Geeky Chic

Today, I attendeded a panel discussion on the life on Justice Thurgood Marshall that was part of the law school’s bigger celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.  The panelists were all HLS faculty members who had clerked for Marshall (amazingly 1/8th of our faculty clerked for Marshall).  The first speaker, Professor Brewer talked about Marshall’s difficult decision as the attorney in Brown to use the study that compared the attitudes on race held by black students who attended Southern segregated schools with those who attended Northern integrated schools.  What surprised me was that the data actually wasn’t that clear — it was murky and showed that the southern black children were more likely to accept the black doll.

This amazes me a little, because despite being taught Brown in Con Law, when I think of the case, I immediately conjure up scenes from a made-for-TV movie about the case that I watched in 7th grade.  I still have the images in my head of the Southern kid picking the white doll, when asked which one was the pretty one.  I’m still imbued with the idea that Chief Justice Earl Warren was a hero, who wanted no dissent on the decision.  In the movie, he approaches Justice Frankfurter, and gives him some speech about the similarities between blacks and jews, to convert Franfurter to the cause.

The only reason that I bring this up, is because I know this is Hollywood’s re-telling of the Brown story.  There are probably a lot of inaccuracies that I consumed.  Yet, this TV movie is what lingers in my head, when I think about the case.  It’s scary to think that there’s some other kid out there, with the Hollywood version of Pearl Harbor lodged in her head.