Racial Segregation

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear a constitutional challenge to California's policy of segregating new prisoners by race. For the first 60 days, new inmates are kept in cells with another inmate of the same race, in what state officials say is an effort to reduce violence. White skinheads or members of black and Hispanic gangs are more likely to get into fights if they are housed with someone of another race, the officials say. The new prisoners are evaluated for their potential for violence, and after 60 days, they are assigned to a permanent cell - without regard to race.

Barely a week after the group made national news for advocating for racial segregation at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Towson University's White Student Union is again drawing attention for plans to conduct nighttime patrols to watch for crime. Matthew Heimbach, a 21-year-old senior and founder of the group, said his group plans to go out a few nights a week - the men armed with only Maglite flashlights, the women with pepper spray - and will attempt to make a citizen's arrest if they witness a "violent felony.

DECLARING THAT racial segregation laws "do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other," the United States Supreme Court, on May 18, 1896, upheld a Louisiana statute mandating racial segregation on trains traveling within the state.The Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, a masterpiece of circumlocution, determined that the Louisiana law did not violate the constitution because it "implies merely a legal distinction between white and colored races [and] has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races."

I couldn't take my eyes off the screen Jan. 20 as Barack Obama, his black hand resting on the Lincoln Bible, took the oath of office as our 44th president. Like millions of other Americans, I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. My thoughts turned to many things that afternoon - to the Layton Theater of my youth, where African-Americans were relegated to the balcony; to Carolyn Thomas, who joined my all-white high school class in 1961 as its only black member; to the "Whites Only" sign on the bathroom door in the city park not far from home.

WHAT DOES Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s plan to install slot machines at Maryland racetracks have in common with President Bush's plan to achieve racial diversity in college admissions? Each is a pact with the devil, employing a social negative to foster social good. Ehrlich would put more than 40 percent of the profits from slots gambling into Maryland public schools. Bush wants to make college admissions "race-neutral" by guaranteeing public university access to students who graduate in the top 5 percent or 10 percent of their high school classes.

The Rev. Ernest Bromley,85, a war resister and one of the original Freedom Riders who spoke against racial segregation in the South, died of cancer Dec. 17 in Cincinnati.Leo August,83, who developed a boyhood stamp collection and a fascination with airplanes into a prominent philatelic publishing house, died Dec. 4 in Livingston, N.J.Pub Date: 12/24/97

As a housing lawyer on leave from my public-interest practice in Johannesburg, I came to Baltimore last October, enthusiastic to learn how to ''undo'' racial segregation. I was anxious for lessons about integrated neighborhoods, the constitutional right to choose where to live and the role of government in ensuring equal opportunities and fair housing practices.My own Afrikaner ancestors, after all, had developed a national social system -- apartheid -- upon the foundation of racial residential segregation.

To play in the big leagues, you got to be a man, but you got to have a lot of little boy in you, too.-- Roy CampanellaHe was a winner, on the field and off. Not only did Roy Campanella wind up in baseball's Hall of Fame for his prowess on the ball diamond, he turned himself into an All Star off the field as the courageous example of what it takes to enjoy life after suffering a crippling injury.All his life, he encountered setbacks, but they never got him down. Racial segregation kept him from the major leagues until he was 26, yet he made the most of the opportunity when it arrived.

Montgomery, Alabama -- George Corley Wallace, the former Alabama governor who once was regarded as one the nation's most destructive racists, writhed on his sickbed recently and told me of the thing he regrets most in his 72 years of life.He says his biggest mistake came during his 1963 inaugural as governor when he stood on a spot in the state Capitol and shouted: ''Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!''''I never should have said it, because it wasn't true,'' said Mr. Wallace, who lay for most of an almost two-hour interview on a hospital-type bed, trying to ease the pains that he has known since a bullet from would-be assassin Arthur Bremer paralyzed him from the waist down during the 1972 presidential election campaign.

