Existing comment:
The court case that became Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al was a consolidation of five cases that were testing the "separate but equal" doctrine.
Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. was a federal lawsuit to desegregate public schools in South Carolina. Filed by a group of people in Clarendon County (South Carolina) against local officials, the lawsuit became the first of the five cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court under the Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. umbrella. It was also the first of these cases to have been filed in federal courts. The suit was filed by Levi Pearson, who was encouraged by Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine Sr.
The Reverend was posthumously given a Congressional gold medal in 2003. The citation includes the following background information:
(1) The Reverend Joseph Armstrong DeLaine, one of the true heroes of the civil rights struggle, led a crusade to break down barriers in education in South Carolina.
(2) The efforts of Reverend DeLaine led to the desegregation of public schools in the United States, but forever scarred his own life.
(3) In 1949, Joseph DeLaine, a minister and school principal, organized African-American parents in Summerton, South Carolina, to petition the school board for a bus for black students, who had to walk up to 10 miles through corn and cotton fields to attend a segregated school, while the white children in the school district rode to and from school in nice clean buses.
(4) In 1950, these same parents, including Harry and Eliza Briggs, sued to end public school segregation in Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al., one of 5 cases that collectively led to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al.
(5) Because of his participation in the desegregation movement, Reverend DeLaine was subjected to repeated acts of domestic terror in which--
(A) he, along with 2 sisters and a niece, lost their jobs;
(B) he fought off an angry mob;
(C) he received frequent death threats; and
(D) his church and his home were burned to the ground.
(6) In October 1955, after Reverend DeLaine relocated to Florence County in South Carolina, shots were fired at the DeLaine home, and because Reverend DeLaine fired back to mark the car, he was charged with assault and battery with intent to kill.
(7) The shooting incident drove him from South Carolina to Buffalo, New York, where he organized an African Methodist Episcopal Church.
(8) Believing that he would not be treated fairly by the South Carolina judicial system if he returned to South Carolina, Reverend DeLaine told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, `I am not running from justice but injustice', and it was not until 2000 (26 years after his death and 45 years after the incident) that Reverend DeLaine was cleared of all charges relating to the October 1955 incident.
(9) Reverend DeLaine was a humble and fearless man who showed the Nation that all people, regardless of the color of their skin, deserve a first-rate education, a lesson from which the Nation has benefited immeasurably.
This is all to say that the people Ann Brownell Sloane are talking to are (closest to us) Brumit De Laine (the youngest of the reverend's three children) and Joseph DeLaine, Jr., Brumit's older brother. |