, 1962, in Stone Papers, supra note 172, at Series 10555-c.
217. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
218. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
219. Id.
220. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
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Treatment Center for Children at Richmond.221 The Center had an inpatient capacity of forty and was able to handle a heavy outpatient service
for emotionally disturbed children.222 That same year, [a] Committee
for Youth was established by resolution to contribute to the coordination,
strengthening and extension of present state services for youth and to
encourage programs locally that contribute to the prevention of crime
and delinquiency [sic].223
One policy idea was to lower the legal age at which children could
begin working and remove the states minimum wage law to provide employers with incentives to hire children.224 Unfortunately for Stone, however, both her minimum wage ban and a bill which would have permitted children to work in public recreation facilities, outside of school
hours, with the consent of their parents were killed.225 Opponents rejected the argument that the bills would help reduce juvenile delinquency and be economically helpful to many families.226
Despite such setbacks, Stone nevertheless boasted considerable
achievements in Virginia during her tenure. The Washington Post listed
among her greatest accomplishments the establishment of a mobile psychiatric clinic, a state system of regional detention homes and a treatment center for emotionally disturbed youths.227 Other successes mentioned included the creation of a Governors Committee for Youth to
study how young people were being educated and trained for the changing job market and her campaigns for a mental hospital in Northern
Virginia and various state colleges.228
Such measures combined to form both a more intrusive and more
nurturing state, replacing the complex network of criminal laws that proscribed interracial contact under Jim Crow.229 At the height of Jim Crow,
southern states skimped on social services to blacks, resulting in a type of
governmental vacuum when it came to state aid.230 That Brown en221. Memorandum from Carter O. Lowance, Governors Office, to Members of Va.
Gen. Assembly 7 (Mar. 12, 1962), in Joseph C. Hutcheson Papers, University of Virginia
Special Collections, at Series 9819.
222. Id.
223. Id. at 12.
224. Id.
225. Id.
226. Id.
227. Carper, supra note 170.
228. Id.
229. See generally Howard N. Rabinowitz, From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern
Race Relations, 18651890, 63 J. Am. Hist. 325 (1976) (describing late nineteenth-century
American Souths legal systems transition from racial exclusion to racial segregation).
230. See Howard N. Rabinowitz, From Exclusion to Segregation: Health and Welfare
Services for Southern Blacks, 18651890, 48 Soc. Serv. Rev. 327, 34344 (1974)
(Occasionally whites and blacks did receive comparable treatment. . . . [But] [e]ven
where public officials provided for their care . . . the belief in Negro inferiority that had
once underwritten the policy of exclusion now led to an inequitable administration of
separate facilities.).
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238. Id.
239. Id. at 932 & n.20 (citing Va. Code Ann. 18.1-247 (1950) (repealed 1975)).
240. Id. at 933 & n.21.
241. Id. at 933, 935; see also Len Holt, An Act of Conscience 2325, 9395 (1965)
(describing polices forceful reaction to gathering of peaceful protestors).
242. Ely, Danville, supra note 231, at 936.
243. Id. at 937.
244. Unlike adult demonstrators, teenagers found themselves victims of many of the
protections offered to youth, among them the notion that proceedings involving children
should focus on the psychological well-being of the child and therefore should not assume
an adversarial posture. Danvilles teenage rebels therefore found themselves in a type of
legal limbo, a position that did not change until the Supreme Court considered the
question in 1967. See In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 57 (1967) ([A] determination of
delinquency . . . cannot be sustained in the absence of sworn testimony subjected to the
opportunity for cross-examination in accordance with our law and constitutional
requirements.).
