America History Month, Black And Otherwise

BY LOUIE OVERSTREET

Unlike my college engineering classes — where it was tough to stay awake the morning after a date with Ms. Thunderbird — I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the lessons being taught in high school. 

Through what I learned at East Tech in Cleveland back in the late 1950s, coupled with life experience since, I have reached the conclusion that laws and the makeup of the Supreme Court are responsible for the good, bad, and ugly in America. 

The good is that there has been undeniable progress. The bad is that progress has been painfully slow. The ugly is that wholesale attacks are being waged to this very day to reverse our progress as a nation. 

Look no further than the Constitution to read how Black people were viewed. This view was enforced by Supreme Court decisions such as the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) case, where the Court ruled that we had no citizenship rights; and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the “separate but equal” nonsense. 

A more enlightened Court, a half century later in the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case, did away with the earlier separate but equal ruling — mandating that schools, with all deliberate speed, were to be integrated. 

For a time, things were changing for the better with the passage of the laws like the Civil and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. Affirmative action was accepted as a remedy for past injustices. However, those progressive steps began to be reversed when the Court gained a 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Clarence Thomas — ironically, the ultimate affirmative action hire. 

Since then and more recently with a 6-3 majority, stuff has gotten uglier — with new additions to the reversal count: setbacks to affirmative action and voting rights, as well as a women’s right to choose; and a ruling that the presidency is now above the law. 

If things get any uglier, America is going to have a face only a mother could love!