Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court

Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational development of Negro children and to deprive them of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. We have now announced that segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.

It is so ordered.

Pictured above: Thurgood Marshall (Counsel for the NAACP, which represented plaintiff Linda and her father Oliver Brown. Marshall would later be appointed to the Supreme Court), Chief Justice Earl Warren, Linda Brown (who was denied admission to the Topeka public school near her home because of its "Whites Only" policy), W.E.B. DuBois (one of the founders of the NAACP, author of The Souls of Black Folk), Charles Houston (Counsel to the NAACP and architect of its litigation strategy; it was he who conceived of a plan to attack segregation in the courts. He died in 1950, too soon to see the fruition of his life's work.)

"If my grandmothers saw me now they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps."

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I'd cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette—
which one is scented with jasmine?

from Jasmine by Yusef Komunyakaa
(born 1947)

"We slowly drove, he knew no haste,..."

On May 15, 1886, Emily Dickenson passed from this life into the next. She was 55 years of age.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

"There was no joy in my heart. I was thinking of the war we were going to have to fight."

On the afternoon of May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of a new nation. "We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel.”

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Isaiah 2:4

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

On May 12, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri, was born Lawrence Peter Berra.

While waiting in the dugout for his turn at bat, he had a habit of sitting cross-legged.

So his team mates began to call him "Yogi".

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."

"Hand-painted dream photographs..."

On this day was born Salvador Dali, in 1904, in Figueras, Spain. He passed from this life on January 23, 1989, as his recording of Tristan and Isolde played on a phonograph.

"Surrealism will at least have served to give experimental proof that total sterility and attempts at automatizations have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system. ... Today's laziness and the total lack of technique have reached their paroxysm in the psychological signification of the current use of the college."

"With hurricanes it's not the wind or the noise or the water.... it's the mangoes, avocados, green plantains and bananas..."

A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I'll tell you he said:
it's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
Against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
Your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace. . . .

from Problems with Hurricanes by Victor Hernández Cruz

"Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy?"

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

from The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says....

from Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O'Hara

"In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody."

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on
the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the
dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

from City That Does Not Sleep by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly

Night on the Great River

Night on the Great River by Meng Hao-jan
Translated by William Carlos Williams


Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.

"They see this, and put down their long heads deeper in grass . . ."

Right under their noses, the green
Of the field is paling away
Because of something fallen from the sky.

They see this, and put down
Their long heads deeper in grass
That only just escapes reflecting them

As the dream of a millpond would.
The color green flees over the grass
Like an insect, following the red sun over

The next hill. The grass is white.
There is no cloud so dark and white at once;
There is no pool at dawn that deepens

Their faces and thirsts as this does.
Now they are feeding on solid
Cloud, and, one by one,

With nails as silent as stars among the wood
Hewed down years ago and now rotten,
The stalls are put up around them. . . .

from The Dusk of Horses by James Dickey

"We, like these, are but a dream."

Ah, wherefore, lonely, to and fro
Flittest like the shades that go
Pale wandering by the weedy stream?
We, like these, are but a dream.

from Uncollected Poems by Herman Melville

“I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie. No self-respecting poet should have to.”

Carol Ann Duffy, whose appointment as Great Britain’s Poet Laureate was announced today. She is the first woman to hold this position in its 341 year history. A decade ago, Ms. Duffy allowed as how she would eschew the PL’s traditional role as provider of verse for various royal events, such as the wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones. (That task fell to Andrew Motion, who had just been named Poet Laureate at the time.)


She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand--twigs, stained gloves--
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone . . . .

from History by Carol Ann Duffy

"But I love the I, steel I-beam that my father sold."

But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. . . .

from Take the I Out by Sharon Olds