In this look back at the landmark Brown v. Board decision about desegregation, Ronald K.L. Collins and Judge Thomas L. Ambro recall the case from Delaware that was also part of the Supreme Court’s considerations.
Many either do not know or have forgotten that two Delaware cases were consolidated with those from three other states and the District of Columbia under the umbrella of Brown v. Board of Education. While those NAACP-consolidated cases received thoughtful attention in Richard Kluger’s seminal Simple Justice (1975), the sheer volume of writing extended discussions of each case was beyond even the two volumes Kluger originally devoted to his enterprise.
Given that, we add context to the Delaware side of Brown, focusing on the remarkable lawyers and judge involved in the case alongside the courageous plaintiffs who challenged school segregation.
Racial Justice in the First State
On the one hand, Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution. On the other hand, it did not ratify the Civil War Amendments until 1901. The history of racial justice and injustice in Delaware is thus a mixed one that emerged against the backdrop of state-sanctioned slavery and indentured servitude. In the year after Plessy v. Ferguson, Delaware amended its Constitution in 1897 to require that “separate” though equal public schools “be maintained.”
The Delaware story is also a proud one of courage and determination to end the vestiges of slavery. Black and white, old and young, along with people of faith, public officials, and even commercial businesspeople are all a part of that venerable story. By the late 1940s and the early 1950s, a move was afoot to contest the segregationist order.
In a period of constitutional evolution, the NAACP won three important Supreme Court segregation cases: two involving admissions to law schools (1948 and 1950), and another involving admission to a graduate school in education (1950). All three rulings preserved Plessy’s holding but applied it so that “separate” nonetheless included “equal.” In time, that formula would significantly erode the segregation tradition; that, at least, was one legal strategy until Plessy could be overruled. It was in that context that the Delaware cases came onto the constitutional scene.
Two Remarkable Lawyers and an Extraordinary Judge
In important respects, the results obtained in the Delaware cases were ground-breaking. This was thanks largely to the efforts of three exceptional men: the NAACP lawyers Louis Redding (1901-1998) and Jack Greenberg (1924-2016), and the Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Collins Seitz (1914-1998).
Louis Redding (left, with Thurgood Marshall) came from a family committed to education and racial justice. He attended Howard High School in Wilmington, the sole Black school in 1919. After that, he went to Brown University from which he graduated with honors in 1923. From there he went on to Harvard Law School. When he received his degree in 1928, Redding was the lone African American in his class. The following year he was admitted to the Delaware Bar, being the first person of his race to be so admitted. Shockingly, for more than a quarter-century, Redding remained the sole Black lawyer in the Delaware Bar.In time, Jack Greenberg would succeed Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. But when he was assigned to work with Redding, the Iwo Jima Navy veteran and Columbia Law School grad was young and untested. Despite his age, Greenberg was already viewed by Marshall and others as an astute lawyer with fresh ideas.
Then there was Collins Seitz, Delaware-born and educated save for his University of Virginia law degree. After a stint in private practice, the congenial and gifted Seitz took his seat as a Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1946. He became Chancellor of that Court in 1951. In both capacities, he presided over important desegregation cases brought to him by Redding and Greenberg. Beyond his impressive jurisprudential skills (recognized nationally in corporate law), Seitz was dedicated to racial justice. In a March 31, 1948, radio broadcast he urged Delawareans to strive to “make the words ‘civil rights’ a meaningful part of their daily lives—not just so many empty words.”
Three Delaware Cases: The Road to Brown
The trio that was Redding, Greenberg, and Seitz came together in a case that involved Black students who sought admission to an all-white state college. That racist reality was under attack in January 1950 when Brooks Parker and nine other African American plaintiffs challenged the University of Delaware’s segregationist undergraduate admissions policy. They were denied admission because Delaware State College (established in 1891 and renamed twice) for Blacks was purportedly equal. Redding and Greenberg took constitutional exception and represented the plaintiffs. Contesting the state’s segregationist policy, they took their case (Parker v. University of Delaware) to Delaware’s Chancery Court. Happenstance explained the assignment of it to the 35-year-old Vice Chancellor Seitz.
