Julia Baxter Bates
(Photo: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey/University Archives/Special)
(Photo: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey/University Archives/Special)
Photo: Thomas J. O'Halloran
An integrated school in Washington, D.C., in May 1955, one year after the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Julia Baxter Bates considered the Supreme Court victory her greatest accomplishment.
Julia Baxter Bates: Proving the Scientific Case for Public School Desegregation
Your Source for University News
An unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement, the Rutgers alumna fought racism from within the system – and won
Monday, May 9, 2016
All Julia Baxter Bates wanted was to receive a college education and
become a teacher. In 1930s America, however, this basic dream presented a
challenge: Bates was black. Admitted to college only due to a clerical
error and denied teaching positions because of the color of her skin,
Bates turned to civil rights activism with the goal of changing the
system that hindered her from seeking the education and career she
earned.
She succeeded: Before her 40th birthday, Bates would play a key role
in ensuring that no child would be denied access to a public school
based on the color of his or her skin.
Activism ran deep in Bates’ family tree: Her great-grandparents
smuggled slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, her
grandfather was Newark’s first African-American school principal and her
father and aunt founded the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People’s Morristown and Newark chapters.
As a light-skinned black woman, the scholarly Bates grew up in a
predominantly white community in Bernardsville, New Jersey. In 1934, she
sent her application, along with the required photograph, to New Jersey
College for Women, which has evolved into Douglass Residential College
at Rutgers University. Mistaking Bates for Caucasian, the admissions
department invited her to interview. When the administrators saw her in
person, however, they tried to steer her to a black college where they
said she would be “more comfortable.” Bates was steadfast. She was an
excellent student, had been accepted to the institution and had every
right to attend.
The college acquiesced but denied her the opportunity to live on
campus. She stayed with family in Newark and commuted to New Brunswick
by train to study English, with the goal of following in her
grandfather’s footsteps as a high school instructor.
Bates’ college experience was the first of many inroads the civil
rights pioneer would make in her career. Being the first
African-American student to be admitted and to graduate – magna cum laude – from Rutgers University’s women-only residential college was just the start.
Denied permission to teach in New Jersey because she was black, Bates
grew increasingly frustrated by repeated encounters with racism. She
joined the staff of New York’s NAACP headquarters, where she spent over
two decades as national director of research and information, working
alongside legendary civil rights leaders W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood
Marshall, Walter White and Roy Wilkins.
“Julia was a savvy, intelligent woman who learned at an early age how
to be an activist within the system,” says Juanita Wade Wilson, a 1966
Rutgers graduate who Bates befriended when they worked together at a
community education center in Newark. “Although she labored behind the
scenes, she provided crucial information to the leaders of the civil
rights movement.”
During the 1950s, Bates researched and co-authored the winning brief in the historic Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas,
which the NAACP used to prove the scientific case against segregation
in the nation’s public schools in the Supreme Court. In the field of
public education, Brown struck down the Plessy v. Ferguson
decision of 1896, which held that as long as separate facilities for
the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the 14th
amendment’s equal protection clause. Considered one of the most
important decisions of the 20th century, Brown is regarded as the catalyst of the modern civil rights era.
Argued by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, the case – a
combination of five lawsuits against school districts in Kansas, South
Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and the District of Columbia – was the
first application of social science to attack a legal precedent.
The research was two-pronged: One angle attacked the precedent set by Plessy
by demonstrating that separate public educational facilities are
inherently unequal. The other, more controversial, argument sought to
provide scientific proof that segregation was psychologically damaging
to black children.
In preparing the brief, Bates supplied critical research
tracing the history of civil rights in 10 northern states, which was
added to contemporary scholarship by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie
Clark, who conducted a series of experiments studying the psychological
effects of segregation on black children. The Clarks showed that black
children responded positively to white dolls over black dolls that had
the same features. Their conclusion: “Prejudice, discrimination and
segregation” create a feeling of inferiority among black children and
damages their self-esteem.
“This brief was controversial because courts traditionally get
questions of law, not of sociology and psychology,” says Wayne Glasker,
who specializes in African-American history at Rutgers
University-Camden. “It was so innovative that lawyers at the time
laughed and sneered at it. They didn’t think it belonged in court and
knew it would be difficult to prove.”
Although controversial, the brief Bates co-authored was persuasive:
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court declared segregation in the nation’s
public schools unconstitutional.
“Julia Baxter Bates is one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights
movement,” Glasker says. “Most people don’t recognize her name or
understand the value of her contribution. The lead attorneys get the
credit for a legal victory, while the staff researchers who do the
background work remain anonymous. This was especially the case for women
during this time period.”
To Bates, directing a laser-focused team that armed attorneys with
the legal firepower they needed to secure a tough victory was simply her
role. “Julia always wanted to be a teacher and believed diligent
research was her way of instructing,” says Rutgers alumna Wilson. “The
stakes were immense and male attorneys depended very much on a woman.
Julia considered Brown her greatest accomplishment.”
Recognition eventually arrived for Bates, who died in 2003 at age 86.
In 1992, the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College established the
Julia Baxter Bates Fellowship, an initiative spearheaded by Wilson. She
was inducted into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 1996.
Until her death, Bates continued to serve as a mentor for young
activists like Wilson. “We met in the 1960s – important years for black
people,” Wilson says. “We were on the cusp of political change, and we
younger women looked to Julia like a college-level instructor with
experience in activism. We wanted to hear her stories. Yes, she
acknowledged that the work she did was important, but she reminded us
that we all have valuable work we must do.”
No comments:
Post a Comment