Randall Kennedy, once a law clerk for Thurgood Marshall, recalls court rulings that set the stage.
By MEGAN SCOTT
Published May 23, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - He turned down a full academic scholarship to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Instead, he went to Princeton where he washed dishes to help pay for his education.
For Randall Kennedy though, the decision was a no-brainer. His brother went to Princeton, and their mom pushed for her other son to go there as well. He graduated in 1977 and completed law school at Yale.
But Kennedy, 49, a Harvard law professor, was not chosen as the keynote speaker for a luncheon Saturday because of his academic credentials or his controversial book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. He is a former law clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
"When Kennedy asked me what he should speak about, I said, "Share with us some of the moments with Thurgood Marshall that you had the opportunity to witness,"' said Pearl Brossard-Bryant, co-chairwoman for the luncheon sponsored by the St. Petersburg Chapter of the Links.
And that is what he did.
In his address, Kennedy emphasized that Marshall did more than plead his landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case 50 years ago. He argued more than 30 cases before the Supreme Court, among them, a voting rights case from Texas and a challenge to housing discrimination.
They included McLaurin vs. Oklahoma State Regents (1950). A black graduate student at the University of Oklahoma was assigned to a special table in the cafeteria and library, and was forced to sit in a row specified for black students in class. The court ruled that those conditions were a violation of the 14th amendment.
Kennedy, also the author of the book Race, Crime and Law, acknowledges that those rulings, including Brown, were not enough to eradicate racism, but they were a step forward.
"No Supreme Court decision is going to get rid of all racial inequities in one final swoop," he said. "There's a still a lot of struggle. But we have made progress over the past 50 years."
Longtime Pinellas County educator Adelle Jemison, 73, was at the luncheon and said she wonders how much progress has been made. She pointed out that Brown did nothing in terms of the quality of education, and cited the achievement gap that exists between black and white students as an example.
"As a result of that decision, we anticipated this means our students will have improved performance. I thought the children coming behind would be able to do far better than the segregated system had done for us."
Jemison was one of the 30 "Trailblazers in Education" from Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Bradenton honored Saturday. The list of people who broke down racial barriers ranged from Florene Abel, who in 1959 became Countywide Supervisor of Negro Education, to Mary Brown, who in 2002, was elected the first black Pinellas County School Board member.
Looking back at Marshall's accomplishments, Rick Davis, the first black chairman of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, said the Brown case was about more than desegregating schools.
"We have to keep Brown in context," he said. "Brown was just a mark. There were many decisions before then and many decisions after Brown. You can't just look at Brown. You have to look at all movement."
