The Scientific Attack on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954-1964

JohnP. Jackson Jr.University of Colorado at Boulder

Psychologists' work was cited in the Supreme Court cast1 ofBrown v. Board of Education (1954). One criticism of thecitation was that psychology could be used to overturn theBrown decision and return the country to segregation"! Ahistorical examination of such an attempt to overturnBrown in the early 1960s on the basis of new psychologicalknowledge shows that psychology was not persuasive in theface of the civil rights movement. The failure of segrega-tionists to overturn Bro\.ln with psychological experts Ifn-derscores how psychology is ineluctably bound to ~elarger society. i

11-,

diminish racial equality. This, the NAACP-LDF argued,was a factual error about society. The NAACP-LDF turnedto social psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists toserve as expert witnesses to testify to the fact that separateeducation was inherently unequal. Throughout the trialsand appeals process, social scientists argued that there wereno inherent racial differences in ability to learn, that racialsegregation was psychologically harmful to both majorityand minority group members, and that desegregation, ifordered firmly, could proceed without social unrest (J. P.Jackson, 2001).

A persistent criticism of the social science used in.Brown has been that if the decision rested on a finding ofsocial science, then, as Kendler (2002) asked, "Would nota change in social scientists' opinions justify a return to thepolicy of legal segregation but with equal educational fa-cilities?" (p. 79). The question is an important one. Theeugenics movement of the early part of the 20th century(Chase, 1980; Haller, 1984; Kevles, 1985; Ktihl, 1994;Tucker, 1994) and the key role scientists played in theracist Nazi regime (Gas man, 1971, 1998; Muller-Hill,1984/1988, Proctor, 1988) serve as stark reminders thatscience easily can be enrolled for repression. Given sci-ence's checkered past regarding political justice, it is areasonable question to ask if psychologists were the key toBrown's success, could they not be the key to its undoing?

To answer this question, we need to explore two facetsof social scientific practice- one having to do with objec-tivity and the second having to do with the cultural author-ity of science.

First, how should we conceptualize scientific objec-tivity in the social sciences? A commonplace idea is thatscience needs to be completely separate from social andpolitical values if it is to be objective. According to thisview of objectivity, reliable knowledge can only beachieved when the investigator denies that she or he hasany perspective on the issues being investigated-whatDaston (1992) has called "aperspectival" objectivity. Thisnotion of objectivity, called "the view from nowhere" byThomas Nagel (1986) and the "god trick" by Donna Har-

I n 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial seg-

regation in public elementary and secondary schools

was a violation of the equal protection clause of the

14th Amendment of the Constitution. Chief Justice Earl

Warren argued that !

i

To separate [colored school children] from others of similar .geand qualifications solely because of their race generates a feelingof inferiority as to their status in the community that may affecttheir hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. .,. .Whatever may have been the extent of the psychological knowl-edge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson [1896], this findingL isamply supported by modem authority. (Brown v. Board of E4u-cation, 1954, p. 494) I

Here, in the 11th footnote of the opinion, the Court cite4 a

number of psychological and sociological works to supp~rt

their claim. The citation of social scientific evidence Jin

Brown was the result of a decade-long campaign by tpe

National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo-

ple-Legal Def~nse Fund (NAACP-LDF) to erode the S

f - arate-but-equal doctrine that had been enshrined in Am r-

ican constitutional law in the 1896 case of Plessy v.

Ferguson.Throughout the legal campaign for civil rights, e

NAACP-LDF's general strategy, according to consti~-

tional historian Mark Tushnet, was to transform unfav6r-

able case precedent into favorable case precedent py

"pointing out anomalies in doctrine and identifying $e

inevitable failur~ of society's efforts to explain why unj,st

doctrines nonetheless were acceptable" (Tushnet, 1994, np.

