The second-graders in Alice Glenn's class may not know the definition of "segregation," but they do know that 50 years ago, they would probably not be eating lunch at the same table together.
"They . . . would probably be at a black school, and I'd be at a white school," said Adelena Duran, 8, pointing to two boys — one of Laotian descent, one of Mexican descent — across the table. "I'm friends with David and Joseph."
"I'd be at the Asian school," replied Joseph Lee, 8. "I'd be in the black school," said David Landa, 8.
"Martin Luther King, he gave a speech," said third-grader Cheyanna Burk, 9. "It means a lot to me, because we wouldn't have this kind of world if Martin Luther King didn't have that speech, and I wouldn't have all the friends that I have."
But before there was a King or a Rosa Parks, there was the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed public school segregation. Today marks the 50th anniversary of that landmark decision.
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argued that equality in education could not be achieved until segregation in the schools was ended.
The case included the NAACP's appeals of decisions from four states: Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia, but the decision brought about change across the nation, even in states such as Utah where schools were never segregated.
Craig Fuller, Utah State Historical Society historian, said the state's black population at that time was "pretty minimal."
Blacks and other minorities made up too small a fraction of Utah's population to ever fill up their own schools, so the public schools weren't segregated, Fuller said.
Blacks, Native Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders together comprised 1.7 percent of the state's total population, according to the 1950 census, Fuller said. Hispanics, which today comprise the state's largest minority group — 9 percent of the population in 2000 — were not counted in 1950. Today about 11 percent of the state's population are minorities, according to the census.
Opportunities denied
While the state did not separate its minority students, there were instances of black college graduates who were denied employment as teachers. As of May 1954, the NAACP reported that no black teacher had taught at any level in the Utah education system, said Ross Peterson, professor of history at Utah State University. His account of Brown v. Board's impact will be published later this year in the Utah Historical Quarterly.
"Most public facilities in Utah, at the time of the decision, were segregated," Peterson said. "Hotels, restaurants would not allow African Americans, and in some cases other minorities, to stay there or eat there."
Peterson said the segregation included all-white neighborhoods, theaters and even Lagoon amusement park, at one time.
According to the NAACP, there was only one black attorney and one black physician practicing in the entire state in 1954, Peterson said.
There's anecdotal evidence of much of the same discrimination against Hispanics, said Armando Solorzano, associate professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah.
Dovie Goodwin, 96, one of the first black teachers hired in the state, remembers being turned away from places such as the Walgreens lunch counter because of her skin color. Blacks were relegated to the balconies of movie theaters, she said.
Once, she recalled a theater sign reading "balcony closed." Goodwin had arrived late, and the theater was already dark, so she just went in and sat down. An employee told her "you people have to sit upstairs." "I just got up and left," she sighed.
Peterson said the state's predominant faith — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — influenced the attitude toward blacks. The church did not allow blacks to hold the priesthood until 1978.
Even black entertainers, such as opera singer Marian Anderson, faced discrimination in the Beehive State. Peterson said when Anderson performed in Salt Lake City in January 1954, she stayed at the Hotel Utah but had to use the freight elevator and receive her meals in her room.
Peterson said Brown v. Board did not have the same direct impact on equality of education in Utah as it did elsewhere. He said many in Utah thought the decision was irrelevant because schools weren't segregated, but they were wrong.
"I think the attitude toward blacks in public accommodations and fairness, I think that set the tone for people in the state," he said.
Change came gradually in Utah, Peterson said. It wasn't until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that the state overturned a law prohibiting interracial marriage.
Peterson said evidence of the shifting attitude toward race could be seen a year after Brown v. Board, when the state's first black teacher was hired in the Ogden School District.
Breaking the color barrier
However, it remained difficult for blacks to break the color barrier and become teachers — a fact Goodwin learned first-hand when she applied to teach at the now closed Pingree Elementary in 1958.
Goodwin had grown up in the then-segregated town of Denton, Texas, became a teacher and later worked for the military's USO, which brought her to Ogden. She was a stay-at-home mom concerned about teacher turnover at her daughter's school. So, she decided to go back to the classroom.
With a teacher shortage, she assumed her math degree and prior experience teaching in Texas and California would allow her to walk into the system.
But she said, the response to her application was that the school "didn't hire you people at that level."
Goodwin tried again the next year; that time the excuse was that she didn't have an elementary teaching certificate. So Goodwin took a class in Utah history at Weber State and earned the certificate. A year later, in 1961, she was hired to teach the sixth grade at the mostly white school. While district employment records don't date back that far, Goodwin said she was one of three black teachers in the district at the time.
While she experienced animosity at first — both from parents and white colleagues — Goodwin became a respected teacher.
"They had to get used to what I was doing," she said. "Other teachers were jealous."
Goodwin, who had grown up attending segregated schools and had previously taught in segregated classrooms, said it wasn't too much of an adjustment to teach in an integrated classroom.
"I always looked at people as people. I've never been a person who hates," Goodwin said. "I tried to integrate the children."
A profound change
Robert Grey Jr., who will become the second president of color of the American Bar Association later this year, said the 1954 Brown v. Board decision was "a profound change in the fabric of this culture."
Nationally, in 1952, only 15 percent of blacks over age 25 were high school graduates, according to the census. By 2002, that number had grown to 79 percent. The number of college graduates has risen from about 252,000 in 1957 to 3.5 million in 2002, according to the census.
"It forever changed our view of what it meant to aspire to an equal and just society," he said. "And I think it forever changed the view of the rest of the world about whether America was very serious about being a democracy or not."
"We are still, I believe, evolving 50 years later, working for the achievement of a balanced and just society, one that is free of discrimination and values diversity in all aspects of American life," he said.
Goodwin remains somewhat pessimistic about progress toward equality since Brown v. Board. She pointed to areas such as the state's graduation rates: Every racial group lags behind white students; what she deems a shortage of professionals of color in the state; and schools that remain mostly white or mostly minority.
"They didn't integrate the teachers," she said. "When they integrated the schools they got rid of the black teachers. . . . We've stepped back quite a ways since integration."
Grey said while he did lose the comfort that went along with a tight-knit community when he first attended an integrated school, he doubts he would be preparing to head the ABA if the nation had remained segregated.
"The country's better off," he said, "without a doubt."
E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com