Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 148. Momentum: The Ripples Made by Ordinary People, Part 3

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon guides us to a lawsuit years in the making, that shaped America. While some of the names tied with the milestone have been all but lost to history, you will hear many of those uncredited names mentioned in this episode, including McKinley Bernet, Vivian Marshall, and Lucinda Todd. The year was 1952 when Brown v. The Board of Education was argued before the Supreme Court by our friend, Thurgood Marshall. But did you know that the case was actually heard by the high court twice? You also might not know that J. Edgar Hoover, mentioned in previous episodes, was spying on the Supreme Court Justices for decades. What would Hoover have to gain from these warrantless wiretaps? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to the third installment of our special series called Momentum. examining the ordinary people who did extraordinary things to create forward motion, momentum, and struggle for freedom in the United States. I'm Sharon McBann, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. In episode two, I started sharing more information about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and he is going to come back again in future episodes. But I want to share a couple of other things about him that are interesting food for thought. There's been many years of speculation about whether or not organized crime was blackmailing J. Edgar Hoover, and that's one of those things that we might never know about him. But it has not stopped people from looking. There was one woman in particular, Millie McGee, who was very interested in J. Edgar

Hoover, and the reason for that was she had been told as a young woman growing up in the 1950s, she grew up in rural Mississippi, she had been told stories of her ancestors. And those stories all included the fact that there was this very powerful man in her family named Edgar, and it was her second cousin, and he was passing for white. And she said that her family told her he was so powerful, he could have us all killed. And Millie McGee was African American. And she looked around, was African American. And she looked around, saw J. Edgar Hoover, and thought, I wonder if it's true. And so she began as an adult to do a significant amount of research on her own. She dug through court records, did oral interviews with people, hired licensed genealogists to substantiate the rumors that she heard as a child. And one of the things she said was,

because of J. Edgar Hoover's anti-Black history, I'm not proud of this lineage, but history must be based on truth. Other people, other novelists that knew the Hoover family in the 1930s said, it was always said in my family and around the city that Hoover came from a family that quote unquote, passed. And passed in this context means passed for white. And I mentioned in a previous episode that he did not get a birth certificate until he was an adult. And there's

been a lot of speculation about whether or not that is somehow related to his race. Because he's dead, it's one of the things we might never know. We might never know what his true race was or if he was being blackmailed by organized crime. Another thing that's widely speculated is that he was being blackmailed by organized crime members because he was gay. And that's another thing that we probably will never know. But one thing is true. J. Edgar Hoover did not like people that were different. That is very well documented. He was heavily involved in the Lavender Scare, which was an attempt to purge people from the federal government who might be gay. You did not even need evidence. You just needed an accusation, and then they could be hauled before Congress, and many of them were dismissed.

So this is not the last you've heard of J. Edgar. I want to move on to another man and his family. His name was Oliver. He was born in 1918. He did not have a lot of education, but one teacher remembered him saying he was an average pupil and a good citizen. And he grew up to be a welder and was very active in his church and eventually became an assistant pastor at an African Methodist Episcopal church. He was well-liked, he was shy, he was hardworking, he was religious. And he was married to a woman named Leola, and they had three daughters. The oldest daughter was named Linda. Linda was adorable. She had a round, open face. She had adorable pigtails. She loved to play the piano. When she grew up, she became a very accomplished pianist. And Oliver and Leola and their three daughters lived in a neighborhood

that was ethnically diverse. But because of school segregation laws, their children had to attend a school that was miles from where they lived. Oliver said that his daughter Linda many times had to wait through the cold, the rain, and the snow for a bus to take her to school. One thing that's interesting to note is that the city where they lived, which was Topeka, Kansas, did a survey, a survey of Black families. And they asked Black families, do you want to integrate schools? Do you want to send your children to integrated schools? Or do you prefer that the schools be segregated?

And 65% of Black parents reportedly said they preferred all Black schools. And that could be for a number of reasons. It could be that they feared for their children's safety if they attended integrated schools. It could be that they feared for their children's safety if they attended integrated schools. It could also be that they felt their children were better off being taught by people who understood what it was like to be Black in America in the 1950s. Hey, Torontonians, recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment.

Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference. Because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends.

And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode.

Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to go back to Oliver and Linda in a few minutes, but I want to tell you about a couple of other interesting people as well. The first one is a man named McKinley Burnett. McKinley Burnett worked for the Santa Fe Railroad and eventually the Veterans Administration. And in those two jobs, racism was highly evident, and it prompted him to become a member of the Topeka NAACP. And you'll recall from a previous episode, we talked a little bit about what the NAACP was and why it was founded, and he wanted to join to help improve the working conditions of people. One of the ways that McKinley Burnett wanted to create better conditions

in Topeka, Kansas, was he wanted to work to integrate schools. And so he was a highly respected minister and youth leader at his local church, and he used his position in his church to influence many people of all races to work to change the systems of racial inequality in Topeka. And one of the ways that he did this is for two years, he worked extra hours outside of his work day so he would have vacation time saved up so that he could attend every single school board meeting for two years. That is dedication. That is momentum. That is an ordinary citizen doing something extraordinary. And it might seem like, yeah, attending school board meetings, like lots of people do that. But this is a man who attended every single school board meeting for two years and saved up his vacation to be able

to make that happen. Eventually, McKinley Burnett became the president of the Topeka chapter of the NAACP. And one of his goals as the president beginning in the late 1940s was desegregation of the schools. In 1950, he told the Topeka school board, if you do not integrate, I am going to take you to court. His exact quote was, it may sound rather abrupt, but you've had two years now to prepare for this. And as soon as he sat down, one of the board members jumped up and roared, is this a request or an ultimatum? And McKinley Burnett said the person yelled at him so loudly that it was frightening. The fact that he had been yelled at and the fact that he had dedicated two years of his life to this cause did not deter him.

In fact, he was suffering from leukemia. But despite his condition, he continued to work to plan and strategize ways in which he could spur the Topeka school board into taking action. And one of the ways that he did that was he recruited a woman named Lucinda Todd. And Lucinda Todd became the secretary of the same NAACP chapter. She was a school teacher until she got married. And then after she married, she began working in civil rights advocacy. And Lucinda had a daughter named Nancy. And Nancy was forced to ride a bus to an all-black school while the all-white neighborhood school was located just a few blocks from her home

and in 1948 a newspaper called the Topeka Daily Capital published a column about militant groups attempting to do away with colored schools and the article praised the bang-up job of education that existed in Black schools. And Lucinda Todd's response to that was, if by wanting my child to have equal education, I'm being militant, then thank God I am militant. And so collectively, what people like McKinley, Oliver, and Lucinda decided to do was enroll their students in the white schools. And Linda remembers her dad holding her hand, marching her into the white school that was very near their home, where many of her friends from the

neighborhood attended, and told her to sit in the chair in the front office way while he spoke with the principal. And she said she heard sort of raised voices in the principal's office. And when he came back and he took her hand and led her out of the office, she said she could feel the tension in his hand. She could feel the anger in his hand, even though he said nothing. And so Oliver Brown, Lucinda Todd, and McKinley Barnett, along with a number of other families whose names have in many ways been lost to history, decided to file a lawsuit. And let's take a moment and not lose those names to history. Let's acknowledge that Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emanuel,

Marguerite Emerson, Sherla Fleming, Zelma Henderson, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, Vivian Scales, and Lucinda Todd were all parties to a lawsuit that changed America. They were all ordinary Americans who decided enough is enough. And I am willing to do what it takes to make a change. If that means working extra hours so I can accumulate vacation to attend every single school board meeting, even though I have leukemia, that is what I'm going to do. And guess who represented them? That's right. You guessed correctly. Our friend, Thurgood Marshall. And so initially, this case lost in the lower courts. The lower courts said that, listen, the schools are equal. The teachers have the same educational qualifications, and they teach the same things as the children in the white schools. The fact that

some kids have to travel farther doesn't mean that the school is not equal. And so the NAACP decided to appeal that decision all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And there was a man working at the United States Supreme Court. In fact, he had recently been appointed as the Chief Justice, and his name was Earl Warren. Earl Warren was very opposed to school segregation as a whole. He felt it was legally indefensible and morally wrong. And he set out to not just overturn the concept of separate but equal that was established by the Supreme Court in 1896. He didn't want to just overturn it. He wanted it to be a unanimous decision. He wanted

