‘Blood, sweat and tears:’ How Brown justified the sacrifice

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Joseph De Laine, standing at his west Charlotte home, is the son of the Rev. Joseph De Laine, who led Black residents in Clarendon County, S.C., to sue the local school district for equal facilities. That lawsuit – Briggs v. Elliott – was the genesis of the combined Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed racial segregation in U.S. public schools.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate but equal public schools unconstitutional, Joseph DeLaine Jr. lived with the constant reminder of racial bias.

Seventy years ago, the court voted 9-0 to affirm the right of Black students to attend schools with their white peers in Brown v. Board of Education, but the genesis of the combined five lawsuits was in Clarendon County, S.C., where De Laine’s father, the Rev. Joseph De Laine, led the fight for equal facilities in Briggs v. Elliott. By May 17, 1954 – the date of the Brown ruling – the DeLaines and other Black families had paid a steep price for justice.

By the 1940s, Clarendon County Schools spent an average of $42 per Black student compared to $179 per white student. Both lagged South Carolina as a whole, where school districts spent an average of $221 per white student compared to $45 per Black student.

Clarendon’s whites-only brick-and-mortar schools were equipped with running water, electricity, libraries, and transportation to and from class. Black students were forced to walk to a one-room wood and tar paper shack with no amenities.

Ultimately, the school board’s decision to deny Black parents’ petition for a school bus sparked the lawsuit, named for Harry Briggs, the first person to sign the petition to sue the Clarendon school board chaired by R.W. Elliott.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Thurgood Marshall – who became the country’s first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967 – argued for the plaintiffs.

“If you were looking anywhere in the union where life for Negroes had changed the least since slavery,” author and historian Richard Kluger said, “look no further than Clarendon County.”

Joseph De Laine Jr., now 91 and living in Charlotte, recalled the toll Briggs had on his family: death threats against his father, the Rev. Joseph DeLaine, a community leader who encouraged the Briggs lawsuit. Neighbors lost their jobs and property when whites fired them or revoked mortgages.

Still, the younger De Laine insists, Briggs was worth the sacrifice. In an interview with The Post, he talked about what Brown means to him, how it’s changed American culture and the importance of history. Responses are edited for brevity and clarity.

Topic: Brown’s impact on the U.S.:

De Laine: I think that the Brown case has done quite a bit for America. To be very blunt with you, I think that decision …is if not the most significant, one of the most significant cases that’s ever been heard by the Supreme Court. I can’t think of another case that really has affected as many people directly and indirectly. The case was filed for school desegregation, but it has affected practically every facet of individual life in America.

If we look back and think about it, think about [protection for] the handicapped; equal pay for the sexes, and we can just rattle off on and on and on, where there has been a benefit made because of that decision.

Topic: Failed efforts to rename the Brown decision in favor of Briggs:

De Laine: My first gripe is the name of the case, Brown v. Board. They're not the ones that earned that name. The name was really earned by Briggs v. Elliott, and I'd say secondary to that was the [Davis v. County School Board] case from Virginia. Those are the people that filed suit challenging state law regarding the separation of races in schools, and they’re also the two cases where people suffered most. A lot of it was never published by the news media. … In South Carolina where I’m from, they suffered a great deal. … And the case in Virginia, the schools were closed there for five years, and Black folks suffered yet they have gotten no credit for their role in the case.

Now, that whole thing is so far along, there’s no way to correct it today. I know there's been some efforts to do so, but I think it’s lunacy to try to correct it because after 70 years of referring to this thing as Brown v. Board, you don't change it now. 

Topic: On court reversals since Brown that have led to re-segregation of schools:

De Laine: We’ve gotten some achievements, but there's a long way still to go. And when I say a long way to go, this includes not just benefits for Black folk. I’m talking about benefits for everybody in the United States, all citizens of the United States. Our system of high schools, of public education in most states needs improvement. Now, minorities still have the short end of the stick, but it’s all of them that needs improvement. And we have not gotten to that point. You take the shortcuts that are done in schools today [it] is a disservice to all students.

Topic: How another Supreme Court decision – Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which established busing as a tool to desegregate schools – changed American education along with Briggs:

De Laine: Both of those rulings came out of the Carolinas. Briggs was a part of the dissection of the initial ruling which declared the state law invalid which required the separation of races. So, that was a basic case Swan came as a part of the implementation of what was decided upon with the Brown case. Two lead cases out of the Carolinas which affected this at different times, and both of them were cases that spearheaded that whole movement.

Topic: His family’s legacy in the fight for equality:

De Laine: When I think of the blood, sweat and tears that people suffered for this thing, I have a lot of pride that my father was a part of it. I was old enough to know what was going on at that time because I was in my late teens … when everything started to move with this case. So, I saw a lot of it. I saw the works. I saw the sweat, the hardship that people went through.

I’m a Korean [War] veteran, and it’s bitter to me to know that I went and fought for this damn country and was shortchanged on every right that I should have gotten as a citizen yet fought for them and I recognize that my best bet was to stay here and fight not go somewhere and experience the same thing elsewhere. But it’s not a pleasant feeling when it comes to mind that I’ve been denied these privileges because I’m not the type that kiss and make up real quickly. I will make up and I will also understand that everybody … is not responsible for what has occurred to minorities in America. And when I say minorities, I don’t mean just us Black folk.

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