The cases known as Brown v. Board of Education would never have come into being without the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and its national counsel Thurgood Marshall. American Teacher had the opportunity to interview Robert L. Carter and Jack Greenberg, who were key members of the Brown legal team.
Both note that the work of  Brown is not yet finished.

Today, in the central city’s almost totally black schools, the education deficits are as bad or worse than they were [for black children] in the South when segregation was at its height,” says Carter, who has been a federal judge for the southern district of New York since 1972.

While Greenberg—now a professor at Columbia Law School—deplores the school (and housing pattern) resegregation of recent years, he sees cause for encouragement since Brown : “If you look at education today, there is some progress. More blacks are now going to college than ever before—17 percent versus 2 percent or 3 percent at the time of Brown .… You can’t attribute that to any one thing, but Brown made that possible.”

Both men are aware that they helped create “a revolution in the United States in terms of race relations,” as Greenberg (who would go on to succeed Marshall as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1962), puts it.

“Brown  gave rise to the civil rights movement and broke up the racist political system that dominated the country.… I can’t say this surprised us, but I don’t think we stopped to hope for it at the time. We were just focused on the cases in front of us,” Greenberg recalls.

Both Greenberg and Carter feel that teachers have a vital role to play in keeping Brown’s legacy alive. “What should teachers take from the Brown cases and pass on to their students?” says Greenberg. “One is that, if you believe in something, your belief and caring do make a difference as you try to do something about it.” (Greenberg tells the Brown story in his two books: Crusaders in the Courts: Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement  (Twelve Tables Press, 2004, updated) and Brown v. Board of Education: Witness to a Landmark Decision  (Twelve Tables Press, 2004).

Carter was a recent veteran of the segregated World War II Army Air Force when the cases originated—one of many black soldiers who served their country in war and hoped it would honor their rights as citizens in peacetime. “In teaching about Brown , teachers can preach to their students that they have an obligation to fight for equality.

“If enough teachers teach that, I think it will have an enormous impact,” he says.