| Posted May 21, 2004
Better Schools Needed to Fulfill Promise
of Brown, Jones Tells Graduates
Graduation Awards
Marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown
v. Board of Education decision, former head of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund Elaine Jones, a 1970 graduate of the
Law School, told the members of the Class of 2004 gathered on Holcombe
Green Lawn May 16 that they have a special reason to be proud of
the school’s contribution to the ruling, and a high moral example
to uphold as well.
Calling Brown “one of the greatest consolidated group
of cases that the Supreme Court has ever decided,” Jones told
this year’s graduates to reflect on the power of law to effect
social change. “Lawyers did that, through law; a small group
of lawyers strategically bringing cases across the country, deciding
which issues to argue and when to argue them, deciding how to answer
the questions they knew would come from the high court.”
Ruling on cases from Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, Kansas, and
the District of Columbia, “Brown for the first time
said that equal justice under the law included blacks as well,” she
said.
“What is it about Brown?” she continued. “In
four of the five cases brought before the court the law had got it
wrong and upheld the separate but equal law. But there was one court
below where the judge got it right and it was a brave, brave thing
he did. . . . In a 1952 Delaware case, Collins J. Seitz, a University
of Virginia Law School graduate, Class of 1940, got it right. Everybody
else missed it.”
Furthermore, she said, Seitz also got the remedy right: his decision
called for “immediate” action to end segregated schools.
But the Supreme Court, when it came back to the issue in 1955 to state
a remedy, said states should use “all deliberate speed,” which,
Jones said, “was taken to mean ‘take your time,’ and
that is what has happened. And to this day we do not have quality public
education in all of our schools.”
A moment of profound moral choice had come to Seitz, and Jones told
graduates to expect to face such choices too. “Keep in mind:
the time comes in the law when you must speak up,” she said. “We
don’t have to seek that time. It will come to us. But we are
going to be counted by what we do and what we say at that time.
“Collin Seitz called on lawyers to have moral courage. He made
it clear that what enabled him to do what he did was the rigor of legal
reasoning and the habits of mind that it engenders as pathways to the
truth. He believed in the state of mind that welcomes to new ideas
and formulations. He believed in a state of mind that does not raise
barriers of intellectual self-contentment. He believed in the state
of mind that does not fear the unorthodox. He got that training here.”
Virginia’s reaction to Brown–massive resistance,
closing schools and thereby punishing children—is nothing to
be proud of, she lamented, but Seitz’s example is.
She quoted him as saying, “You will never be worth your salt
if at sometime during your life you do not take up a worthwhile cause
and fight for it.”
Other issues will inspire today’s graduates, such as the condition
of the disabled or the aged or regional and ethnic issues, she said,
but in any event, “do not keep silent in the face of injustice.
“One final point on this: it is important that we become culturally
competent.” Sixty-five major corporations filed briefs in the
University of Michigan affirmative action cases last year to describe
the sort of employees they seek, she pointed out. “They said,
look, we are multinational corporations. As multinational corporations
we need certain types of employees. We serve billions of people across
the globe and we need a culturally competent employee who is better
able to understand other perspectives. . . . We don’t have another
50 years to get it right,” Jones urged.
Despite the revolution in American society that Brown wrought
by catalyzing the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, its larger aim
of a quality public education for all children remains to be achieved,
Jones said.
America should spend enough money to give every child such schooling,
she said. Meanwhile, society has put an undue priority on jailing nonviolent
criminals. “We are spending thousands and thousands and thousands
of dollars incarcerating folks who are not violent,” she said. “California
incarcerates...more people than Germany, Spain, France, Cuba, and the
Netherlands combined. That’s your issue. We pass the baton to
you.”
Drawing to her conclusion, Jones quoted a speech by Theodore Roosevelt
in which he exalted those who put themselves personally into the arena
of social change and ended by repeating her call for an urgent emphasis
on school improvement. “Nothing is more important to the future
of this democracy,” she insisted.
 |
| Dean Jeffries hands a diploma to
a graduating student. |
The Law School conferred 358 Juris Doctor degrees, 37 Masters of Laws
degrees, 29 Master of Laws in the Judicial Process degrees (to judges
completing the Judges Program), and two S.J.D (Doctor of Juridical
Science) degrees following Jones’s remarks.
Law School Dean John C. Jeffries Jr. complimented the Class for being
among the School’s most stellar. “I’ve been here
for 30 years and I have not seen your equal,” he said. “You
are the most committed, the most engaged, most active class in our
long history,” he said. “You have shown more leadership
in organizations, projects, and activities than any class before you.
“The University of Virginia School of Law has never been a more
vibrant, a more stimulating, a more fun place to study than when it
was inhabited by the Class of 2004.”
• Reported by M. Marshall
2004
GRADUATION AWARDS
Margaret G. Hyde Award
Allison Maria Orr
James C. Slaughter Honor Award
Kevin Gafford Ritz
Thomas Marshall Miller Prize
Jeffrey Paul Yarbro
Z Society Shannon Award
Allison Maria Orr
Law School Alumni Association Best Note Award
David Walker Glazier
Robert E. Goldsten Award for Distinction in the Classroom
Theodore Allan Kiem
Roger and Madeleine Traynor Prize
Michael Stephen Passaportis
William David Sarratt
Herbert Kramer/Herbert Bangel Community Service Award
Carmen Lynn Elliott
Mortimer Caplin Public Service Award
James Reyes Whitehead
Robert F. Kennedy Award for Public Service
Erin Cathleen Quay
Edwin S. Cohen Tax Prize
Andrew Falevich
Earle K. Shawe Labor Relations Award
Scott Brian Luftglass
John M. Olin Prize in Law and Economics
Michael Stephen Passaportis
Eppa Hunton IV Memorial Book Award
John Lee Newby II
Virginia Trial Lawyers Trial Advocacy Award
Ford Scott Pippin
Virginia State Bar Family Law Book Award
Nuala Ellen Droney
|