Interesting to hear #Kavanaugh discuss Brown and the Harlan dissent in Plessy as being the guideboook and frame for Brown & our understanding of why there can be no “separation of the races.” #KavanaughHearings
But this is so deeply elementary that it leaves a lot on the cutting room floor - much of it critical to understanding how this nominee sees the scope of equal protection and rights in modern America. So I know this is not the “Schoolhouse Rock” version but:
First of all Harlan’s dissent is the most rudimentary vision of racial equality by today’s standards. Much of it is enduring, elegant and powerful. But he also says this: 
Marshall’s strategy was born of his deep understanding of racism in the south and the southern obsession with and fear of interaction betw white girls and African American boys. He began w law school & pharmacy schools for this reason.
The most ardent segregationist could accept that there should be Black doctors & lawyers to serve the segregated Black population.
In addition, it is really Judge Waities Waring’s trial court decision in Briggs (the South Carolina Brown case) that is a key template for the SCOTUS decision in Brown, w/some exceptions. It’s important b/c there is an explicit recognition of the illegality of white supremacy.
Where’s in his Plessy dissent, Justice Harlan said this:
But more importantly to spend two days talking abt Brown w/o reference to or discussion of the cases needed to breathe life in a great decision whose promise remains unfulfilled, threatens to turn Brown into a device of useless cynicism.
I’d like to hear about Cooper v Aaron (Little Rock 9 case). Griffin v Kent County (freedom of choice plans); Swann v Mecklenberg (busing) and those cases limiting Brown - Milliken (interdistrict busing); Parents Involved (voluntary deseg).
How about Bob Jones?
Brown is great because it changed the meaning of equality and citizenship in the 20th century. And as a nation we’ve been fighting about that meaning ever since.
Marshall remained in the battle to fulfill that meaning in his jurisprudence until his last days on the Court. Brown was not a relic for him - frozen in amber. To hear it discussed this way 64 years later as we fight efforts daily to rollback its promise is deeply dispiriting.
The 40+ year effort to overturn Roe has more in common with the immediate and unrelenting effort that began the day after Brown to undo Brown’s promise, than it does with the brilliant, necessary strategy Marshall & the @NAACP_LDF team undertook to reach that landmark decision.