every single person on that court to agree with him. Why? Because he felt that that was the message America needed to hear. That even one holdout would be enough for some people to say, I don't have to do that. Lots of good people don't agree with that. He made it his mission to try to get everyone on board. Here's something you might not know about the Supreme Court. J. Edgar Hoover was spying on them. J. Edgar Hoover spied on the Supreme Court for decades. And you might hear things in the news today about things like a Supreme Court leak, where a decision, a draft decision was leaked to the press before it was released by the Supreme Court. And that is a concerning thing. And it's something that the Supreme Court needs to investigate and figure out how they can keep

that from happening in the future, because it's very disruptive. But it's also interesting to note that the Supreme Court justices themselves were subjected to decades of warrantless wiretaps in which J. Edgar Hoover listened in on their conversations, including the conversations of Earl Warren. There was one Supreme Court justice that J. Edgar Hoover in particular hated, Justice Frankfurter. And J. Edgar Hoover felt like Justice Frankfurter was one of the most dangerous men in America, to use his own words. You might think that Thurgood Marshall was riding high during this time period. He was racking up a lot of wins at the Supreme Court. He was seeing momentum on the issue of civil rights in the United States, but he was facing some personal difficulty. His wife, who had really seen him through college, who had helped propel him through the beginning of his career, was sick.

Eventually, she learned she had lung cancer, but she continued to hide it from Thurgood until after these Topeka cases had been decided. She did not want him to be distracted from his important work. So she waited until the day after the Supreme Court made their decision on the cases of Oliver Brown et al. to tell him, I have lung cancer. And Thurgood Marshall's wife, Vivian, who went by the nickname Buster, was also one of those Americans who made freedom possible. She was a civil rights activist who worked alongside her husband, Thurgood Marshall, who encouraged him in his important work. She is one of the uncredited heroes of a case that we now know as Brown versus the Board of Education.

It was one case that got the big name, Brown versus the Board of Education, and it was Oliver Brown and his daughter Linda, who in many ways became the faces of Education, and it was Oliver Brown and his daughter Linda who in many ways became the faces of this movement. But Oliver Brown's name was on the case because his name was first alphabetically. When I said the Latin phrase et al, that is a legal phrase that you see used often, and it means as well, or and others. And so let's not forget all of the other people who worked to make this happen. We remember the name Brown, but perhaps we don't remember the wife of the man who made the case possible. Perhaps we don't remember the McKinley Burnetts. Perhaps we don't remember the Lucinda Todds, who said, if this makes me radical, then so be it. And so when the Supreme Court agreed here,

Brown versus the Board of Education, it was actually a consolidation of multiple cases about the issue surrounding school segregation. The year was 1952, and Thurgood Marshall argued the case himself. And he used the 14th Amendment of the United States and argued that separate school systems for Black and white children were inherently unequal. And thus they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. He used evidence like sociological tests that were performed by social scientists like Kenneth Clark to demonstrate that being separate had a tendency to make Black children feel inferior to white children. And thus, such a system was unconstitutional. I mentioned that the Supreme Court justice who was deeply committed to abolishing the doctrine

of separate but equal was Earl Warren. But what I didn't mention is that Brown versus the Board of Education was actually heard twice. It was heard two times. The first time in 1952 when there was a different Chief Justice on the Supreme Court, Fred Vinson, and then he died and a new Chief Justice was appointed, Earl Warren. Earl Warren was the governor of California. And so the justices agreed to re-hear the case because they wanted Earl Warren to be able to have the full impact of oral arguments that the Supreme Court hears. Now, quick little point of clarification, the Supreme Court does not have trials. They do not call witnesses. They do not present evidence, one attorney for one side

and one attorney for the other side. They each get a very set amount of time to talk, during which time the justices interrupt the attorney all the time, eating into their time. A little light goes on, they get to start talking. The justices will say, excuse me, what about this? What about this? And they have to answer that question and still get all of their points in in the time allotted. And so because the Supreme Court was unable to make a decision by the end of their term,

they agreed to hear Brown v. The Board of Education again in December of 1953. Thurgood Marshall's opponent was an attorney who had made over a hundred appearances in front of the Supreme Court. And his arguments sounded tired. His arguments reflected the ripped and frayed institution of segregation in the United States. His arguments sounded like, shouldn't states be allowed to decide how they want to educate their own children? Separate is not necessarily unequal. Blacks should be happy for what they have. It's a lot more than what they used to get. People camped out outside the courthouse so that they could have a chance to get a seat to listen to the oral arguments.

And a case that was many, many years in the making finally went behind the closed doors of the Supreme Court justices that were being spied on by J. Edgar Hoover. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson.

It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.