A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education

Synopsis

Any scheme that classifies people on the basis of race or color and withholds from one class benefits that are enjoyed by others is indefensible. As a lawyer, I spoke in defense of a law that permitted such a result.

This thoughtful and engaging memoir opens up a previously hidden side to what many consider the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century. With quiet candor Paul Wilson reflects upon his role as the Kansas assistant attorney general assigned to defend the indefensible—the policy of separate but equal that was overturned on May 17, 1954, by Linda Brown's precedent-shattering suit.

The Brown decision ended legally sanctioned racial segregation in our nation's public schools, expanded the constitutional concepts of equal protection and due process of law, and in many ways launched the modern civil rights movement. Since that time, it has been cited by appellate courts in thousands of federal and state cases, analyzed in thousands of books and articles, and remains a cornerstone of law school education.

Wilson reminds us that Brown was not one case but four—including similar cases in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware—and that it was only a quirk of fate that brought this young lawyer to center stage at the Supreme Court. But the Kansas case and his own role, he argues, were different from the others in significant ways. His recollections reveal why.

Recalling many events known only to Brown insiders, Wilson re-creates the world of 1950s Kansas, places the case in the context of those times and politics, provides important new information about the state's ambivalent defense, and then steps back to suggest some fundamental lessons about his experience, the evolution of race relations, and the lawyer's role in the judicial resolution of social conflict.

Throughout these reflections Wilson's voice shines through with sincerity, warmth, and genuine humility. Far from a self-serving apology by one of history's losers, his memoir reminds us once again that there are good people on every side of the issues that divide us and that truth and meaning are not the special preserve of history's winners.

Publishers Weekly

Wilson, professor emeritus of law at the University of Kansas, was the young assistant attorney general who, in an ``unsought, unplanned, and unearned brush with history,'' had to defend school segregation in Kansas in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court. His memoir, though mainly for specialists, helps fill out the record with useful details and well-considered reflections on the role of the defense. After sketching Kansas's historical ambivalence about race, he recounts his own slow recognition of racial injustice. Then he describes the process of the case, noting that, though he personally opposed segregation, Supreme Court precedent clearly supported its legality. Indeed, unlike defense attorneys in companion cases in South Carolina and Virginia, Wilson welcomed friend of the court briefs from organizations like the ACLU, the CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, ``none [of which] were friends of Kansas and the Topeka Board of Education.'' Wilson also describes his appearances at the Supreme Court and offers critical reflections on the defense argument of the famed John W. Davis. After the decision, he notes, no Kansans acknowledged they had favored segregation: ``They were less righteous than embarrassed.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)