Edwin Washington Project

EWP 1 Tenth Amendment 002

Item

Title

EWP 1 Tenth Amendment 002

Place

Virginia

Identifier

1000511

Is Version Of

1000511_EWP_Tenth_Amendment_002.jpg

Is Part Of

Uncategorized

Date Created

2024-01-07

Format

Jpeg Image

Number

b113b1080223765c7bac9974e3fa7083846ba8c06ee4b89134d2eb045244e166

Source

/Volumes/T7 Shield/EWP/Elements/EWP_Files/Access Files/Upload temp/1000511_EWP_Tenth_Amendment_002.jpg

Publisher

Digitized by Edwin Washington Project

Rights

Loudoun County Public Schools

Language

English

Replaces

/Volumes/T7 Shield/EWP/Elements/EWP_Files/source/Ingest One/1 Civil Rights/integration_folder/Constitutional_Convention/EWP_Tenth_Amendment_002.jpg

extracted text

@ 2—



The fourteenth amendment stated, among other things, that all citizens
shall have the equal protection of law., For nearly a hundred years it was
coneidered right and proper for the states to decide whether or not they were
to have integrated or separate schools. This same Congress that approved the
fourteenth amendment approved separate schools for the District of Columbia.
In 1867 it was considered right for states to decide whether they wanted
separate or intergrated schools. In 1895 the Supreme Court affirmed this law.
On several occasions after 1895 the Supreme Court reaffirmed these conceptions
of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has a right to interpret the Constitution. The Supreme
Court has no right to make a new law or amend the Constitution, On May 17, 1954,
the Court usurped powers rightfully belonging to the states and, in essence,
amended the Constitution so that all states had to integrate the schools. Not
only did the Court amend the Constitution, they have now assumed that they have
the right to determine how this integration is going to be accomplished,

No new law has been passed. The Court has assumed a duty not given to it
under the Constitution.

But what is even more disturbing about this decision is the manner in
which it was made. A court usually makes its decision on the basis of law,
or precedents, or witnesses. This Court cast aside all law, all precedent
and made the decision on the basis of sociology and psychology. Is it possible
for the viewers here to understand the implication of this decision? Are we
from henceforth to be governed by the writers of books of sociology and psychology?
Are the framers of the Constitution to be arbitrarily overthrown by wild, young
professors of some new untried science?

If the Court had made this decision on the basis of books written by
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, or Booker T. Washington, I
would even then be disturbed, but these men are at least great statesmen, and
great Americans., But when the Court changes a law of Virginia on the basis of
a book written by a Swedish sociologist, a sociologist that in that book states
that the Constitution has outworn its usefulness, the State has a complete duty
to resist by every means available.

The question of integration becomes a secondary importance. The primary
question is: Can the Supreme Court of the United States write a decision on the
basis of books written by foreigh experts and have such a decision supersede
the laws of a Sovereigh State? If it can, then the Court is all powerful and we
have a government of men and not of law. Other books can be written. Books
that might take away all of our precious rights.

I am sure that a sociological expert can be found that would write a book
gaying that Bill Story should not be allowed to talk that way, or that a certain
aewspaper should not be printed, or a certain church endured, and we will have
lost our rights under the first amendment to the Constitution. There are people
wio might easily write a book that trial by a board of left-wing, liberal
professors would be better than trial by jury and the seventh amendment will
have been destroyed.


Item sets

EWP 01 Civil Rights