Oliver White Hill dies at 100
One sees a great deal in 100 years. In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt was President, there were only 45 states in the union. And African Americans were locked into an ironclad system of injustice known as Jim Crow. This violent negation of democracy was secured by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and upheld by centuries of brutal custom. Only the most resilient optimist could foresee a day when access to education, public facilities, housing, jobs and transportation were not based on color-coded hierarchy, and the nation could realize a day such as the 53rd anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Fortunately, Oliver Hill was one of those optimists. Hill, who turned 100 years old on May 1, 2007, not only witnessed the demise of that system, but he was one of the legal strategists who helped bring it down. He along with Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit, Jack Greenberg and others were part of the legal team that brought an end to legalized segregation in 1954.
Time has a way of reducing even the most far-reaching moments of history into thumbnail sketches and in the case of Brown we see simply a case about segregated education. In reality, the Brown decision marked a legal turning point in which the 14th Amendment was returned to its true purpose. Crafted in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Amendment was intended to protect newly emancipated blacks from state laws that sought to virtually re-enslave them. But a series of Supreme Court decisions culminating in Plessy v. Ferguson chipped away at the Amendment and left blacks nearly defenseless against resurgent racism, particularly in the Deep South. In short, achieving racial democracy in America meant finding a way to revive the spirit of that Amendment.
Inspired by their mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, Oliver Hill - and his classmate and close friend Thurgood Marshall understood this reality. When a group of black students marched out of R.R. Moton High School in Virginia to protest the dilapidated conditions of the building, Hill seized the opportunity to attack segregation. When the parents of eight year-old Linda Brown challenged the policy that sent her to a school miles away from her home simply because she was black, Marshall saw a chance to change the course of history. Joined by school desegregation cases from Delaware, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. that became collectively argued as Brown v. Board of Education, their 1954 Supreme Court victory opened more than the doors of schoolhouses. It led to cases challenging racism in transportation, voting rights and housing. Brown provided a legal foundation that energized the Civil Rights Movement.