T he Supreme Court was a reliable partner in maintaining slavery and in the campaign to rebuild and strengthen racial hierarchy and white supremacy after the Civil War.
When the Court changed course in the midth century and began striking down laws that authorized racial discrimination and segregation, many white people in the South felt betrayed. On May 17, , in Brown v. Board of Education Topeka , U. Ferguson, U. Brown threatened to dislodge a cornerstone of the Southern racial caste system. Brown outraged white segregationists as much as it energized civil rights activists.
Throughout the South, where state constitutions 89 Miss. Within months, Brookhaven, Mississippi, circuit judge Thomas Pickens Brady published a pamphlet that predicted Brown would harm both races. What the Supreme Court needs to do is to spend about thirty days in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or East Texas and associate intimately with the average Negro family. In so far as the South is concerned, the Southern Negro knows we are his friend.
We have provided his material necessities when he could not do so for himself. Gradually we have opened the door of opportunity to him and will continue to do so. The South has produced some Negroes of considerable wealth and ability.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Some of these tools, such as bombing and murdering civil rights activists, continued the tradition of maintaining white supremacy through lethal violence.
