Page 14 - Delaware Lawyer - Issue 1 - 2024

FEATURE | BRAVE JUDGES
Chalk board from Hockessin Colored School #107c
After considering powerful testi- mony from experts “in the fields of education, sociology, psychology, psychiatry and anthropology,”5 the Chancellor concluded as a factual matter that “State-imposed segre- gation in education itself” was the cause of detrimental psychological effects on persons of color.6 He then felt compelled to analyze, as a matter of “judicial integrity,” whether Unit- ed States Supreme Court precedent had already decided that State-im- posed segregation violated the 14th Amendment.7 He concluded that the high court had, in fact, resolved the matter by implication. He then stat- ed his position with absolute clarity: “I do not believe a lower court can reject a principle of United States Constitutional law which has been adopted by fair implication by the highest court of the land. I believe the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine in education should be rejected, but I also believe its rejection must come from that Court.”8 He thus declined to rule in the plaintiffs’ favor on the question of whether segregation in public schools was unconstitutional per se, but — in so many words — invited the United States Supreme Court to do so.
The End of ‘Separate but Equal’
The high court accepted the invi- tation. Citing the Chancellor’s factu- al findings, the Court held in Brown I: “[I]n the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”9
The Court then took up the issue of remedy in Brown II.10 In Gebhart, the Chancellor ordered, and the Del- aware Supreme Court affirmed, the immediate desegregation of public schools. In Brown II, however, the United States Supreme Court re- fused to order immediate desegrega- tion and instead required that courts
DELAWARE PUBLIC ARCHIVES
HOCKESSINCOLOREDSCHOOL107.ORG DELAWARE PUBLIC ARCHIVES DR. DAVID WILK
Historic photos of students playing and Hockessin Colored School #107c
12 DELAWARE LAWYER ISSUE 1 2024