314-315). According to the NAACP-LDF argumen

~ in Brown, the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy rested n

a misunderstanding of social reality. Plessy assumed at

separation of the races, even in a racist society, did ot

Some of the research for this article was supported by National ScienceFoundation Grant SES-9907034.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to JohnP. Jackson Jr., Department of Communication, University of Colorado atBoulder, Hellems 94, Campus Box 270, Boulder, CO 80309-0270.E-mail: [email protected]

September 2004 .American PsychologistCopyright 2004 by d1e American Psychological Association 0003-O66X/04/$12.00

Vol. 59. No.6. 530-537 DOl: 10.1037/OOO3-O66X59.6.530

530

scientists failed in their quest to overturn Brown becausethey were drowned out by opposing voices that came fromsociety itself. Finally, I will close by exploring the impli-cations this story has for understanding how psychologyand society are intertwined.

The Brown Decision ancl the Rise ofMassive Resistance

John P.Jack.son Jr.

away (1991, p. 193), allows scientists to present eirarguments as an unmediated look at the natural worl

The notion of objectivity as aperspectivalleads t thesecond notion regarding the public authority of scienc .Ifgood science is objective, then the public authori ofscience would increase the further that scientific fin ngswould be isolated from social and political concerns(Mitchell, 2003). Public advocates who can enroll sciencefor their cause are, in a significant sense, enrolling natureitself because, in this view, science speaks for natQre r erthan for the scientific investigator.

This picture of the power of science to dictate h anaffairs is granting too much power to scientific experti inAmerican society. The history of psychology does notdemonstrate that the public was often willing to rep acetheir "common sense" about the social world with "expertknowledge," as provided by the social scientists (Morawksi& Hornstein, 1991). The common sense problem was ar-ticularly acute when scientists provided expert testi nyon race relations in the courtroom. In the early 20th en-tury, courts consistently refused to substitute scientific un-derstanding of race for common sense understan ngs(Haney Lopez, 1996; Pascoe, 1996).

In the case of racial segregation in the years folIo ingthe Brown decision, we have a nearly perfect test cas forthe power of psychological expertise on social affair. Inthis article, I show how a small group of social scien 'ststried to overturn Brown in the early 1960s. First, I note owthe Brown decision spurred the rise of the massive r sis-tance movement in the White South and note how s cialscience proved to be one foil for the South. Second, I s owhow a small group of social scientists mobilized in the late1950s to provide the expert testimony in federal co topreserve racial segregation. Third, I show how these s cial

In the wake of Brown, the White South quickly declaredthat desegregation posed a threat to what they saw as thesouthern way of life and vowed to massively resist anyattempts at racial intermingling. Constitutional historianMichael Klarman (2004) has written that Brown "radical-ized southern politics" as the "political center collapsed"and White southern politicians vied with one another toadopt the most extreme position in favor of segregation(p. 391).

One attack on Brown was to attack the apparent sub-stitution of "socialistic" science for court precedent inBrown (Southern, 1987). For example, Mississippi SenatorJames O. Eastland (1955) declared that the citation ofsocial scientific material was "the final indication as to thedegree that the Court has been 'brainwashed' by pressuregroups and is willing to sacrifice the people, the Constitu-tion, and established law to communistic and socialisticdogma and principles" (p. 13).

However, the citation of social scientific evidence inBrown also provided a method for the White South tooverturn the decision. If Brown turned on a "finding offact" rather than a "finding of law," then White southernleaders believed they could show Brown's facts to bewrong. Georgia attorney Charles Bloch (1959) wrote that,"It can be shown that in our society of 1959 ...thesefindings and factual conclusions [in Brown] are erroneousand have no place" (p. 138). To mount an attack on Brown,therefore, some segregationists believed they could returnto the courtroom with scientific expert witnesses to showthat the factual basis that Brown rested on was in error, thusoverturning the case and preserving segregation.

Unfortunately for the segregationists, the scientificconsensus of the 1950s and 1960s was firmly set againstthem. Historian Walter Jackson (1990) has called the sci-entific community in the two decades following World War'II a "liberal orthodoxy" regarding race relations. The pre-vailing scientific belief, which was reflected in the Browndecision, was that there were no significant differences inintelligence or character among the various races. Indeed,many anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, and soci-ologists argued that the entire concept of race should bescrapped as scientifically worthless.