After personally visiting the Black student college and the white student university, Seitz wrote a lengthy opinion. His trial court ruling took perceptive notice of what Redding and Greenberg had argued in their filings; it also contained a remarkable mixture of compare-and-contrast realism with judicial prudence. Attentive to recent Supreme Court precedents, Seitz concluded that “the State of Delaware is not providing these plaintiffs and others similarly situated with educational opportunities at the [Delaware State] College which are equal to those provided at the University [of Delaware]. [Hence,] the Trustees of the University by refusing to consider plaintiffs' applications because they are Negroes have violated the guarantee contained in the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.” In other words, under Plessy Delaware’s colleges were “separate” but not “equal.” Seitz’s opinion was formidable; the government did not appeal it.
Redding, Greenberg (left), and Seitz had breached one of the nefarious fortresses of segregation. It wasn’t an out-and-out desegregation victory -- real and full integration still had to occur. Though Plessy remained on the books, its racist staying power was waning. Soon enough all three men would return to the educational scene to scrutinize yet another one of Delaware’s Jim Crow laws.
Claymont and Hockessin, Delaware, are at the northernmost part of the State, each less than a mile from Pennsylvania. Claymont is near the Delaware River in the east; Hockessin is a dozen miles to the west. As in Parker, separate was not equal when it came to education. In Claymont, Black parents of high school students (one of whom was Ethel Louise Belton, pictured left) sought Louis Redding’s help to integrate the white high school to stave off busing their children to all-Black schools several miles away in Wilmington.
Sarah Bulah and her husband Fred had adopted an abandoned child and named her Shirley. They lived two miles from the one-room Black schoolhouse, and Sarah wanted the school bus that went by her door to transport Shirley to the Black elementary school on the way to the white school. When state officials refused to provide this bus service, Ms. Bulah then sought out Redding. He was not, however, interested in getting a Jim Crow bus to take Shirley to a Jim Crow school. Rather, he would take the case if it sought to integrate the white school. Bulah agreed though she faced opposition from, among others, the minister of the Black church next to the schoolhouse.
Redding and Greenberg filed the Belton/Bulah suits against the members of the Delaware Board of Education and other school officials. They chose a federal district court as their venue and not the state’s Court of Chancery where Seitz, by then the Chancellor, presided. He made “a lot of enemies” by the Parker decision, and Redding didn’t want “this much additional heat” on Seitz. That tack changed when the consolidated cases were transferred to state court. Seitz was thus back in the eye of a legal storm.
Redding and Greenberg’s strategy was to enlist, among others, social and psychology experts to show the common-sense damage done to Black students in segregated schools. Seitz visited each school and in 1952 agreed with the plaintiffs’ theme: the Black schools were separate, but they were not equal, especially when considering the contrast in educational facilities. Seitz ruled that “[a]n injunction will issue preventing the defendants and their agents from refusing these plaintiffs, and those similarly situated, admission” to the white schools. “This [was] the first real victory,” said Thurgood Marshall, “in our campaign to destroy segregation of American pupils in elementary and high schools.”
After Belton and Bulah were essentially affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court, the State sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court. The cases then joined the decisions denominated as Brown, with Redding and others arguing their respective positions before the Justices. In overturning Plessy, the Brown Court held unanimously that segregation of white and Black students in public schools violated the equal protection rights of Black students even if facilities were “equal.” Following Brown, there were delays in implementation owing to organized efforts in Milford, Delaware to prevent school integration. Here again, Redding intervened and ultimately prevailed.
Seventy years later, Brown, foreshadowed by the Delaware decisions, sits atop the arc of justice to which our law aspires. We in Delaware are most proud.
Ronald Collins is a retired law professor and author of Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial (2024). Thomas Ambro is a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
