The Negro Teacher and the Fourteenth Amendment

Negro teacher in the South has borne a special burden during the progress towards school desegregation since ,the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954. At times he may even envy the Negro pupil. Despite defiance, delays, tokenism and resegregation, the Negro pupil's rights are well defined and his progress toward integrated classrooms is a matter of Federal Government policy. Negro teacher's position is much less secure. As one Federal judge in Arkansas commented during a 1965 suit brought by three Negro teachers who had lost their jobs due to desegregation, The Fourteenth Amendment . . . is not a teacher tenure law.1