Robert H. Jackson

“ I favor, at the moment, going no farther than to enter a decree that the state constitutions and statutes relied upon as requiring or authorizing segregation merely on account of race or color, are unconstitutional. ”

“ Once a privilege conferred on those fortunate enough to take advantage of it, it is now regarded as a right of a citizen and a duty enforced by compulsory education laws. Any thought of public education as a privilege which may be given or withheld as a matter of grace has long since passed out of American thinking.
It is neither novel nor radial doctrine that statutes once held constitutional may become invalid by reason of changing conditions, and those held to be good in one state of facts may be held to be bad in another. ”

“ Separatism, either by voluntary withdrawal or by imposed segregation, has been practiced in some degree by many religions, nationalities and races, and by many—one can almost say all—governments, to alleviate tensions, prevent subversions and to quell or forestall violence. It is today being practiced on a voluntary basis by minorities, who discourage or forbid intermarriage, maintain separate denominational schools, and otherwise seek to prevent contacts which threaten dilution of blood or dissipation of faith. ”

“ I am convinced that present-day conditions require us to strike from our books the doctrine of separate-but-equal facilities and to hold invalid provisions of state constitutions or statutes which classify persons for separate treatment in matters of education based solely on possession of colored blood. ”

“ Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that assimilation today has proceeded much beyond where it was at the earlier periods. Blush or shudder, as many will, mixture of blood has been making inroads on segregation faster than change in law. No clear line of separation between the races has been observed. More and more a large population with as much claim to white as to colored blood baffles any justice in classification for segregation. ”

“ School districts, from habit and conviction, will carry it along without aid of state statutes. To eradicate segregation by judicial action means two generations of litigation.
It is apparent that our decision does not end but begins the struggle over segregation. Representatives of the Negros contend with great force that if to enter white schools is a right at all it is a present and personal right and that deferred belief may be a denial of rights to those pupils who meanwhile pass school age. ”

“ The Court can strike down legislation which supports educational segregation, but any constructive policy for abolishing it must come from Congress. Only Congress can enact a policy binding on all states and districts, and it can delegate its supervision to some administrative body provided with standards for determining the conditions under which sanctions should apply. ”

“ It has seemed almost instinctive with every race, faith, state or culture to resort to some isolating device to protect and perpetuate those qualities, real or fancied, which it especially values in itself. ”

“ Almost a century of decisional law rendered by judges, many of whom risked their lives for the cause that produced these Amendments, is almost unanimous in the view that the Amendment tolerated segregation by state action, at least in the absence of congressional action to the contrary.
The custom of a people has always been recognized as a powerful lawmaker. ”

“ One whose impressionable years were spent in public schools in a region where Negro pupils were very few and where economic, social and political motives united against segregating them is predisposed to the conclusion that segregation elsewhere has outlived whatever justification it may have had. The practice seems marked for early extinction. Whatever we might say today, within a generation it will be outlawed by decision of this Court because of the forces of mortality and replacement which operate upon it. ”

“ The handicap of inheritance and environment has been too widely overcome today to warrant these earlier presumptions based on race alone. I do not say that every Negro everywhere is so advanced, nor would I know whether the proportion who have shown educational capacity is or is not in all sections similar. But it seems sufficiently general to require me to say that mere possession of colored blood, in whole or in part, no longer affords a reasonable basis for a classification for educational purposes and that each individual must be rated on his own merit. ”

“ The majority was composed of more moderate men who appeared to be thinking in terms of ending all questions as to constitutionality of the contemporaneous statutes conferring upon the freed man certain limited civil rights. It is hard to find an indication that any influential body of the movement that carried the Civil War Amendments had reached the point of thinking about either segregation or education of the Negro as a current problem, and harder still to find that the Amendments were designed to be a solution. ”

“ I do not find it necessary to stigmatize as hateful or unintelligent the early assumption that Negro education presented problems that were elementary, special and peculiar and that the mass teaching of Negroes was an experiment not easily tied in with the education of pupils of more favored background. ”

“ The Department of Justice concedes that uniform and immediate enforcement of a Court decree condemning segregation is impossible. It points out that school districts may have to be consolidated or divided, or their boundaries revised, and the teachers and pupils may have to be transferred. The Government points out that an essential part of the plan will involve placing white children under colored teachers, unless colored teachers are to be dismissed in some areas where they have been hired in substantial numbers. ”

“ With the fundamental premise that the requirement of equal protection does not disable the state from making reasonable classifications of its inhabitants nor impose the obligation to accord identical treatment to all, there can be no quarrel. ”

“ That is an effective sanction in a private controversy, but it is a weak reed to rely on in initiating a change in the social system of a large part of the United States. With no machinery except that of the courts to put the power of the Government behind it, it seems likely to result in a failure that will bring the court into contempt and the judicial process into discredit. ”

“ I. Since the close of the Civil War, the United States has been “hesitating between two worlds – one dead, the other powerless to be born.” Constitutions are easier amended than social customs, and even the North never fully conformed its racial practices to its professions. ”

“ It can make provisions for federal funds where changes required are beyond the means of the community, for mixing the races will require extensive changes in physical plants and will impose the largest burden on some of the nation’s lowest income regions. Moreover, Congress can lift the heavy burden of private litigation from disadvantaged people and make the investigation and administrative proceedings against recalcitrant districts the function of some public agency that would secure enforcement of the policy. ”

“ While our decision may invalidate existing laws and regulations governing the school, the Court cannot substitute constructive laws and regulations for their governance. Local or state or federal action will have to build the integrated school systems if they are to exist. A gigantic administrative job has to be undertaken. ”

“ Retarded or subnormal ones, like the same kinds in whites, may be accorded separate educational treatment. All that is required is that they be classified as individuals and not as a race for their learning, aptitude and discipline. ”

“ New facilities are necessarily to be provided, and that involves taxation, the sale of bonds, and the votes of taxpayers and affirmative actions by public bodies. It is impossible now to anticipate all of the difficulties or to determine the time necessary in any particular area to overcome them. ”

“ In some regions, the white schools are good, the Negro schools are poor. If both classes are to be accommodated in both schools, it would require white pupils to shift to the Negro schools, a measure not likely to be accepted without strong local opposition. ”