- “Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills,” said Attorney General James P. McGranery.
This is Attorney General James P. McGranery’s response to the Topeka case, implying that the lingering problem of racial discrimination in the United States has become a target for communist attacks.
- The strongest reservations were those of black schoolteachers; even in Topeka, they “wanted no part of the effort to desegregate the schools.”
These were the words of the black teachers from Topeka, in response to the legislature’s opening of new black schools, which implied the desegregation of schools.
- Among whites, especially in the Jim Crow South, Brown was met with swift and sustained resistance. Eisenhower had been dismayed by the ruling: “I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress in the South at least fifteen years,” he said privately.
This was Eisenhower’s frustrated reaction to the boycott of Brown in the segregated South, and by implication, to his support for Brown and to the Supreme Court’s decision。
- “The only weapon we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest.’ Joining a tradition of American oratory that dated back to the day Frederick Douglass concluded that he could make a better argument against slavery if he decided the Constitution was on his side instead of against him, King called this protest an American protest.
This was Martin Luther King’s reaction to racial discrimination, which implied that he wanted to draw attention to racial discrimination through protests so as to abolish it.
- “If he had gone to the nation on television and radio telling people to obey the law and fall into line, the cause of desegregation would have been accelerated,’ Douglas said.
Douglas was angry with Eisenhower for the years of violence that followed the announcement of the Brownian ruling. The implicit hope was that Eisenhower would abolish racial discrimination by legal and non-violent means.
