The Brown v. Board decision, made 70 years ago this month, outlawed racial segregation in schools and, in the process, overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had brought about formal segregation. Thus, it was a monumental ruling, setting several civil rights bills in motion.
However, the Brown decision had some harmful consequences. By ruling that all Black schools were inherently inferior to White schools, it set in motion the closing of many Black schools, many that were inferior and many that were not. This inferior designation was carried over to the Black teachers, which was invalid.
After many years of resistance and then foot-dragging, the public school systems began its “integration” by firing many experienced, highly credentialled Black educators who had staffed the Black schools.
Before Brown, an estimated 35 percent to 50 percent of the teaching workforces in the 17 states with segregated school systems were Black. After Brown, the proportion of Black teachers was reduced to less than 10 percent.
Former Howard University Dean of Education Leslie Fenwick argues that Blacks had played by the rules. They went North and got their graduate education-since the states did not provide it to Blacks in the South. They came back and were underpaid compared to White teachers with fewer qualifications. And then many were fired.
The firing of Black schoolteachers had at least two devastating impacts on Black communities in the South. The first negative impact was on education. Because education was one of the only well respected career paths open to Blacks, there were many well-trained and talented Black teachers.
The presence of skillful teachers resulted in many all-Black schools being places where children received an excellent academic education. The White people in charge of education in the counties knew about these talented teachers. I used to joke about this by pointing out that integration finally started in my small town in Alabama by moving two of the highly heralded Black teachers and not firing them. Instead, the White administrators of the school system moved them to the White elementary school.
Despite the large numbers of talented African Americans in the national teaching force before the Brown case, that situation changed drastically after 1954. The loss of a generation of exceptionally credentialed and effective educators was virtually traumatic for Black students. The trauma was Black students finding themselves in previously all-White segregated schools without models of intellectual authority in teachers or leadership authority in principals.
A second negative impact of the Brown decision on Black communities was economic. At the time of Brown, nearly 75 percent of Black professionals were educators, either teachers or principals. Tens of thousands of Black educators losing their jobs caused about a $1 billion economic cut.
Further, schoolteachers were often leaders in their communities, for example, working in NAACP chapters and pushing for voting rights. Of course, some of the dismissals of teachers and principals resulted from resentment by the local White power structures.
These Black teachers and principals could not readily get other White-collar jobs. An oft-told story about a Black principal underscores the trauma of the dismissal of teachers and principals.
The story: A Black man loses his principalship and ends up working in a factory. There, he encounters some of his students who are working in this factory, students he had encouraged to finish high school so they could go to college and get a good job. And here he is, working alongside school dropouts in a very menial job despite having done all the right things about self-improvement.
Black educators stood as examples of how there were a way to be educated and obtain a working service to their community. However, massive firings troubled that notion and negatively impacted future generations who would become teachers and principals.
