What was the US Supreme Court case Browder v. Gale and how did it affect African-Americans' civil rights?

Answer 1

The US Supreme Court affirmed (agreed with) the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama decision that the state and municipal statutes promoting segregation were unconstitutional, and ordered the buses to be integrated.

Explanation

Most people associate the the Montgomery bus boycott and Supreme Court case with Rosa Parks, who was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to stand so a white person could take bus seat (which, incidentally, was in the official "colored" section of the bus). While Parks' arrest did spur the famous civil rights action, her case was tied up in the Alabama state courts and was never heard by the US Supreme Court.

In order to move to the discrimination issue into the federal courts, local attorneys Fred Gray and Charles Langford consulted with famed NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert Carter and Thurgood Marshall, who had led the successful challenge to the "separate but equal" doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education, (1954). Marshall and Carter suggested filing a new suit on behalf of a hand-selected group of plaintiffs who had experienced abuse and discrimination in the Montgomery bus system. Gray and Langford approached Aurelia Browder and three other women, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, and convinced them to become plaintiffs in a federal civil action law suit. The named defendants were the Board of Commissioners and the Chief of Police of the City of Montgomery, the members of the Alabama Public Service Commission, The Montgomery City Lines, Inc., and two of its employee drivers. The named defendant, "Gayle," was William A. Gayle, mayor of Montgomery.

The illegal state statutes and city code all had provisions similar to the Montgomery City Code of 1952 cited (in part), below:

Chapter 6, Section 11

"Any employee in charge of a bus operated in the city shall have the powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus, for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the preceding section, and it shall be unlawful for any passenger to refuse or fail to take a seat among those assigned to the race to which he belongs, at the request of any such employee in charge, if there is such a seat vacant."

On February 1, 1956, Fred Gray filed suit in US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, seeking a permanent injunction against the city's bus segregation policy.

US District Courts are trial courts, where both sides have an opportunity to present evidence and witness testimony. Testifying as a witness, the President of the Alabama Public Service Commission admitted that on April 24, 1956, he sent a telegram to the National City Lines of Chicago, of which the Montgomery City Lines, Inc., is a subsidiary, reading as follows:

"As President of the Alabama Public Service Commission, elected by the people of Alabama, sworn to uphold the segregation laws of this state, which include all forms of public transportation, I hereby defy ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court ordering desegregation on public carriers. Alabama state law requiring segregation of the races on buses still stands. All public carriers in Alabama are hereby directed to strictly adhere to all present existing segregation laws in our state or suffer the consequences."

The arrogance and defiance expressed in that telegram was typical of southern white bureaucrats and business people in that era.

On June 4, 1956, the three-judge panel reviewing Browder v. Gayle (142 F. Supp. 707 (1956)) declared segregation unconstitutional by a vote of 2-1, determining that the "separate but equal" precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson,(1896) "... can no longer be safely followed as a correct statement of the law." While this followed the Court's thinking in Brown v. Board of Education, (1954), only the single dissenting judge cited the case, claiming Brown only addressed public education, and left the "separate but equal" doctrine intact in other areas of life.

The two judges who found in favor of the plaintiffs wrote: "We hold that the statutes and ordinances requiring segregation of the white and colored races on the motor buses of a common carrier of passengers in the City of Montgomery and its police jurisdiction violate the due process and equal protection of the law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

Gayle, et al. appealed the case to the US Supreme Court, which denied the city's request for a hearing, instead affirming the lower court ruling on November 13, 1956. The decision was unanimous, but the Court did not issue a written opinion.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was standing trial in Montgomery municiple court for organizing carpools in violation of a 1921 Conspiracy law that prohibited boycotts against lawful businesses, when he received news of the Court's decision.

Although Dr. King was found guilty and fined $500 for helping to organize the boycott, he recognized the Supreme Court decision as a triumph over segregationist Jim Crow laws. In a speech given at Holt Street Baptist Church on November 14, Dr. King announced the decision was "a reaffirmation of the principle that separate facilities are inherently unequal, and that the oldPlessy Doctrine of separate but equal is no longer valid, either sociologically or legally."

The city applied for, and was denied, a rehearing on December 17, 1956. On December 20, 1956, the city of Montgomery received a court order mandating integration of buses. Dr. King announced an end to the 381-day boycott the same day, stating, "The year-old protest against city buses is officially called off, and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning on a non-segregated basis."

Case Citation:

Browder v. Gayle, 352 US 903 (1956)