245. Ely, Danville, supra note 231, at 937, 950.
246. Id. at 964 (noting overturning of over 270 convictions).
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activists and undermining civil rights protest.283 Precisely because children provided popular soldiers in a movement that often struggled to
gain senior support, black youth became easy targets for delinquency
prosecutions in places as disparate as Danville, Virginia;284 Hyde County,
North Carolina;285 and Birmingham, Alabama.286 Indeed, in
Birmingham, children formed the vanguard of almost a week of intense
demonstrations against police that roused national support for the cause
of civil rights, only then to find themselves incarcerated in jails, expelled
from schools, and forgotten.287
Though courts took an increased interest in guaranteeing legal
rights for such children, even rulings like In re Gault nudged juvenile justice away from a care-giving, parens patriae posture and toward a more
punishment-oriented, detention-friendly version of the adult system.288
For children caught in that system, a new, arguably frightening civil rights
dynamic began to take shape. So long as law enforcement failed to do its
job peacefully, popular support for racial equality spiked and the children involved in civil rights protest emerged as heroes. However, once
law enforcement and juvenile justice worked together to process juvenile
protestors quietly and efficiently, public interest in demonstrations flagged, and the children involved in those protests found themselves designated truants and delinquents.289
Put simply, even as the civil rights movement led to impressive federal interventions and legislation on behalf of racial equality, including
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so too did
the movement spark a transformation in southern law enforcement, a
move away from the public deployment of violence and toward an emphasis on efficiently identifying and managing unruly groups, the very
essence of what Malcolm Feeley and David Simon have since identified as
the new penology.290
Though criminal justice scholars like Simon and Feeley tend not to
locate the birth of mass incarceration in the midst of the civil rights victories of the 1960s, this may be partly because they fail to adequately acknowledge the extent to which discourses of delinquency and crime permeated cultural portrayals of the movement, sanctioning the peaceful
carrying away of black demonstrators to jail so long as they did not suffer
283. See supra notes 231246 and accompanying text (discussing civil rights marches
in Danville, Virginia).
284. See supra notes 231246 and accompanying text.
285. See supra notes 248251 and accompanying text.
286. See supra notes 252265 and accompanying text.
287. See supra notes 252265 and accompanying text.
288. See supra notes 273276 and accompanying text (discussing In re Gaults effect
on juvenile justice system).
289. See supra Part V (explaining how juvenile delinquency laws were used against
young demonstrators).
290. Malcolm M. Feeley & Jonathan Simon, The New Penology: Notes on the
Emerging Strategy of Corrections and Its Implications, 30 Criminology 449, 449 (1992).
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public violence.291 Public indifference to the quiet incarceration of delinquent black youth in the 1950s and 1960s, in other words, may have
become a critical determiner in whether states decided to allocate money
to meet black demands oras was the case in Alabama, North Carolina
and Virginiaemploy incarceration to quiet social unrest.
Herein lies the last contribution of this piece. Though long forgotten, battles over whether integration and black activism were to be viewed
through the cultural frames of equity, i.e., racial justice, or delinquency
became central to the legal struggle over civil rights at mid-century. Even
as national leaders touted the successes of the civil rights movement (the
equity frame), those successes ultimately masked the extent to which state
government and public funds themselves moved in a very different direction toward managing unruly groups (the delinquency frame), a move
that prefigured what criminal justice scholars currently call the school-toprison pipeline.292 Put simply, public indifference to the quiet incarceration of delinquent black youth in the 1950s and 1960s raises important
questions about the mass incarceration of young African Americans today, not to mention the larger puzzle of persistent racial inequalityyet
decline in overt racismin the twenty-first century United States.
291. See, e.g., Mona Lynch, Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of
American Punishment 510 (2010) (describing shift from reform to warehousing,
attributable in part to get-tough conservative policies).
292. See, e.g., Chauncee D. Smith, Note, Deconstructing the Pipeline: Evaluating
School-to-Prison Pipeline Equal Protection Cases Through a Structural Racism Framework,
36 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1009, 1012 (2009) (The phrase school-to-prison pipeline
conceptually categorizes an ambiguous, yet seemingly systematic, process through which a
wide range of education and criminal justice policies and practices result in students of
color being disparately pushed out of school and into prison.); see also Tona M. Boyd,
Note, Confronting Racial Disparity: Legislative Responses to the School-to-Prison Pipeline,
44 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 571, 571 (2009) (describing proposed legislative fixes and
offering proposals to end racially disparate impact of current system of juvenile
discipline); Johanna Wald & Daniel J. Losen, Defining and Redirecting a School-to-Prison
Pipeline, New Directions for Youth Dev., Fall 2003, at 9, 1214 (summarizing studies that
provide clear evidence of dysfunctional systems that not only fail to serve the neediest
children but in fact . . . create conditions that exacerbate the harm inflicted on them).
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