Brown v. Board of Education and Native American Schools

Note: the 1950s sources quoted here use racial language now widely considered insensitive or offensive to Native peoples.

While the Supreme Court weighed the cases that became Brown v. Board of Education (decided May 17, 1954), a side question came up more than once: if racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, what about the schools for Native American children run by the Department of the Interior?

The Bolling v. Sharpe argument, December 1952

Bolling v. Sharpe challenged segregation in the District of Columbia's schools. Because the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause didn't apply to the District, D.C.'s lawyer, Assistant Corporation Counsel Milton D. Korman, argued that the Fifth Amendment — which governs Congress's actions in D.C. — has a due process clause but no equal protection clause, so Congress could pass discriminatory laws; and that the Court had for some ninety years accepted separate schools under the Fourteenth Amendment.

US Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson Library of Congress (neg. no. LC-USZ62-38828)

Justice Robert H. Jackson had asked what ruling against separate schools under the Fifth Amendment might mean for Indians. Korman answered that whole chapters of federal law were written to "protect" Indians — citing the ban on selling them liquor. Jackson, who lived near the Seneca Reservation in New York, replied with a quip that leaned on stereotypes of drunkenness and "scalping knives."

US Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas Library of Congress, neg. no. LC-USZ62-44543.

Then Justice William O. Douglas raised schools in his part of the country:

"Justice Douglas: Referring to the educational system in the part of the country I come from, the Indians are not barred from the public schools, but the schools on the reservations are open only to Indians, and the white man would be barred from those schools.
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Mr. Korman: That is quite a different problem, Mr. Justice. In anticipation of that question, I talked to representative of the Indian Bureau, and I told them that there are some 230 schools on reservations which are restricted to Indians, and there are 19 schools off reservations which are restricted to Indians.
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Justice Douglas: That merely keeps the white man out. The public school systems of the West, at least, are open to Indians."

Korman said that was up to the states. He went on to note that many big-city systems separated students by sex, and closed by urging the Court to let communities change at their own pace, leaving the question to Congress.

The letters

Page 1 of Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman's letter to Supreme Court Clerk Harold B. Willey, December 12, 1952. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Supreme Court.

December 12, 1952 — Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman to the Court's clerk, Harold B. Willey. Chapman wrote that the exchange had left the "erroneous impression" that federal Indian schools were segregated by law or policy. They were not, he said: their pupils were mostly Indian because the schools were generally in isolated Indian country, or because nearby non-Indian families preferred other schools. Any non-Indian child in the area could enroll, and in 1951–1952, 247 non-Indian children attended federal Indian schools. Where state public schools were available, Interior's policy was for Indian children to attend them.

Page 2 of Chapman's letter. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Supreme Court.

December 16, 1952 — Korman's reply. Korman, stung by the suggestion he had misled the Court, laid out his contemporaneous phone notes: the Interior Department's assistant solicitor for Indian affairs had referred him to the Indian Bureau's education division, where a staff member told him of 230 reservation schools and 19 off-reservation schools — such as Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and schools at Albuquerque, Wahpeton, Flandreau, Pierre, Santa Fe and Chilocco — limited to children of one-quarter or more Indian blood. An associate later learned from the Bureau that all 247 non-Indian pupils were at 19 of the reservation schools and paid tuition, while Indian children did not. Any error, Korman wrote, came from Interior's own information; after twenty-seven years building his reputation before the District's courts, he would hardly start deceiving the Supreme Court.

Thurgood Marshall's answer, two days earlier

The question had also come up in Briggs v. Elliott, from Summerton, South Carolina. Jackson asked NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall what his argument meant for the segregation of Indians. Marshall said Indians were no longer wards of the government and stood in no special category; that in the southern states he knew of, Indians were treated better than Black Americans and not excluded; and that the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to them too — the problem was that they had lacked the means to bring lawsuits. When Jackson suggested he bring some, Marshall replied that he already had a full load.

What the exchanges show

• Even highly educated justices could voice stereotypes about Native Americans in open court without embarrassment.
• Some already saw that striking down segregation of Black students would extend logically to other excluded groups — and perhaps raise questions about separating students by sex.
• There was not yet a united civil rights movement; other groups' legal victories would come in the 1960s and 1970s. Korman's plea to leave schools to states and legislatures was among the last stands of states' rights over education.

What happened for Native Americans

Brown did not apply to Native American education. As legal scholar Lawrence R. Baca explains, in the 1950s — known to Indian people as the termination era — the federal government set out to get out of Indian affairs: breaking up reservations, ending tribal governments and handing Indian education to the states, with federal money. The path to Brown, he argues, never passed through Indian country.

The issue reached the courts through Sinajini v. Board of Education, filed in 1973 by the Native American Rights Fund to bring elementary and secondary schools to the Utah portion of the Navajo Indian Reservation. In 1994, sixty-six high school students at Navajo Mountain, Utah — who otherwise had to attend federal boarding schools in Arizona, ninety miles away — asked the San Juan County school district to build a high school. It refused, and Meyers v. Board of Education was filed.

The question was who must educate Indian children living on a reservation. The United States sided with the Navajo plaintiffs that the state and county were responsible; Utah argued the duty was shared by federal, state and county governments; the district wanted the federal government to take it all. The court came closest to Utah's view:

"The court concludes that all of the entities involved in this case—the District, the State, the United States and the Navajo Nation—each has a duty to educate the children of Navajo Mountain. The duty of one does not relieve any other of its own obligation."

With federal and state money, the district built a high school at Navajo Mountain.

Congress directs Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park to honor the civil rights stories of struggle, perseverance and activism in the pursuit of education equity.

Sources

Based on "The Brown v. Board of Education Decision Related to Native Americans," by James H. Williams, PhD, Superintendent, Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article draws on the U.S. Supreme Court's records at the National Archives; Leon Friedman, ed., Argument: The Oral Argument before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1952–55 (1969); and Lawrence R. Baca, "Meyers v. Board of Education: The Brown v. Board of Indian Country," University of Illinois Law Review (2004). Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.