Page 9 - Delaware Lawyer - Issue 1 - 2024

Former Hockessin Colored School #107c student Sonny Knott at an exhibit displaying the gown of Chancellor Collins J. Seitz.
However, the Court of Chancery is connected to New Orleans by much more than corporate law. While in New Orleans, I happened upon a historical marker. It commemorated the place where police forcibly removed Homer Adolph Plessy from a segregated rail- road car. A civil rights organization called The Citizens’ Committee staged the confrontation. It enlisted Mr. Plessy as a plaintiff to bring a constitutional challenge in an attempt to remedy seg- regation across the South.
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment permit- ted segregated public institutions and
facilities if they were equal — other- wise known as the “separate but equal” doctrine. It was an early defeat for the civil rights movement. But the Citizens’ Committee remained committed. Re- flecting on its loss in the highest court in the land, it stated:
We as freemen still believe we were right and our cause is sacred .... In defending the cause of lib- erty, we met with defeat but not ignominy.
You can draw a straight line from Plessy to Chancellor Collins Seitz and then to Plessy’s demise in Brown v. Board of Education. In the early 1950s, the Delaware Constitution and state law
Chancellor Collins J. Seitz, who issued the declaration that the disparity in educational institutions for white and Black students violated the U.S. Constitution.
required segregated schools. Blacks and whites could not marry. Delaware was, in Chancellor Seitz’s words, a northern state with a southern exposure. The na- tional civil rights movement was skepti- cal that real reform could come through the courts.
Nonetheless, a few courageous Dela- wareans brought cases in the Court of Chancery challenging segregation in Delaware. They were fortunate to have Chancellor Seitz as the judge. Also, they could not have predicted the enormity of their success or that appeals from the Court of Chancery decisions would end up as part of the appeals in Brown v. Board of Education.
ISSUE 1 2024 DELAWARE LAWYER 7
LEFT: PHOTO BY SAQUAN STIMPSON; ABOVE: PHOTO BY BUD KEEGAN
PHOTO COURTESY OF HOCKESSINCOLOREDSCHOOL107.ORG