Within this orthodoxy, however, a smaIl minority ofscientists disagreed with the egalitarian view of the major-ity. These scientists had their own professional organiza-tion, the International Association for the Advancement ofEthnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), founded in Washington,DC, in 1959 (Newby, 1967; Tucker, 1994,2002; Winston,1998). When White southern lawyers wanted to attackBrown with scientific testimony, the IAAEE was willing

September 2004 .American Psychologist 531

George, was indisputable proof that African Americanscould not adapt to White civilization. Relying on studiesfrom the early years of the 20th century and studies madeby colonial physicians in South Africa and Kenya, Georgeargued that White and Black brain structures were signif-icantly different, which was proof that racial differences inintelligence and achievement were biological, not cultural,in nature (George, 1963). None of this would be verycontroversial in the White South, as it fit perfectly withwhat White southerners believed about essential racial dif-ferences between Blacks and Whites. Noted segregationistW. J. Simmons (1962) claimed that George's study of thedifferences in brain structure demonstrates why "the whiteman has demonstrated his superiority to the negro in ca-pacity to create and maintain civilization" (p. 8).

George's report was originally prepared as a docu-ment that could be used in court to defend segregation.However, it was only one possible line of attack availableto segregationists interested in using science in the court-room. The second line of attack originated from IAAEEscientists based in New York City.

Naturalizing Race Preiudice

In the aftermath of World War II, many northern citieswere faced with an influx of African Americans seeking to~scape Jim Crow in the South. Urban Whites resisted whatthey saw as an "intrusion" of African Americans into their,previously all-White, neighborhoods (Sugrue, 1995). Oneresponse northern cities and states had to this trisis inhousing was to pass "open housing" laws that made racialdiscrimination by landlords and realtors illegal. In NewYork City, in response to such an open-housing ordinance,a group of conservative academics and attorneys formedthe Association for the Preservation of Freedom of Choice(APFC). The APFC despaired that in the academic world,the antiracist position that arose in the wake of the crimesof World War II had produced a "reaction almost as per-verted as the so called 'scientific' foundation upon whichthese crimes were perpetrated" (Gregor, 1958). One of thegoals of the committee was to "break the log-jam of freescientific inquiry by making the anti-integrationist positiononce again respectable" (Gregor, 1958, p. 4). The APFChad a certain amount of success in gathering togetheracademics for their organization, most of whom agreed thatrace prejudice was a natural, normal, and healthy emotionand that society should be organized around that fact? Thekey figure for building the case for race prejudice wassocial philosopher A. James Gregor, who offered more

and eager to supply the evidence. As one IAAEE found~r,

psychologist and former American Psychological Ass 1 i- ation president Henry E. Garrett1 (1961) put it

There are certainly grounds for asking for a fe-hearing of

Brown]. The Warren Court cited 8 "experts" in the 1954 deci-

sion. ...Of these 8, 4 were left-wing Jews... and 2 w4re

Negroes. ...On such expert evidence hung the fate of 50,OOO,otJO

people.

However, just what sort of evidence they would sup ly

became a matter of fierce debate within this small co

nity of segregationist scientists and attorneys, for th re

were two contradictory lines of evidence that they co d

utilize: an argument that turned on biological differen s

between the races and an argument that turned on e

psychological impact of racial segregation.

"The Protoplasmic Integrity of theWhite Race"

In 1960, Alabama Governor John W. Patterson contac

University of North Carolina anatomist Wesley C tz

George in order to hire George to prepare a scientific

defense of segregation. As George (1961) recounted

J e meeting to his friend Garrett:

Up until now, Alabama has escaped integration, but it is an' i-

pated that in time they will be the object of frontal attack. ey

want to be prepared to meet that attack in the courts. They hope

to base their case not only on legal precedent but on SCie ~ fiC evidence that will withstand the attacks of lawyers and 0 er

scientists.

George was a logical choice for Patterson to prep a

scientific argument against desegregation, as he was bo a

scientist and an ardent segregationist. In 1954, three days

after the Brown decision, George (1954) had fired o i a letter to his governor, William B. Umstead, warning th t

the end result of integrating the races in the educational and s ial

spheres would be to promote the amalgamation of the races. 's

must not be allowed to happen. Although the maintenance of (jur

public school system is desirable it is not so vital as the m .te-

nance of the protoplasmic integrity of the white race, upon w ch

our civilization depends.

Throughout the 1950s, George warned of the dangers of

miscegenation and laid out the scientific case against i e-

gration (Niven, 1998).

George spent the summer of 1961 preparing his re rt

for Governor Patterson and then an additional year in

revising it. Retired airline executive Carleton Putn

(1962) helped him prepare his manuscript for publica on

by going over the report with George "paragraph by p a-

graph." Like George, Putnam opposed school segrega on

because it would inevitably lead to the intermarriage of

White and Black people. Putnam claimed that "integra on

is morally wrong because it is destructive of the w te

civilization of the South" (putnam, 1961, p. 110). at

excited Putnam about George's work was George's disc v-

ery that the brains of Black people were significantly'

ferent than White people. This, thought Putnam

1 Garrett had testified on behalf of segregation in the Brown litigation

in 1952 when he was on the faculty of Columbia University in New YorkCity, but in the late 1950s, he had returned to his native Virginia to takeanns against the integration movement (see J. P. Jackson, 2001; Winston,

1998).2 Some of the key figures in the APFC such as biochemist Robert E.

Kuttner and student Donald Swan were associated with the extremistjournal Truth Seeker and active in the neo-Nazi underground of New YorkCity (Coogan, 1999, pp. 478-489; Tucker, 1994, pp. 138-179; 2002, pp.65-130).

September 2004 .American Psychologist532

subtle and sophisticated versions of previously disc ddoctrines about racial attitudes.

Gregor argued that there was a natural group p efer-ence that caused spontaneous and inevitable segregati n ofgroups within society. "What passes as 'race prejudic '" hewrote, "is actually but a single variety of a whole cl s ofrelated responses rooted in normal human behavior' thatcentered on the need for group identification (Gr gor,1961a, p. 217). In making this argument, Gregor was yrooted in mainstream social scientific thinking about ~rej-udice. Gordon Allport (1954), whose The Nature of Prej-udice set the tone for at least two decades of scie tificresearch on race prejudice (Cherry, 2000), argued ongsimilar lines, entitling one chapter "The Normality 0 Pre-judgment" and arguing that the formation of in-group wasa natural phenomenon and was often accompanied b therejection of out-groups (pp. 17-28).

However, writers in the 1940s and 1950s who ar uedthat the tendency toward group formation meant that raceprejudice was a natural and normal part of society had .ttlesuccess. For example, in the 1940s, sociologist G stavIchheiser (1949) maintained that there was a univ rsaltendency to reject those physically different from qne'sself, making effective integration impossible. In resp</lnse,Louis Wirth (1949) countered that race prejudice washardly universal because "certain physical characte ticsare defined as socially significant. Others are not. Onemight ask, for example, why blond-haired persons d notreact especially differently to brunets or to red-haired 0-pIe than they do to their own kind" (p. 399). It was d e tothis seemingly arbitrary nature of group preferences thatrace prejudice could not be an instinctual trait hu anspossessed.

Gregor had several answers to the "arbitrariness gu-ment." First, he attempted to make an empirical case ~ theexistence of racial preferences. Pointing to the long hi toryof intergroup hostility, Gregor (1962) wrote, "Hostil ag-gregates which regularly make contact generally shar thesame physical features, distinguishing themselves thr ughspecial cultural traits (speech, religions, modes of dres andornamentation)." An examination of the historical re ord,Gregor concluded, showed that "preference for one's. dis a generic social fact" (p. 79).

Further, Gregor accepted the contingent and arbi arynature of group associations. The tendency to form gr upswas the essential social truth, and it could indeed m .estitself in a variety of social forms. Race prejudice, ar edGregor (1962), ''as an object specific response, is bu onevariety of response in a more comprehensive pattern. en-tified in the literature as ethnocentrism" (p. 79). It w notany specific form of race prejudice that was a necess andinherent feature of our social order; it was that there w aninherent drive for the formation of groups. An analo wasthat of language acquisition: "While no one would co tendthat language is 'inherited,'" wrote Gregor (1961b), 'fewwould deny that the capacity to learn a language is g net-ically determined, i.e., is 'innate'" (p. 139). Bec;aus thedrive to form in-groups and out-groups was an innate partof human psychology, societies necessarily were div ded,

and in the United States, the fonn of division was racial.

Gregor (1961a) concluded, "Discriminatory practices andpreferential treatment are almost universal concomitants ofthe contact of two widely different races" that cannot "beeliminated by education, by legislation or by time itself"

(p. 222).For Gregor, it was not only natural that Whites would

shun interracial contact but it was also rational. Even while

remaining agnostic on scientific proof of racial inferiority,Gregor (1963a) pointed to sociological studies of AfricanAmericans who suffered from "significant social and psy-

chological disabilities," and argued that, "Whatever theultimate causes of reduced academic perfonnance and thehigh incidence of venereal disease, immorality and delin-

quency among Negroes as a group, those differences doexist" (pp. 635-636), hence the desire for segregation wasrational and healthy.

In an article written with other social scientists whoworked within the APFC, Gregor concluded that

The deterioration of the standards of local schools, the increasedincidence of delinquency and crime, greater public health hazards,regular exposure to a group which, because of conditions prevail-ing in its subculture, is characterized by lax sexual morality,broken homes and minimal academic aspirations, would seem toprovide, in general, sufficient rational motive for white flight.(Armstrong, Erickson, Garrett, & Gregor, 1963, p. 147)

By 1960, Gregor and the New York group abandonedtheir previous commitment to "free association" and joinedforces with Garrett, George, and other southerners to fightfor school segregation in the South. A case in Georgia, Stellv. Savannah (1963a) became the vehicle for bringing thescientific challenge to Brown into the courtroom.

Stell v. SavannahFor the courtroom battle, the centerpiece of the scientificcase for school segregation was the IQ argument. AllIAAEE members agreed that psychological tests provedthat African Americans were not as intelligent as WhiteAmericans. The "bible" for the IAAEE was The Testing ofNegro Intelligence, a massi,,:e book of intelligence testresults compiled by Audrey Shuey (1958), a doctoral stu-dent of Garrett's while he was at Columbia. The sheer massof studies, IAAEE scientists argued, must prove that thegap in IQ between Whites and Blacks could not be due toenvironmental differences.

In a court of law, the IQ argument could be used toshow that race was a "reasonable" classification under thelaw for the purposes of educational policy. Given the widedifferences in intelligence between the two races, it was areasonable use of state power to require segregated school-ing because the curriculum of each school system could beadjusted to the level needed for each race.

The IQ argument, however, was not enough to clinchthe cases for the IAAEE. The problem was the largeoverlap between White and Black tests scores. Segrega-tionists knew the NAACP-LDF could argue that althoughthe differences in IQ might justify educational tracking bytest scores, they did not justify segregation by race. The


!NAACP-LDF could simply argue that the court sho dgroup the smart children, regardless of race, and the slo erchildren, regardless of race. What was needed was so eargument to add to the IQ argument that would guaran ethat race would be the relevant factor for the courts.

The lead attorney, R. Carter Pittman, had two possi Iepaths to follow: first, to follow George and Putnam dargue that there were physiological differences between eraces that made racial integration biologically dangero s;second, to follow Gregor and argue that racial separationwas psychologically beneficial to African American schoolchildren. The problem faced by the segregationists was atthese two arguments contradicted each other. It would. bedifficult for the attorneys to argue that segregation led toinevitable miscegenation while simultaneously main ..gthat the races naturally separated and did not interact w thone another.

Pittman prepared the legal brief that put forth escientific case for segregation following the path laid doby Gregor.3 First, it pointed to literally hundreds of IQ te tsthat found that African Americans scored significan ylower than White Americans. Pittman argued that thisdifference in intelligence was a rational basis for the s teto maintain segregated schools. Pittman explicitly si e-stepped the biological argument and held that, regardless ofthe ultimate cause (genetics or environment), the IQ pdid exist. Further, because "Negroes" were socially c n-spicuous, integration would be psychologically harmful toNegro students by forcing them out of their natural dpreferred segregated environment and into a hostile in e-grated environment where they could not possibly com teacademically.

When he read the brief, Carleton Putnam was agh tthat the miscegenation argument was missing. In Febru1963, he wrote to Pittman that he had read the entire briefwhere he saw "references to intelligence tests and SOCi~ - ogy. I find no references to the gross morphology or e

histology.. .of White and Negro brains"(Putnam, 1963 ).Putnam argued that this was a terrible mistake for the Ie alcase against integration. He argued:

No matter how cumulative their impact or convincing their~ n- troIs, the finding of intelligence tests and sociological stu es

leave in the mind of the layman a faint whisper of possibility atthey may be the result of environment. ...The only data whichcannot be attacked on this ground is gross morphologyrdmicroscopic structure-these cannot be the result of environm nt...they must be inherent and hereditary. (Putnam, 1963a)

issues before the court. Putnam's concerns about racialinterbreeding were dependent on miscegenation, which atsome unspecified point in the future led to deleteriouseugenic consequences. "The problems of interracial mar-riage can be faced when court cases are mounted turning onthis issue," Gregor (1963b) wrote to Putnam, "Then per-haps the biological arguments will be crucial. But in theschool segregation case they are of peripheral importance."Pittman was right to base his case on the psychologicaldamage that integration would cause. Gregor (1963b)wrote that "Group differences can justify separation as aconvenience. ..that such separation causes no harm is thecentral issue and is the issue on which Brown turned."Gregor (1963c) explained that "all the available evidenceindicates that forced congregation leads to a greater senseof rejection" than segregation. "The Whites reject the Ne-gro irrespective of the prescriptive and proscriptive laws tothe contrary."

For Gregor, Putnam's concern with miscegenationwas not just a tactical error, but it was empirically deniedby all available evidence. Gregor's belief that the racesnaturally self-segregated made the danger of racial inter-marriage a slight one. "Intermarriage between two diverseraces marked by high social visibility has never been theconsequence of 'integration,'" Gregor (1963b) wrote toPutnam, "Free interracial marriage will never be the case inthe United States."

Gregor (1963d) clinched his case by arguing that hisapproach guaranteed that race would be the basis of thecourt's decision. "Even if Negro performance is proved tobe the consequence of genetic inferiority," he wrote, thecourt could still order educational tracking by ability, ratherthan continued racial segregation. However, "high socialvisibility" was a trait that was "uniformly distributedamong all Negroes" and therefore, by using it, "race, inand of itself" would be "made a relevant fact" for theCourt. "We can show," Gregor concluded, "that Negroes,even the most higWy qualified, suffer psychodynamic im-pairments by protracted contact with Whites at criticalphases of their personality development."

In the end, Gregor's position was presented to thecourt in Stell, although the biological arguments were pre-sented to the court by George in expert testimony (Tucker,2002, pp. 112-117). The IAAEE scientists were eager tomatch their arguments against the NAACP-LDF's scien-tific witnesses. Putnam (1967) wrote that in court

it would be possible to expose the fallacies and supply thedeficiencies in Brown. The proponents of the environmental so-ciology, the cultural anthropologists, the Montagues, theKlinebergs, and the Clarks could be cross-examined under oath onthe witness stand. So could the Garretts and the Georges. Finally,adequate press coverage would permit a beginning in the educa-tion of the public about the facts. (p. 74)

3 The full brief is only available from the Federal District Court in

Savannah, Georgia, although portions are reprinted as "In Defense ofSchool Segregation" (1968).

For Putnam, the result of IQ tests and sociologi alstudies that pointed out the high crime rates and 0 erproblems in African American society were too suscepti Ieto the environmentalist response. He maintained:' eSupreme Court and the American people do not need totold about the limitations and misbehavior of the Ne o.They are fully prepared to concede all that. What you h veto answer is the charge that the White man made him t tway" (putnam, 1963b).

Iff response, Gregor argued that the biological ar -ment that Putnam favored was, at best, tangential to

534 September 2004 .American Psychologist

effect of human kinds" (p. 34). People react to the classi-fications to which they are assigned and change their be-haviors when classified. As Hacking argued, "The targetsof the natural sciences are stationary. Because of loopingeffects, the targets of the social sciences are on the move"(p. 108). In the postwar United States, we cannot concep-tualize race relations as static. When Brown was decided,the effect was to raise expectations even further amongAfrican Americans as well as to remind White Americansthat civil rights were not their provenance alone. Theserising expectations would, in turn, affect how psychologistswould interpret the mental states of those living under

segregation.Although Brown is popularly viewed as a court deci-

sion that broke sharply with the dominant ideas regardingrace relations, such a view is only partially correct. AfterWorld War II, African Americans were increasingly mili-tant in their demands for civil rights and equality. Evenbefore the Brown decision, economic, demographic, andideological changes had spawned enormous changes inracial relations in the United States. Klarman (2004) wrote,"The changes in racial attitudes and practices that occurredin the 1940s were more rapid and fundamental than anythat had taken place since Reconstruction" (p. 288). Farfrom being far outside national opinion on race, the Browndecision reflected a growing sense of the injustice of racialsegregation. Irons (2002) wrote that

most white Americans in 1950 had some awareness of the na-tion's "race probleIIi" and the fact that "separate but equal"schools in the Jim Crow states were far from equal. A fair numberof northern whites, but just a handful of white southerners, feltstrongly that racial segregation was wrong and should be ended.(p. 41)

In one of the first critiques of the use of social sciencein Brown, law professor Edmond Cahn (1955) claimed thatthe social science was not only faulty scientifically but wasunnecessary because the harms of segregation were "obvi-ous and evident" (p. 157). Kenneth Clark (1963) repliedtellingly, "How could the social scientists be so unreliableyet nonetheless come out with a picture of social realitywhich Professor Cahn and everybody else 'alreadyknew'?" (p. 195). The answer to Clark's rhetorical questionwas that social scientists recognized the social reality oftheir times; indeed they had themselves helped create thenew thinking about race relations in the United States.

Such recognition of how science and society providedfeedback to one another contrasted sharply with the posi-tions advocated by IAAEE scientists. Despite Gregor'sclaims of a universal, innate, and unchanging preferencefor members of a race to prefer to congregate with their"own kind," such a position simply did not reflect the socialreality of the postwar United States. By 1964, the authorityof science to proclaim that racial segregation was scientif-ically justified had withered in the face of the authority ofthe civil rights movement to proclaim the contrary. Al-though the IAAEE scientific findings resonated with seg-regationists in the American South, they were out of stepboth with the consensus of scientific opinion regarding race

Such a battle of expert witnesses, however, di notcome to pass. With each scientific witness, the N CP-LDF moved to strike the testimony as immaterial t thecase, relying on the simple constitutional manda ofBrown. This was consistent with the larger legal strate y ofthe NAACP-LDF. Tushnet (1994) concluded, "Once lawbecame favorable, the rule of law was an advantage" (pp.314-315), and the NAACP-LDF would argue agains in-troducing social scientific evidence in school segreg tiontrials after Brown. The NAACP-LDF' s motions to disallowthe IAAEE's scientific testimony failed, and the evidencewas introduced. NAACP-LDF attorney Jack Green erg(1994) believed that the presiding judge in the Stell 'alwas "adamantly hostile to blacks" (p. 257). In his op' ionin Stell, Scarlett made this hostility quite evident. He ~ undthat the facts of the case before him did not agree .ththose presented in Brown; therefore it was a reason bleexercise of state power to assign pupils to separate sch olson the basis of race given the differences in their abi1i tolearn and the need to identify with members of their wngroup (Stell v. Savannah, 1963a).

The NAACP-LDF, which was undoubtedly u ur-prised by the ruling from the notorious Judge Sc ett,immediately appealed the decision to the Fifth C' uitCourt of Appeals, which quickly overturned Scarlett. P int-ing to Brown's mandate that separate schools were un on-stitutional, the Fifth Circuit informed Scarlett that the nlyquestion before him was to determine whether the sch Iswere segregated and, if so, order desegregation. The p-pellate Court wrote, "It was a clear abuse of its disc .onfor the trial court" not to order "a prompt and reason blestart towards desegregating the Savannah-Chatham Co tyschools" (Stell v. Savannah, 1963b, p. 427). The eff6 toreverse Brown in court died with a whimper after thepassage of the Civil Rights Act (1964), which perman tlyended de jure segregation in the American South, alth ugha variety of legal and extra-legal mechanisms prevente thefull-scale implementation of the spirit of Brown (Ir ns,2002).

Psychology in SocietyIf we were to focus strictly on the formal arguments re-sented to the courts, it would not be clear why, exactly theStell scientists' case failed where Brown scientists uc-ceeded. The argument in Stell was tailored precisel toundercut Brown. The scientific evidence was, to the Co'seye, unopposed and therefore authoritative. In ord toexplain Brown's success and Stell's failure, we nee tolook beyond the courtroom.

At least since World Warn, if not before, many 0 thesocial scientists who worked with the NAACP-LD inBrown had been working to use their scientific knowl geto create a more just and equitable society (Capshew, 1 99;Herman, 1995; J. P. Jackson, 2001). These studies, as ellas the Brown decision itself, served to influence how er-icans perceived race relations. This is not to say thatscientists simply read their political and social wishes intotheir science in Brown; rather it is an example of hatphilosopher Ian Hacking (1999) has called "the 100 ing


relations as well as a growing national consensu~ t segregation was morally wrong. Science simply was ot

enough to maintain a social system that was buckling un era concentrated attack from African Americans and teliberals. Despite the hopes of segregationists like Carlet nPutnam and fears of liberals like Edmond Cahn, Brown 4idnot vanish with new scientific evidence being presented Itothe court, even though that scientific evidence was C1-pletely unchallenged by integrationists in the courtroo .

White southerners, particularly in the Deep Sou,stubbornly resisted acknowledging the changing times.They were not prepared to admit that segregation wasanything but beneficial for both races and were convinJdthat African Americans favored segregation, save wh~naroused by northerners or other outsiders. Such a view wasencapsulated by Gregor's claim that segregation was in $ebest interests of Negro children. In the planning sessionsfor the Stell case, Gregor urged that Pittman recruit a Ne~plaintiff. "Appropriate tactics would require that someNegroes (a Negro) petition for intervention against inte-gration in order to protect his child from the imP~.e tswhich result from contact with majority children in eschool situation," Gregor (1963d) wrote, for "even. .alcontact with majority children in the school situatio ."Regardless of whether Pittman took Gregor's suggesti nseriously, the reality was that he did not represent Negr sin Stell but rather White parents who were concerned ab utthe effects of having their children intermingle withinferior race.

By 1963, when the IAAEE mounted its attack nBrown, it took a particular blindness to think leg'segregation served to protect African Americans. The St IIcase was after the Montgomery bus boycott, when AfricAmericans walked miles every day for a year rather thride a segregated bus system. It was after Little Rock, dthe children that Gregor was professing to protect bravangry mobs of Whites in order to attend Central Hi hSchool. It was after the sit-in movement, when you gAfrican Americans were harassed and spat on as th ycalmly sat at segregated lunch counters waiting to eserved. It was after James Meredith's admission to Univ r-sity of Mississippi caused a riot. It was after the childr nGregor professed to speak for faced Bull Connor's poli edogs and fire hoses and willingly filled Birmingham's j .s.It was after the murders of Emmett Till and Schwerm r,Goodman, and Cheney (Branch, 1988; Garrow, 1986; K1 -man, 2004; Morris, 1984). The voices ofwhatJohnDi er(1994) called "local people" easily drowned out the voi sof a handful of scientists even though they claimed to espeaking for nature itself.

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The Scientific Attack on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954-1964

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