Scholar speaks on Missouri's history of school desegregation

Debra Miles [Order this photo]

Missouri scholar Dr. Debra Miles spoke in Arrow Rock Saturday, Feb. 7, about the history of school desegregation in Missouri and the United States and the influence of Charles Hamilton Houston, a lawyer who handled many civil rights cases.

Miles' presentation was the first lecture in the 1st Saturday Lecture Series offered by Friends of Arrow Rock.

"The mission of the Friends of Arrow Rock is historic preservation and history education," Executive Director Kathy Borgman said.

Miles, who holds a master's degree in history and a law degree, travels the state giving presentations concerning African-American desegregation and civil rights history in Missouri. She is part of The Missouri History Speakers' Bureau, which offers educational presentations about Missouri history. Miles also practices law full-time for the Missouri Department of Mental Health. She primarily gives the presentation at K-12 schools, but this year she started lecturing to adults, too.

"My goal has always been to teach black history programs," Miles said. "There is a history that needs to be told."

The presentation, "The Road to Brown v. Board of Education," centers on the civil rights court cases tried by Houston in the early- and mid- 20th century. Houston, a graduate of Harvard Law School, tried many civil rights cases in the United States, but two of his most significant cases were held in Missouri, according to Miles. Houston represented Lloyd Gains, a young man who attempted to enter the University of Missouri School of Law, and Lucille Bluford, who pursued the possibility of attending the Missouri School of Journalism. Both Lloyd and Bluford were denied enrollment due to the color of their skin. The cases were tried in local trial courts before moving on to the Missouri Supreme Court and, in Gaines' case, the United States Supreme Court. The two students were never admitted to the University of Missouri because the courts made provisions that required Lincoln University, a school established for African-Americans at the close of the Civil War, to open colleges that taught law and journalism. Gaines disappeared before he could start attending classes at Lincoln.

The cases contributed to the eventual desegregation of universities in Missouri and the U.S., according to Miles. She explained the cases covered in the lecture dealt with desegregation at the collegiate level. Houston's strategy focused on civil right cases with institutions of higher education under the notion that desegregation at this level would eventually make its way into the public sphere.

"He had the forethought to see that tearing down the walls of segregation in education would lead to the tearing down of other walls of segregation," Miles said. "He had to start somewhere."

"I thought it was a good point, and a very important one, that the strategy of civil rights came from arguing the points of the Constitution in the courts," Borgman said. "It might be easy to get the idea that changes came from protests and marches without realizing that change happened by the calculated chipping away at the problem via the courts and the Constitution."

Among Houston's other accomplishments were the accreditation of Howard University School of Law with the American Bar Association and the improvement of education for its African-American law students, Miles said.

"He believed lawyers should be social engineers," Miles said. "He said, 'A lawyer is either a social engineer or he is a parasite on society.'"