Jimmy Carter on Brown v. Board at 25: 'We Will Not Be Pushed Back'

On May 17, 1979 — 25 years after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education — President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, spoke at a White House observance in the East Room. After his death, the National Park Service recalled the speech.

A tribute to A. Philip Randolph

Carter opened by mourning A. Philip Randolph, who had just died. When America was "a completely segregated society," he said, Randolph was "a voice for justice and equal rights for all Americans":

• he organized the first black trade union in 1925;
• he organized and led the first march on Washington in 1941;
• during the Second World War he was probably the figure most responsible for opening industries to black workers.

Above all, Carter said, Randolph gave the movement "the power of his example" — dignity, integrity, eloquence, commitment to justice, gentleness and nonviolence — and his ideals had been "the guiding spirit of the modern civil rights movement." Carter asked for a moment of silence.

What Brown changed

Brown, Carter said, "was the most important of all civil rights cases." It struck down the legal basis for segregation — though, he acknowledged, segregation in schools and discrimination in housing still existed in fact. "But let us not be discouraged. Let us just be even more determined."

He traced the long contradiction in American history between ideals of freedom and equality and the reality, from the arrival of the first enslaved people in Virginia to the 1896 decision, by 8 to 1, that made "the fraudulent Jim Crow concept of separate-but-equal the law of the land." On May 17, 1954, something changed:

1. Black Americans themselves were before the courts defending their own rights;
2. the Court was unanimous — "All nine members spoke as one for the conscience of our country";
3. thousands now felt free to work, state by state, changing law after law.

A call on housing

"Too many doors are still locked," Carter said. To bring Brown's benefits to the northern poor, he urged Congress to amend the Fair Housing Act, lifting the burden and cost of enforcement from victims of discrimination, and to give the Department of Housing and Urban Development power to resolve complaints directly, with cease-and-desist authority for Secretary Pat Harris. He asked the audience to help get the bill through Congress.

Three campaigns

Carter described three great campaigns for equality: the Emancipation Proclamation, signed in the White House; the end of legalized social oppression, in which Brown was decisive; and — hardest of all — equal opportunity in the economy.

He noted the 166 black presidential appointees of his administration, announced he would nominate Nat Jones, general counsel of the NAACP, to the federal bench in the Sixth Circuit, and Marcus Alexis to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

"We believe that it does"

Carter quoted Chief Justice Warren: "Does segregation of children in public schools, solely on the basis of race, deprive children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? … We believe that it does." By the same reasoning, he asked, do not poor-quality schools, housing discrimination and exclusion from jobs deprive Americans of equal opportunity too?

"We will not be pushed back. We will not be turned away. We will fight to see that no one is left outside, that equality of opportunity and justice will prevail in our country, the land of the free."

He ended with a joke to the officials in the room: as soon as they finished celebrating, "let's all go back to work."

Sources

Based on "President Jimmy Carter's Remarks on the 25th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Decisions," Brown v. Board of Education and Jimmy Carter national historical parks, National Park Service, reproducing the remarks from the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1979; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Quotations are the president's.