Howe Asks Gradual Moves To End School Segregation

Members of the Athenaeum last night defeated a resolution that the United States Supreme Court abolish segregation in the schools. Mark DoWolfe Howe '28, professor of Law, spoke against the resolution, which was supported by Professor Arthur E. Sutherland, also of the Law School.

Howe contended that the end of segregation would be more peacefully and and stably effected as the result of a process of gradual social change. Other negative speakers echoed his views, and the final vote was 11 to 6 against Court abolition.

Sutherland opened the debate with a survey of the history of the 14th Amendment, on which an anti-segregation ruling by the Court would be based. The Amendment prevents any state from depriving a citizen of "life, liberty, or property without due process of law," and requires "equal protection under the law" for any citizen.

A Fundamental Mistake

Interpretation of this Amendment as allowing the constitutionality of "separate but equal" facilities for negroes and whites was a fundamental mistake, according to Sutherland. He went on to enumerate later Supreme Court decisions in which the mistake had been partially, but not completely rectified.

The means of bringing about the end of segregation rather than the end itself was the basic question of the debate. Speakers on both sides upheld the legality of Supreme Court decision to declare segregation in the schools unconstitutional.

"I do not deny that there is authority in the United States to abolish segregation," Howe explained. He said that he felt a Court edict would only give rise to political delaying tactics and possible social upheaval in the South, however.

Pure Morality

"The Judiciary makes a fatal mistake when it tries to turn pure morality into constitutional law," Howe added. The solution, he felt, would be for the Court to enforce to the letter the "separate but equal" doctrine.

The states would soon find the maintenance of separate but actually equal facilities too costly to continue, and, what with the gradually improving economic status of the Negro, segregation would die a natural and comparatively painless death.