This monument pays homage to court cases involving segregation that made their way through Delaware courts in the 1950’s, before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision. It was dedicated on May 17, 2024, the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision, on the grounds of the Delaware Legislative Hall.
Two Delaware cases were part of the Brown v. Board of Education case:
Belton v. Gebhart was brought by Ethel Louise Belton and six other parents of eight black high school students who lived in Claymont, Delaware. (Claymont is where President Joe Biden lived as a boy.) Despite the existence of a well-maintained, spacious high school in Claymont, segregation forced the parents to send their children on a public bus to attend the run-down Howard High School in downtown Wilmington. Howard High School was Delaware’s sole business and college-prep school for black students and served the entire state of Delaware. Related concerns involved class size, teacher qualifications, and curriculum; Howard students interested in vocational training were required to walk several blocks to a nearby annex to attend classes offered only after the conclusion of the normal school day.
Bulah v. Gebhart was brought by Sarah Bulah, a resident of the rural town of Hockessin, Delaware, in the northwest corner of the stat, bordering Pennsylvania. Mrs. Bulah’s daughter, Shirley, had been denied admission to the modern, whites-only Hockessin School No. 29, and instead was compelled to attend a one-room “colored” school, Hockessin School No. 107, which, though very near School No. 29, had vastly inferior facilities and construction. Moreover, Shirley Bulah was required to walk to school every day, even though a school bus serving the nearby whites-only school passed by her house. Mrs. Bulah had attempted to get Shirley on that bus, but she was told they would never transport a black student.
Delaware’s first Black attorney, Louis L. Redding, represented the Bulah and Belton families in Delaware courts in lawsuits arguing that the state’s law requiring segregation on the basis of race denied Black students their constitutional rights to equal protection under the law.
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Chancellor Collins J. Seitz ruled in favor of the families. Those decisions marked the first in the nation to strike down school segregation. However, they only applied to the schools named in the suits.
The cases were eventually combined on appeal, and merged with four others, to become part of the Brown v. Board of Education decision: leading to the end of school segregation in the United States.
The front of the monument, pictured above, has photos of the two students named in the lawsuits — Ethel Louise Belton and Shirley Barbara Bulah — plus a photo of Chancellor Collins J. Seitz, who wrote the opinions desegregating the two schools, and of the families attorney, Louis L. Redding, and Thurgood Marshall, then lead attorney for the NAACP. The text on the front is:
we are all Americans, and when the State sets up separate schools for certain people of a separate color, then I or others are made to feel ashamed and embarrassed. — Mother of Ethel Louise Belton
They were courageous pioneers blazing trails through controversial and then uncharted territories of law and justice which ultimately brought to our state the true meaning of justice for all. — The Journal of the Delaware State Bar Association, November, 1998
The back of the monument has more photos with captions and this text:
In the two Delaware segregation cases, Belton v. Gebhart (Claymont High School) and Bulah v. Gebhart (Hockessin Elementary School No. 107 C) Chancellor Collins J. Seitz struck down segregation, the only cases among those making up Brown v. Board to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court’s May 1954 decision upheld the Delaware decisions.
In tribute to those Delawareans — the children, their families, the attorneys, and the judge in their cases — through whose efforts Delaware became the first state to strike down public school segregation through judicial action a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark1954 decision Brown vs. Board of education.
