We were able to secure a number of social scientists, educators, historians, psychologists, etc., to testify as expert witnesses, once they understood that we did not want them to go beyond what their research could support. Otto Klineberg initially declined to be one of our expert witnesses, I suspect because he thought I would ask him to go out on a limb for the cause. I never wanted our witnesses to do that, since their credibility could be destroyed or made suspect under informed cross-examination. An expert witness whose credibility crumbled under cross-examination could have compromised our effort to persuade the Court to adopt our contentions. Once we made clear to the experts we recruited that we wanted them to testify only about what they could firmly defend, we had little trouble securing experts in history, psychology, education, social science and so forth to become our witnesses.

In the trial of the Topeka, Kansas, case (Brown), Louisa Holt, a psychologist who testified about the adverse effects of segregation on black children's ability to learn, said there was an adverse effect on white children as well. She said she had children in the Topeka public schools and that segregation was going to leave her children unprepared to deal with the diverse people and cultures they would face as adults.

In all these cases, our basic thesis was that even if school facilities for black children were made substantially equal to those for whites, segregation nonetheless impaired the ability of the black child to learn and therefore violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court adopted this argument in its May 17, 1954, holding on the merits.

Charles Houston was the father of Brown. He initiated the legal strategy that ultimately culminated in the May 17, 1954, decision. He secured the admission of the first African-American to the University of Maryland and subsequently won the Gaines case requiring equality of physical facilities in fact before segregation could win Court approval. Given the limited number of blacks qualified at the time for entry at the state university graduate and professional school levels, segregation at the highest levels of the state educational system was doomed. It was not feasible on economic grounds, when the few qualified black applicants could be readily absorbed into the main institution. Social science data, moreover, showed that segregation was a restriction on the learning reach of the black child and was at war with the Fourteenth Amendment's equal educational opportunity mandate. Brown is, thus, the product of black legal skill and strategy. I have been telling friends jokingly that Brown v. Board of Education has an African-American cultural copyright with an acknowledgment of appreciation to the NAACP, but there is truth and reality to that statement. Brown was conceived and won through NAACP-sponsored litigation, by lawyers employed by that organization.

The 1954 Brown decision is now regarded as the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century. This majestic ruling, however, was compromised by the "all deliberate speed" or "over time" relief formula the Court adopted in 1955, the first time it has ever deferred immediate vindication of a successful litigant's entitlement to a constitutional right. The over-time provision corrupts Brown with racist delimitations, scored with a white supremacist brush.

Moreover, taking stock of the current state of public education, it is clear that Brown has not achieved its primary purpose of guaranteeing equal educational opportunity for children of color. Yet, in making equality for all people a fundamental tenet in our society, Brown provides the foundation for activists and scholars committed to fulfilling its promise to pursue that goal. I am optimistic or fatuous enough to believe that at some future point in time, America will give credence to that unfulfilled promise.

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Robert L. Carter, a senior United States district judge, Southern District of New York, was chief assistant to Thurgood Marshall from 1945 to 1956 and NAACP general counsel from 1956 to 1968. His memoir will be published by the New Press this fall.

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