New York, NY, May 14, 2004—Fifty years ago, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States repudiated one tradition of American history and resurrected another. By ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schooling under the so-called separate but equal regime of the South was inherently unequal, the Court sounded the death knell for government-sanctioned racism. In doing so, it affirmed that Americans must follow in practice, not just rhetorically, the self-evident truth on which the Constitution rests: that all human beings are created equal and equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There?s no denying, of course, that the Brown decision was not, as some had hoped, the last stop on the journey to the promised land of racial equality. The resistance to its implementation was fierce and, for all the honeyed words used to disguise it today, opposition to its implementation remains so. Fifty years later, far too many schools are segregated by race, and equally troubling, by economic class.

Nonetheless, we must take advantage of this occasion to celebrate Brown: It was a great testament to the determination of African Americans and their allies among other Americans to make the American Ideal. It provoked in its wake the explosion of nonviolent civil rights activity across the South and the North that reshaped the American social and political landscape and redeemed American?s honor and standing in the world. It made the nation we inhabit, the modern United States of America, possible. Thus, its value in those contemporary terms as well as its value as an historical monument to the expansion of freedom is incalculable. And, finally, we must consider its greatest importance as being this: a source of inspiration for us to continue to do the work that must be done to provide equal educational opportunity for all Americans. It is our task to make the realization of that goal the Brown decision?s greatest legacy