Editing Brown v. Board of Education (section)

===Consensus building===
[[File:Warren Court 1953.jpg|thumb|right|The members of the U.S. Supreme Court that on May 17, 1954, ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.]]
In spring 1953, the court heard the case, but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks.<ref>See [http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/index.html Smithsonian, ''Separate is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150630105121/http://americanhistory.si.edu/Brown/history/index.html |date=June 30, 2015 }}</ref>

Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued.<ref name=nyorker>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/03/040503crbo_books |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150713084954/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/03/did-brown-matter |archive-date=July 13, 2015 |magazine=The New Yorker |date=May 3, 2004 |title=Did Brown Matter? |first=Cass R. |last=Sunstein |access-date=January 22, 2010 |author-link=Cass R. Sunstein}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Justices [[William O. Douglas]], [[Hugo Black]], [[Harold Hitz Burton]], and [[Sherman Minton]] were predisposed to overturn ''Plessy''.<ref name=nyorker/> [[Fred M. Vinson]] noted that Congress had not adopted desegregation legislation; [[Stanley F. Reed]] discussed incomplete [[cultural assimilation]] and [[states' rights]], and was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; [[Tom C. Clark]] wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out."<ref name=nyorker/> [[Felix Frankfurter]] and [[Robert H. Jackson]] disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to [[judicial activism]] and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability.<ref name=nyorker/> Chief Justice Vinson had been a key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] appointed [[Earl Warren]] as Chief Justice.<ref name=nyorker/> Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems following ''[[Mendez v. Westminster]]''.<ref>{{cite book |title=The quest for a general theory of leadership |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yoSpyA152NQC&pg=PT183 |editor1=George R. Goethals
| editor2=Georgia Jones Sorenson |publisher=[[Edward Elgar Publishing]] |year=2006  
| chapter=Causality, change and leadership
| pages=152–187
| author1=Gill Robinson Hickman 
| author2=Richard A. Couto
|isbn=978-1-84542-541-8}}</ref>{{rp|165}} However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a [[White House]] dinner along with [[John W. Davis]], who was the oral advocate against desegregation in ''[[Briggs v. Elliott]]'', where the president told Warren privately: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes."{{efn|One source gives Eisenhower's quote as saying "big black bucks" instead of "big overgrown Negroes".<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Donnell |first1=Michael |title=When Eisenhower and Warren Squared Off Over Civil Rights |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/commander-v-chief/554045/ |website=The Atlantic |access-date=30 October 2020 |date=9 March 2018 |archive-date=October 31, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201031235758/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/commander-v-chief/554045/ |url-status=live }}</ref>}} Nevertheless, the Justice Department sided with the African-American plaintiffs.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1120 |title=Digital History |website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu |access-date=January 9, 2015 |archive-date=January 10, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150110013024/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1120 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/upshot/the-gang-that-always-liked-ike.html |title=The Gang That Always Liked Ike |first=Michael |last=Beschloss |author-link=Michael Beschloss |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141117022333/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/upshot/the-gang-that-always-liked-ike.html |archive-date=2014-11-17 |url-access=subscription |date=November 15, 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Warren |first=Earl |date=1977 |title=The Memoirs of Earl Warren |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday & Company |page=[https://archive.org/details/memoirsofearlwar0000warr/page/291 291] |isbn=0385128355 |url=https://archive.org/details/memoirsofearlwar0000warr/page/291}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Newton |first=Jim |title=Justice For All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made |publisher=Penguin Group |year=2006 |location=New York |pages=312–313}}</ref>

While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the [[judicial restraint]] faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a [[recess appointment]], held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment.

Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that the court must overrule ''Plessy'' to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive [[Southern United States|Southern]] resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion. Although most justices were immediately convinced, Warren spent some time after this famous speech convincing everyone to sign onto the opinion. Justice Jackson dropped his concurrence and Reed finally decided to drop his dissent. The final decision was unanimous. Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the court.<ref>{{cite book |first=James T. |last=Patterson |author-link=James T. Patterson (historian) |title=Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=New York |year=2001 |isbn=0-19-515632-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/brownvboardofedu2001patt}}</ref> Reed was the last holdout and reportedly cried during the reading of the opinion.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Caro |first1=Robert A. |author-link=Robert Caro |title=[[Master of the Senate]] |date=2002 |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |isbn=9780394720951 |page=696}}</ref>