Remembering Brown v. Board of Education

After time separates us from America’s worst tragedies, historical moments have become a litmus test for who we were in the past.
The most common shared memories are the most recent — Barack Obama’s 2008 election win, 9/11, the Columbine shootings. For two University of Virginia law school professors, the question of “where were you when” was particularly engaging when it came to the landmark 1954 Oliver L. Brown et. al. v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.
“From a very early conversation, we identified Brown was a common experience we had,” said Mildred W. Robinson, 64, referring to fellow law professor Richard J. Bonnie, 63. “We were affected at some point in some way about the efforts to desegregate the schools.”
Those conversations paved the way for “Law Touched Our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education,” a book of 40 essays chronicling how people around the nation were affected by the desegregation of schools. Vanderbilt University Press released the book late last month. Bonnie and Robinson will participate in a Virginia Festival of the Book event, Stories from the Civil Rights Movement, at noon Thursday at the UVa Bookstore.
As the 50th anniversary of the historic decision came closer, the law professors talked about collecting other people’s stories from that time period. A few waves of surveys netted the professors about 1,000 responses from law school professors born between 1936 to 1954.
The essays in the book spurred from an open-ended question in the two-page survey: “Is there anything else you would like to say about your experience?”
“I think we touched a nerve,” Bonnie said. “People just wanted to talk about it, and they took up all of the space we gave them.”

Q. Where were you when the Brown v. Board of Education decision was announced?
BONNIE. I don’t specifically remember the Brown decision as a moment or as a headline or anything like that, but I do have very, very vivid recollections about the experience of all of the litigation and turmoil during Massive Resistance in Virginia. My essay is about the formative effect that I feel like it had on me as a person.
I was 13 then. I had just moved from elementary school to Northside Junior High School [in Virginia], or I was supposed to. That was the semester that, due to the controversy and the litigation and the decision of the school board in Norfolk, they closed the school rather than integrate.
I was focusing on my daily life. And here I was, basically a pawn in this political controversy, which has certainly opened my eyes to why this was happening and to the segregated nature of my world.
ROBINSON. I was 9 and in the fourth grade [in South Carolina].
I happen to remember May 17, 1954, very vividly because my dad was the principal of our school. He made the announcement to the student body that afternoon.
We all knew right from the beginning. I think that’s the thing about black children in the South. We knew that segregation was very real.
There were boundaries imposed by our parents, primarily to keep us safe … there were stories during that period that showed the highest penalty could be exacted against even children. I was from a relatively middle class family, comparatively speaking, and many of us in that group had the experience of being insulated to an extent possible from the worst ravages of segregation.

Q. Were you both surprised at how honest people were in their essay responses?
ROBINSON. I think this is in part the product of maturity … our own ability to look back and to make some honest assessment about our personal place. Some distance was important to enable our contributors to talk honestly about family, especially those that we read to be critical of family.
BONNIE. One of the things that binds these things together is a sense of common experience and shared identity across the United States and racial lines and so on. There is clearly more of a national experience now and a sense of identity that we have despite all of the regional differences in our society, which surely was not true then.
I think that Brown and the civil rights movement … have helped us to forge a sense of identity. I think that’s part of what had to happen in order for people to look back on this experience.

Q. Were there any common themes that you both saw in the essays?
ROBINSON. Some of them report on just one incident, and others talk about the fallout over the longer period. There are some who take a very long view, like mine. I started with my own experiences and go up to the lives of my children.
It’s not a report 40 times one of what happened. These essays give all kinds of insights.
This is not directed toward the legal academy or the legal profession. This is for anybody who wants to know a little more about this period and how it might influence some of what we see now.
BONNIE. One of the beauties of this is that they are so diverse and there are so many experiences that it’s hard to capture them in a word.
These are very personal narratives. One of the most surprising things to me is that these are very touching literary presentations, some of which will bring tears to your eyes.