60th Anniversary of BLUE V. DURHAM School Equalization Case of 1951

In early 1951, federal court judge Johnson J. Hayes rendered a famous school funding decision in a case that had been brought by the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs and several black families in Durham.

This case, called Blue v. Durham, prevented the Durham City Schools from continuing the practice of allocating more funding for buildings, books, curriculum, and teachers for white schools than for black schools.

On Sunday, December 18, 2011, the Humanities Series of the Durham Public Library and the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation will sponsor a program spotlighting the 60th anniversary of Blue v. Durham. The program will be held at the Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville Street in Durham at 3:00 PM.

The legal success of Blue v. Durham served as a model for other communities across the state of North Carolina during the “separate-but-equal” era. Also, Blue v. Durham caused the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other civil rights groups to take the next step, which was to appeal through the courts for full-fledged school integration.

The lead attorneys for the case were Durham’s John H. Wheeler and M. Hugh Thompson. They were assisted by a Richmond law firm that included Oliver W. Hill, Martin A. Martin, and Spotswood Robinson, III.

The attorney that led the defense of the Durham schools in the Blue case was William B. Umstead, who had served in the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. Umstead later was elected and served as Governor of North Carolina.

A year after the successful legal strategy that emerged during oral arguments in North Carolina, Hill, Martin, and Robinson applied many of the same 14th Amendment arguments in the Virginia case of Davis v. Prince Edward County.

At the appeal level, this case was one of the five individual lawsuits that the U.S. Supreme Court consolidated into what became the historic Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas. The Brown decision was unanimously rendered by the Supreme Court on May 17, 1954.

So, a strong argument can be made that the 1951 case of Blue v. Durham had a direct link to the landmark Brown v. Board Supreme Court case of 1954. In other words, … Blue led to Brown.

The program on December 18 will highlight the historic significance of the Blue case and will offer connections to the national advocacy for school integration in America. Also, the audience will have the opportunity to meet and interact with several of the actual plaintiffs from the Blue case.