Part of a series of articles titled Superintendent Articles about Brown v. Board of Education NHP.
Article
Public Remarks about Brown v. Board of Education NHP
Remarks at a Naturalization Ceremony Held at Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park in Topeka, Kansas, on June 27, 2024
Good morning! We in the National Park Service welcome you to Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park for this momentous occasion in your lives. There is nothing we like more in the National Park Service than hosting naturalization ceremonies at our 429 units in the National Park System. Yes, we are just one of 429 sites that spread from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico to Maine and across the continent to Alaska and Hawaii and Guam and even American Samoa.
We like naturalization ceremonies so much, in fact, that the National Park Service plans to host at least 250 ceremonies across the parks next year. Why 250? Because we are one of the lead federal agencies charged by Congress to commemorate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding in 2026.
So thank you to our partners at the Citizenship and Immigration Services and the federal courts for allowing us to host ceremonies like this one at our park.
Of those 250 ceremonies next year, several will be here, which is great! And you may think the others will be concentrated at iconic historic sites that the National Park Service takes care of. Like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Or at one of our many presidential sites, including the White House. Or perhaps at the monuments to American ideals such as the Lincoln Memorial. Or Mount Rushmore. Or Women’s Rights National Historical Park.
Or even at the famous national parks that preserve for the enjoyment of future generations hot springs, mountains, waterfalls, dinosaur fossils, rivers, lakeshores, seashores, prairies, and caves. Yes, as I look at the list of upcoming naturalization ceremonies, it is just as likely for them to occur at Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Saguaro National Park as it is to be at a historic site like this one. With 429 places to choose from, the options are almost endless.
Our national parks have been called one of America’s great ideas. Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. Since its founding, other countries have looked to the U.S. for assistance, advice, and inspiration. Likewise, we in the National Park Service have learned much from the experiences of other park agencies and have adopted ideas from other countries in our own programs. Our nation’s natural and cultural heritage is directly connected to the rest of the world. Several U.S. parks have sister parks in countries including (but not limited to) Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, China, Mongolia, Nepal, Japan, Thailand, France, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Australia.
The National Park Service also participates in programs that designate sites as having international significance. There are 19 units of the national park system that are on the UNESCO World Heritage list; others that are Biosphere Reserves, International Dark Sky Parks, and globally Important Bird Areas.
This sounds all well and good and patriotic and wonderful. But let me tell you what I am especially proud of as an employee of the National Park Service. We are charged with telling America’s stories—all of them—not just the happy ones. And increasingly Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration have charged us to make sure that we include ALL Americans stories. So we have sites that commemorate Japanese American internment during World War II; we have sites at which visitors can learn about enslaved people, and factory laborers, and women, and Hispanics.
This in fact is one of those places. The history of African Americans includes segregation, violence, and exclusion from the benefits of citizenship. This park was created in 1992 by Congress to commemorate the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The one that expanded citizenship to African Americans, but also guaranteed to all citizens due process and the equal protection of the laws. I hope you all will have time to explore our exhibits while you are here and to learn the often painful stories that we honor here of those who have struggled and persevered in the pursuit of education equity in this country. That struggle is far from over, but we are here to help visitors understand the history of the struggle and how that struggle relates to issues today.
The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s is so significant that this park, along with 12 other places from here to Little Rock, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, and Washington DC will soon be proposed for inscription on the World Heritage list as sites of international cultural significance. We are very proud of this admission by the American people that our history has not always been pleasant and pretty, but that we are a stronger nation when we continue to welcome immigrants and bestow upon them citizenship with all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and our laws. There are some in this country who for seventy years have fought back against the Supreme Court’s declaration that “segregation is inherently unequal” and unconstitutional. We welcome you as citizens and invite you to participate in our national discussions about the rights of citizens and how we preserve them.
Congratulations to you all.
NPS photo by James H. Williams
"The Significance of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka," remarks delivered at the unveiling of the Brown v. Board of Education Monument on the grounds of Legislative Hall in Dover, Delaware, May 16, 2024
Landmark. That word is used so often to describe the Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, et al. decision that we almost think of it as part of the official name, as in "the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education." But why was the decision a landmark?
For seventy years we have as a nation debated the meaning of the decision—but there seems to be no debate that it was important. Historians, legal scholars, and others often say it was the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century. But why?
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary, President Bill Clinton asserted, "If the shots fired at Lexington and Concord signalled America's declaration of independence, then surely the victory of Brown embodied America's declaration of interdependence." Brown, he said, "really represented a turning point in the inner life of America. For the first time we knew we had at least to try to become one nation."
So landmarks, as the word says itself, mark important features on the land, in our culture, in the civic life of our nation. And, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out—also twenty years ago—some landmarks loom so large that they can be seen across the globe. In her words, "Despite, or perhaps because of, the southern defiance [after Brown], the world recognized that the Supreme Court had stepped ahead of the country's political branches and various communities in pursuit of equal justice under law. That pursuit became part of the international human rights decision."
I wonder how many Americans know that the courts in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, India, and other countries have cited the Brown decision on the importance of education and equal access to it in a democratic society? Or, as Justice Ginsburg noted, "powerfully influenced the women's rights litigation in which [she] was engaged in the 1970s."
In 1992, Congress recognized the importance of Brown by creating a national historic site in Topeka, Kansas, "to preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations, the places that contributed materially to the landmark United States Supreme Court decision that brought an end to segregation in public education." [emphasis added] Then, two years ago this week, President Biden signed another act that added to the park a site in South Carolina, and three affiliated areas in Delaware, and others in Virginia and Washington, D.C. The purpose of the expansion, the law states, "is to honor the civil rights stories of struggle, perseverance, and activism in the pursuit of education equity."
The National Park Service for more than a century has preserved and protected many of America's most iconic natural and cultural landmarks. But landmarks are not uncontested. For instance, Mount Rushmore to some Americans is an inspirational patriotic work of art, while to other Americans is is an ugly scar on an ancestral landscape.
What does this have to do with Brown v. Board of Education, you may be asking? Did you notice that Congress got ahead of itself in 1992 by declaring that the Brown decision "brought an end to segregation in public education"? In fact, by some measures America's schools are more segregated now than they were in 1954. This does not diminish to importance of the decision, but it does remind us that, as attorney Jack Greenberg remarked at the University of Delaware in 2004, the glass in 1954 was empty, and perhaps in another fifty years might finally be full.
The National Park Service knows that landmarks are constantly under threat: from nature, from neglect, from development. Now, in 2024, the Legal Defense Fund and others fear for the future of the landmark Brown decision. Why? Last year, the Supreme Court issues decisions about affirmative action in higher education. Five of the six opinions debated the meaning of Brown. Clearly, the decision remains a legal landmark—and for the court, needed to be reckoned with. The meaning of Brown, the majority concluded, was that "the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race." A concurring opinion asserted that "the alleged educational benefits of diversity cannot justify racial discrimination today." In dissent, Justice Sotomayor argued that Brown created a "vision of a nation with more inclusive schools" and "the Court's recharacterization of Brown is nothing but revisionist history and an affront to the legendary life of Justice [Thurgood] Marshall."
Unquestionably, Brown v. Board of Education remains important in human history. The National Park Service will continue to preserve and interpret the places related to Brown, including Howard High School, Hockessin Colored School #107, and Claymont Community Center here in Delaware. As a historian, however, I cannot predict the future. If Jack Greenberg were here with us today, would he say the glass of education equity is fuller than it was twenty years ago? Or would his friend Louis Redding be standing here with him saying, "If there are wrongs that still need to be righted, someone should be working on that"?
Last updated: October 3, 2024