Of Course, Clarence Thomas Objects to Brown V. Board of Education

Was He Against Integration the Integration of Schools He Benefitted From?

By John T. Bledsoe — This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsca.03090.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7969635

It wasn’t even the topic of conversation, but Clarence Thomas couldn’t help but voice his disagreement with the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, which, on paper, ended segregation. Thomas wasn’t opposed to the overall decision; he believed the Court didn’t have the power to enforce the law they had just made, which was being widely ignored across the South and the nation. Thomas was opposed to that sweeping legislation, whereas he had no problem with the Court inventing Presidential immunity, corporations being people, and removing women’s Constitutional rights.

In the 1954 Brown v. Board opinion, justices offered no instructions on when and how desegregation would occur. The Court didn’t force the states to comply, and it should be no surprise they didn’t. The Court always planned to return to the issue the following year, and in Brown v. Board of Education II, SCOTUS issued the famous but toothless directive, “With All Deliberate Speed.” One of the plaintiffs in the case, the NAACP, argued for an immediate end to segregation. The states said it would be too expensive and disruptive and asked for more time. The states won.