Chancery Court opinion dealt blow to school segregation in 1950

Anniversaries invite reflection. Hence, the upcoming 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board on May 17 allows us to consider Delaware’s racial past as we strive to move into a more just future. 

Inhumanity enters through bigotry’s door; once it does, it lingers there. That racist reality was under attack in January 1950, when Brooks M. Parker and nine other African American plaintiffs challenged the University of Delaware’s whites-only admissions policy. They were denied admission to the undergraduate school. The official reason: there was a separate school (Delaware State College, established in 1891 and renamed twice) for Blacks that was purportedly equal. Two exceptionally talented NAACP lawyers, Louis L. Redding and Jack Greenberg, took constitutional exception and represented the plaintiffs. The case was Parker v. University of Delaware.

The supposition underlying the separate-but-equal segregation principle embedded in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and then incorporated in Delaware’s 1897 Constitution, was that Blacks were inferior beings. Put bluntly: “Black was bad. Black was evil. Black was sinister. Blackness was baseness” (Richard Kluger, “Simple Justice,” 2004, p. 305).

At the time, the national NAACP had won three important Supreme Court segregation cases: two involving admissions to law schools (1948 and 1950), and another involving admission to a graduate school in education (1950). All three rulings preserved Plessy’s holding but applied it in such a way that separate actually meant equal. In time, that formula would significantly upset the segregation tradition; that, at least, was one legal strategy until Plessy could be overruled. 

With legal nuance and real-world facts, Redding (refined and well educated) and Greenberg (passionate and gifted) set out to extend the recent Supreme Court rulings. To do that, they challenged segregation in Delaware not at the secondary and elementary school levels where education was mandatory, but at the undergraduate college level where schooling was non-compulsory. Their thinking: attack school segregation where the racist outcry would be less audible. Of course, if a victory were secured at the undergraduate college level, that would pave the way to desegregating elementary schools. 

To contest the underlying presumption of Black inferiority, Redding and Greenberg took their case to Delaware Chancery Court with Vice Chancellor Collins J. Seitz presiding. Happenstance explained the assignment of the case to the 35-year-old judge – a brilliant integration-minded jurist with a calm demeanor. A few years before the Parker case came before him, Seitz underscored the importance of Delawareans making the words “civil rights” a meaningful part of their daily lives.

Aug. 9, 1950: After personally visiting the Black student college and the white student university, Seitz rendered his 5,730-word opinion. That landmark trial court ruling took perceptive notice of what Redding and Greenberg had argued in their filings; it also brought with it a remarkable mixture of compare-and-contrast realism and judicial prudence. Seitz concluded that “the State of Delaware is not providing these plaintiffs and others similarly situated with educational opportunities at the [Delaware State] College which are equal to those provided at the University [of Delaware]. [Hence,] the trustees of the university by refusing to consider plaintiffs' applications because they are Negroes have violated the guarantee contained in the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.” In other words, under Plessy, Delaware’s separate was not equal. Seitz’s opinion was formidable; the government did not appeal it. 

Redding, Greenberg and Seitz had breached one of the nefarious fortresses of segregation. It wasn’t an out-and-out desegregation victory – real and full integration was still to be actualized. Nonetheless, though Plessy remained on the books, its racist staying power wanted. Soon enough, all three men would return to the educational scene to encounter yet another one of Delaware’s Jim Crow laws. Meanwhile, the Parker win was a good omen, a very good one.  

Note: The Lewes Public Library will host a program on racial justice in Delaware, before and after Brown v. Board. The event, set for Friday, May 17 (online registration required), will comprise a public exchange between Leland Ware, the Louis Redding chair for the study of law and public policy at the University of Delaware, and U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro.