 and they're coming in right over there pushing and pushing and now they want in well they ain't gonna come in we got all right damn not here not now not ever hey y'all look at that sign out there welcome to Lamar you think they mean welcome ain't gonna be in my grandson's class not here they ain't listening to this policy is yelling we got our right bus when the kid next to me was cut we put the girls on the floor because of the blind glass man it was too much and all the time these things we got all right you got off light it's incredible to me that not more of you were hurt even killed if the state police had not fired gas I don't get it of course as we got to go to a more high school under this new integration right these folks don't like the law but they come after us with rocks and chains and ax handle man they're crazy just like it's always there you'll fight your right if you black get back justice for us in this country been a long time coming I'm not just talking about the right to go to a decent food in the mall talking about the right to get a decent job right by a decent home in the mall to be treated in a Lamar police police station with decent respect and I'm talking about all the most north and south you're wrong when you say it's like it's always been there are just what kind of differences that mean anything they tried to beat us they turned over our buses and all the time they were crying about their right for what kind of right do we have right well very simply the right to guaranteed in the Constitution the simple answers won't tell you nearly 200 years the court denied that the right guaranteed in the Constitution applied nearly 80 years after the Constitution was adopted the United States Supreme Court was still debating whether a black man but even be considered a citizen when Dred Scott a slave moved with his master from a slave state to a free state he appealed to the United States Supreme Court for his freedom leaving protection of the Constitution and in 1856 Chief Justice Tony ruled on his case it cannot be believed that large slaveholding states regarded me as included in the word citizens would have considered to a Constitution which might compel them to receive niggas and cities more than a century before the framing of our Constitution niggas have been regarded as the ends of an inferior order and altogether associate so far in theory that niggas had no rights which the white man was bound to respect therefore this court is of the opinion that you are not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States and not entitled to sue in its course for your freedom we got our rights courtrooms mean different things to different people like the law itself when you're a citizen with rights that are guaranteed the law is your protector this room is your refuge but when you are told you are property like Dred Scott and you don't have right which the white man is bound to respect the law is a tyrant this courtroom becomes a terrifying place think of it by court order Scott and his entire family were returned to the living hell of slavery they're going to be in my grandson's class there are those who say the Constitution itself was unfair some say it was designed by wealthy men of property for wealthy men of property some like Jefferson owned slaves from its beginning the Constitution defined a black to be only three-fifths of his white fellow American when in 1856 Justice County interpreted the Constitution as a racially biased document you may have reflected the truth of that time in our history but the Constitution is read differently by succeeding generations of Supreme Court almost 200,000 niggros fought with the Union to destroy slavery 38,000 black men died in the struggle the northern victory seemed to promise a new era of equality for the black American but 200 years of master and servant couldn't be wiped away because a southern army had surrendered in the years of reconstruction that followed the war black congressmen were mocked and stoned ballot boxes were stolen black voters were hounded by murderous bands of white vigilantes and America weary of the long war turned its face away from the white violence pretending not to see in 1865 the 13th amendment to the Constitution finally made the black a citizen and in 1868 the radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner forced through the Congress the 14th amendment no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens that should have done it right there it was signed ratified by the state that was law and we were equal before the law the membered Constitution of the United States Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina said when inoculated with the virus of equality the niggra becomes a fiend a wild beast seeking who he may devour the virus of equality well Ben was right in one thing the Civil War had inoculated a lot of us with the virus of equality during reconstruction we began to serve on juries but white America went right on arguing about what that 14th amendment really meant you see nowhere in that amendment is the word segregation never used a lot of people particularly in the south argue that the Negro could be free and segregated when President Rutherford Hayes pulled out the federal troops and let the South settle its own problems segregation was back in the saddle neither the president nor the Congress nor the courts seem disposed to fear the Constitution ceased to exist for black Americans in the South they're gonna wish they was never born for a long time the black American found only denial and humiliation in the courts when Homer Plessy a Negro refused to move from a white railroad coach to a Jim Crow car in 1896 he was arrested his appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected separate but equal facilities were found by the court to be Constitution if one race be inferior to the other socially the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane justice John Marshall Holland descended with the majority of the court you are heaping on yourself a future of terror and violence by such a repudiation of the Constitution our Constitution is colorblind and he was right but until a majority of judges on the Supreme Court would agree black Americans in the late 20s Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis advised the president of Howard University to make a fine law school which could turn out lawyers expert in constitutional law being will be the men and women he said he will force the Supreme Court to grant Negroes their civil and constitutional rights in the intervening years many trained lawyers have helped revitalize the Constitution to change the role of black American one of the great ones that Howard for the first time I found out my right in 1938 Marshall became the director counsel of the new NAACP legal defense and education during the next 23 years Marshall built the legal defense fond into a potent legal striking force he fought cases through the Jim Crow courts of the South and brought them all the way to the United States Supreme Court he went where it was dangerous to be a Negro let alone one who was fighting racism with every legal tool of the 32 cases he brought to the highest court you won 29 and the victories were the granite foundations for the emerging civil rights and when court says go you go that's the law when Marshall won a Supreme Court decision that outlawed all white primaries in Texas in 1944 it signaled the beginning of black political power in the South if the Constitution were indeed colorblind then politics must be colorblind as well when Marshall won a Supreme Court decision that outlawed Jim Crow transportation between states this country finally removed the disgraceful insult to Homer Plessy and every black American when Marshall won a Supreme Court decision that struck down unfair agreement which would restrict the sale of houses in certain neighborhoods to members of one race was the beginning of a long struggle that would finally remove another roadblock to black equality and when Marshall fought successfully against the use by courts of confession forced by physical means by the police every American civil liberties the strength what is striking to me is the importance of law in determining the condition of the Negro just from real life he was effectively enslaved not by brute force but by law which declared him a shadow of his man he was given a legal right to recapture him even in free territory he was emancipated by law and then disenfranchised and segregated by law and finally he's beginning to win equality by law cause non-legal even illegal events can significantly affect the development of the law but I submit the history of the Negro in this country demonstrates the importance of getting rid of hostile laws and seeking the security of new friendly laws federal state and local but it was in 1953 Brown versus the Board of Education Marshall challenged the whole idea of separate but separate can never be equal equal means getting the same thing at the same time and in the same place even if the physical facilities and the separate racial foods with the same he argued there were additional factors that must be weighed black children were made to feel inferior by the majority's refusal to allow them to share their schools black children who were excluded too often began to believe that they were indeed second-class people on May 17th 1954 the Supreme Court agreed we conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place William Patterson an attorney would put the years of black justice in American court commented it took from 1896 to 1954 to get the Supreme Court to reverse itself the Supreme Court was the leading force in the violation of constitutional rights and guarantees for black America nevertheless the victory was the legal trigger for a social revolution but the successful challenge to separate but equal education black America launched an assault on separate but equal in every avenue of American life it was fitting that during the decade of the 60s which saw civil rights movement sweep across America the country he had served so well honored Thurgood Marshall his appointment to the United States Court of Appeals by President Kennedy in 1961 was opposed bitterly by Southern senators for almost a year but his performance on the bench was a brilliant triumph in more than 100 majority opinions that he wrote for the court not one was to be reversed by the Supreme Court when he became solicited general of the United States he successfully defended the government position 14 of 1998 I don't know if you've had an opportunity to see the afternoon papers but when solicited general Thurgood Marshall was supposed to be with you he was with me actually in my office I was informing him that I wanted him to accept the form of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Senate willing he will become a social justice succeed the justice clerk he had accepted his appointment the United States Supreme Court first make no justice was confirmed by the Senate in 1967 President Johnson said I believe it is the right thing to do the right time to do it the right man and the right place the battle Marshall waged so well and so long continues legal defense fund from its beginning under Thurgood Marshall had thought to find black boys in the south who could assist in the struggle but even today there is only one black attorney for every 37,000 blacks in the south yet the poor and the uneducated black continues to be the most likely victim of the denial of legal rights now a new generation of Thurgood Marshall struggled to make the consequences of this only strict enforcement of the bitterly one laws can ensure a quality in housing quality in jobs quality in education quality before the law on September 5th 1957 a United States Court order to desegregate Little Rock Central High School was openly defied by Arkansas Governor Orville Thorbitt he ordered the National Guard to stop the nine black children ordered to the school in a move to enforce the Constitution President Dwight Eisenhower ordered a battalion of airborne federal troops to carry out the court order and escort the black children to the school certain misguided person many of them imported into Little Rock by educators have insisted upon defying the law and have stopped to bring it into disrepute the orders of the court have been frustrated the very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rest upon the certainty that the president and the executive branch of government will support and ensure that carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts even when necessary with all the means that the president's command the overwhelming majority of our people in every section of the country are united in their respect for observance of the law even in those cases where they misadmit may disagree with that they deplore the call of extremists to violence I call upon the citizens of the state of Arkansas to assist in bringing to an immediate end all interference with the law and its process that will be restored the image of America and of all his parts as one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all if the magic of how far we've come how far we've yet to go contrast the defiance of Little Rock and the defiance of Lamar South Carolina March. The court ordered integrated education in a single system immediately. Here in Lamar those 200 angry whites determined to force the court to reverse its decision. They thought they could do that by using violence by attacking the buses with rocks and chains. Thirty in that malls have already been arrested. Governor McNair used force to protect black children from mob violence. If the safety of our children is not sacred to all men then the entire process of law and government is meaningless. Now he didn't say the safety of our white children. He said the safety of our children. All our children. Constitution is only words and papers. They only live when people make them. A Southern governor proclaiming in 1970 that all life is sacred in July to a Southern Chief Justice who said in 1856 that no white man is bound to respect the rights of a negro. Everyone right in the Constitution is to kill in the hands of the poor men. The wrong decision. Black, brown, red and yellow, those white people. Constitution from justice. Hey y'all, look at that sign up there. Welcome to Lamar. Do you think they mean welcome?