Because of racism, his major league career didn't begin until he was 26. It ended prematurely 10 years later in a car crash. He spent the final 35 years of his life as a quadriplegic.For most men, these setbacks might have produced bitterness. But in Roy Campanella, it produced a role model extraordinaire. He helped shatter baseball's racial barrier. He was the preeminent catcher of his day. And after tragedy struck, he became a spokesman for the handicapped.On the ball field, he won Most Valuable Player three times; set a single-season record (for a catcher)

American public schools are becoming increasingly separate and unequal, and last week's Supreme Court decision invalidating desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., will hasten this process. Three-quarters of African-American and Latino schoolchildren attend predominantly minority schools, and white children are even more likely to attend racially isolated schools. School districts across the country have adopted plans to decrease segregation, and many of these plans are now vulnerable to legal challenge.

Late in the 19th century, a strange fruit began appearing on trees in the South. The dangling bodies of black victims of lynching signaled the end of Reconstruction and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. By the early 20th century, the racial violence had extended beyond the South. A race riot in Springfield, Ill., in 1908 spurred a group of progressive blacks and whites to band together to fight racial violence. The next year, they founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will reopen the constitutional question of whether prison officials can segregate inmates in an effort to prevent racial violence behind the walls. In a brief order yesterday, the justices agreed to hear a challenge by a California inmate to a state prison policy of initially assigning every new prisoner only to a cell occupied by another member of the same race. A key issue is whether the justices will judge such segregation under a constitutional standard that almost never tolerates public policy that is based on race or under a more relaxed approach that gives wide discretion to wardens to manage their prison populations.

MORE HIGH-FIVES to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Arbutus for his leadership in Baltimore's school crisis. Last week, the governor pledged a $42 million loan to help the school system pay its bills, and this week, with the deficit numbers looking even worse, Ehrlich came closer to advocating a complete state takeover of the system, declaring himself its new guardian with these words: "I have 90,000 children in Baltimore City schools." Say what you will about Bobby Slots, but he's no deadbeat dad. Some might find it wholly remarkable that a Republican from the suburbs, who garnered little support in the 2002 gubernatorial election from the city families who will benefit from this intervention, would take the lead here.

WHATEVER THE outcome of the trial in U.S. District Court on discrimination claims by public housing residents against the city and the federal government, the case has provided a fascinating look at the early development of low-income housing here -- and of Baltimore's inner city as well. The view comes courtesy of the reports and testimony of expert witnesses for both sides. The experts, like the plaintiffs and the defense, disagree on whether the city and the federal government have willfully perpetuated in recent times the racially segregated system they put in place six decades ago. But there is little dispute about how public housing developed in the years before the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawed racial segregation -- and little doubt that the development influenced patterns of growth for years.

WHAT DOES Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s plan to install slot machines at Maryland racetracks have in common with President Bush's plan to achieve racial diversity in college admissions? Each is a pact with the devil, employing a social negative to foster social good. Ehrlich would put more than 40 percent of the profits from slots gambling into Maryland public schools. Bush wants to make college admissions "race-neutral" by guaranteeing public university access to students who graduate in the top 5 percent or 10 percent of their high school classes.

Battling over a gift of nearly $30 million, lawyers for two Baltimore health care institutions argued yesterday over which takes precedence, Maryland's anti-segregation policies or rules governing bequests. The attorneys, appearing before the state's highest court, are vying over a bequest from Dr. Jesse C. Coggins. In 1962, Coggins wrote a will leaving what was then a $2.3 million estate to the Keswick Home with the caveat that it use the money to house white patients and name the building for him. If that was unacceptable, the money was to go to University of Maryland Medical System, with no race restrictions.

Battling over a gift of nearly $30 million, lawyers for two Baltimore health care institutions argued yesterday over which takes precedence, Maryland's anti-segregation policies or rules governing bequests. The attorneys, appearing before the state's highest court, are vying over a bequest from Dr. Jesse C. Coggins. In 1962, Coggins wrote a will leaving what was then a $2.3 million estate to the Keswick Home with the caveat that it use the money to house white patients and name the building for him. If that was unacceptable, the money was to go to University of Maryland Medical System, with no race restrictions.