Letters from an American - May 16, 2024

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

May 16, 2024. Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Brown v. Board was a turning point in American history. It established that the U.S. government would, once and for all, use the 14th Amendment to protect American citizens from discriminatory legislation written by state legislatures. Added to the Constitution in 1868 in the wake of the

Civil War, as Southern state legislatures were writing laws that made black Americans subservient to white Americans, the 14th Amendment asserted that the federal government could and must stop such discrimination. It established that no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. It gave Congress the power to enforce the amendment. In the late 19th century, the Supreme Court nodded to racial segregation in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, getting around the 14th Amendment by asserting that separate accommodations were fine

so long as they were equal. But in 1954, a unanimous court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had previously been the Republican governor of California, ruled that racial segregation established by state law in public schools denied to black children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, it wrote. Just two weeks before it decided Brown v. Board, the Supreme Court had decided Hernandez v. Texas, which established that not only Black Americans, but also Mexican Americans and all other nationality groups were entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Over the following decades, the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to strike down

state laws against interracial marriage and gay marriage, and to establish equal rights for women, including the right to abortion. It also ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin constitutional. That new legal framework embodied in Brown v. Board, both established the equal rights that were central to the modern era and sparked a backlash against them. The federal requirement that states desegregate their public schools spurred southern state legislatures to

pass laws and resolutions to block or postpone desegregation. In 1956, 99 congressmen, led by South Carolina Democrat Strom Thurmond, wrote the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, quickly dubbed the Southern Manifesto, denouncing desegregation as unconstitutional. Lawmakers also found ways to transfer tax dollars to private schools, which were not covered by the Supreme Court's decision. Attendance at so-called segregation academies exploded. By 1958, more than 250,000 students had migrated to segregation academies, a number that jumped to a million by 1965. Those opposed to racial equality made common cause with

those businessmen determined to get rid of federal regulation of business. In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr., the son of an oil man, started National Review, a periodical that promised to stand against an active government that protected labor and regulated business. Buckley said he would tell the violated businessman side of the story. In National Review, Buckley gave Virginia newspaper editor James Kilpatrick a platform to assure readers that desegregation challenged American values. Black Americans had no right to the equality declared unanimously by the Supreme Court, Kilpatrick wrote. Rather, the white community had an established right to peace and tranquility, the right to freedom from tumult and lawlessness. Desegregation would lead to bloody violence, he promised, implying that black Americans would rage and riot,

although in fact it was the white community that was attacking black Americans. In 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater brought these two themes to his presidential campaign. He stood firm on the idea that the federal government had no business either regulating business or protecting equality. In The Conscience of a Conservative, published under his name in 1960, Goldwater asserted that the federal government had no power over schools at all and certainly could not order them to desegregate. Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination in July 1964, less than a month after three civil rights workers registering Black Americans to vote had disappeared in Mississippi.

Goldwater told his cheering supporters, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Strom Thurmond publicly announced that he would vote for Goldwater. Goldwater lost in a landslide, but his loss fed the backlash against federal protection of equality, especially after Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act to expand black and brown voting, moving many of those voters into the Democrats' camp. black and brown voting, moving many of those voters into the Democrats' camp. In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon courted Thurmond and white Southerners with a promise to slow down desegregation and a defense of states' rights. The so-called Southern Strategy moved the former Dixiecrats to the Republican Party. Religious traditionalists, particularly

those among the Southern Baptist Convention, also opposed the federal government's support for equality, although they got less press in the early years of that expansion. In their view, the Bible laid out hierarchical social arrangements, especially patriarchy. Government defense of women's equality was a direct assault on their worldview. When he ran for the presidency in 1980, former California Governor Ronald Reagan courted those religious traditionalists, and in 1985, his people made them a key part of the Republican coalition. Americans for Tax Reform brought together big business, evangelicals, and social conservatives under the leadership of Grover Norquist, who had been an economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources, Norquist explained, but these groups can provide the votes. In the following decades, Republican leaders used racist and traditionalist dislike of equal rights to turn out voters who would let them put their economic policies, cuts to taxes and deregulation of business, into place. But those opposed to equal rights found themselves out of step with the majority of voters and unable to get their policies enshrined into law. As courts continued to

uphold equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ plus individuals, and women. The backlash against the federal protection of equal rights based on the 14th Amendment entered a new era with the election of Donald Trump. In contrast to his predecessors, of Donald Trump. In contrast to his predecessors, Trump let the racist and sexist voter base of the party drive policy. White evangelicals, especially, found in Trump an answer to their frustration at being sidelined by the courts and a majority of American voters. Despite his own lack of personal virtue, Trump was willing to smash through the laws and court decisions that had supported equality since the 1950s, offering to center the country on traditional religion and racial hierarchies in exchange for power. Under him, traditionalists saw the court stacked

with extremists who would prioritize their evangelical faith across society, including by ending the federal protection of abortion rights. Their fight to return Trump to power is part of their fight to establish traditional religion, rather than the equality promised in the 14th Amendment, as the nation's fundamental law. As Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Me, wrote to Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as they plotted to overturn the decision of voters in 2020 to reject Trump, this is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the king of kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well new era of equality and democracy in the United States, MAGA Republican lawmakers, Andy Biggs, a Republican of Arizona, Lauren Boebert, a Republican of Colorado, Michael Cloud, a Republican of Texas, Eli Crane, a Republican of Arizona, Matt Gates,

a Republican of Florida, Bob Good, a Republican of Virginia, Diana Harshbarger, a Republican of Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican of Florida, Ralph Norman, a Republican of South Carolina, and Andy Ogles, a Republican of Tennessee, traveled to Manhattan to stand with Trump at his criminal trial for falsifying business records to interfere in an election. The lawmakers made it clear that their determination to control the country has made them give up not only on the equality promised in the Declaration

of Independence and defended by the 14th Amendment, but also on democracy. Echoing the promise of the right-wing Proud Boys to Trump before they stormed the U.S. Capitol to install Trump into office despite the will of voters, Gates tweeted, standing back and standing by, Mr. President. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.