Fifty years ago, high above Earth, Sputnik signalled a new era for mankind. But on the ground in Little Rock, Arkansas, where nine black students were jeered mercilessly, the prospects for Humanity didn’t seem as sanguine. By way of Do You Feel Loved and to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the desegregation of Litle Rock Central High, Vanity Fair‘s David Margolick tells the sad but illuminating story of Elizabeth Eckford (of the Little Rock 9) and Hazel Bryan (her tormentor in the pic at right.) “[T]he picture belongs to Elizabeth and Hazel, and for them it set off a drama that has never really ended. Bound together in fame and misfortune, they have tried, separately and together, to escape the frame. After a brief and well-photographed pseudo-reconciliation 10 years ago, the two are once more incommunicado, living only a few miles, and a cultural chasm, apart.“
Tag: Brown v. Board
Backcourt Violations.
“‘Conservatives got everything they could reasonably have hoped for out of the term,’ said Thomas C. Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court litigation.” Proving the crucial importance of the Alito-O’Connor switch (and, I’ll continue to maintain as my answer to Emily Bazelon’s line of questioning, the 2004 election), the Roberts Court flexed its muscle in depressing fashion this week, voting 5-4 (as feared) not only to gut the McCain-Feingold act in the name of “free speech” but also — seriously, no lie — to partially roll back Brown v. Board of Education. (In another well-reported case, the majority’s inordinate fear of bongs trumped this stalwart commitment to free speech.) So, if you’re keeping score, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy came down like this: money good, corruption good, drug hysteria good; clean politics bad, youthful irony bad, integration bad. Oh, wonderful. Suddenly, the announcement that the Court will take a look at the Guantanamo cases doesn’t sound so appetizing. Update: Slate‘s slate of legal observers discuss.
Not yet overcome.
“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As Brown v. Board turns 50, segregation persists, such that America’s schools are now barely as integrated as they were in 1969. Let’s get it together, y’all.