Redding and Greenberg argue Brown companion case in high court

Nov. 11, 2025, Wilmington: There was magic in the air that night at the DuPont Country Club, as lawyers, judges, public officials and others came together at a Louis L. Redding Benefit and Awards Gala. The event was hosted by the Delaware Barristers Association. It honored five individuals (Serena Williams, James “Sonny” Knott, David Wilk, Theresa Brown-Edwards and Lisa Blunt Rochester). All, in their own special ways, advanced the amazing legacy of Louis Redding (1901-98). 

That evening, family and friends joined in celebratory spirits, committed to remembering his culture-changing achievements. They gathered to give renewed life to his legacy so that it would not be erased from the pages of history.     

Turn the clock back in time, 875 months and 21 days earlier. In December 1952, NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer Louis Redding argued one of the first of two rounds of cases in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case – he argued the Delaware companion case (case No. 10). Having won Bulah v. Gebhart and Gebhart v. Belton in the Delaware Supreme Court (Aug. 28, 1952), Redding asked the high court to affirm his school desegregation victory. Well educated, well mannered and well prepared, Redding was ready as he addressed the nine black-robed justices in the fifth of the consolidated Brown cases before the court.

“I conclude from the testimony that in our Delaware society, state-imposed segregation in education itself results in the Negro children, as a class, receiving educational opportunities which are substantially inferior to those available to white children otherwise similarly situated,” he said.    

With informed nuance, Redding skillfully fielded an array of procedural questions presented to him by Justices Stanley Reed, Harold Burton, Fred Vinson and Felix Frankfurter – the kind of questions that, if erroneously answered, could lose the case straightaway. The Harvard-educated lawyer held his ground as he paved the way for his co-counsel Jack Greenberg. 

There were “inequalities in sites and buildings, and inequalities in teacher preparation, and there was inequality in teacher load,” Greenberg stressed. There were also “inequalities in curricula and extra-curricular activities” as well as “inequalities in the elementary school case in sites and buildings,” he added. And there were those inequities associated with the travel distances children of color had to endure to get to school.   

That, however, was hardly the end of the matter, as the Brown cases were reargued Dec. 8-9, 1953, two months after Earl Warren replaced Chief Justice Fred Vinson. That switch changed the course of history. In rearguing the case for Delaware, Attorney General H. Albert Young maintained that the debates related to the 14th Amendment contained no reference to school segregation in the house. Hence, “the 14th Amendment did not affect the right of the state to educate the Negro in segregated schools.” That point had been fully and forcefully contested by the LDF in the first round of arguments in Brown.

Greenberg returned to the lectern to respond. This time, he was followed by Thurgood Marshall, then director of the LDF. Both addressed yet more procedural questions posed by Justices Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson. 

Nearly 23 weeks later, a unanimous Supreme Court rendered its Brown ruling. It affirmed the principle underlying the Delaware desegregation decree, the one rendered by Chancery Judge Collins J. Seitz two years earlier. In his opinion for the court, Chief Justice Warren declared: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.” In the process, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896, upholding segregation laws) was overruled. 

With Brown, the constitutional fight for equal justice in education had been won. But more on-the-ground work remained. The Delaware case was remanded for further deliberations on how and when to implement the court’s desegregation decree. Louis Redding, the first Black lawyer admitted to the Delaware bar, would be busy arguing cases in state courts and before local officials.   

In a 1993 Brown University Alumni Magazine article, Redding looked back on his achievement: “I don’t know that I’m a hero at all. I grew up with a generation of lawyers that exerted itself to abolish distinctions … based solely on color. Of course, they should have been abolished long before. All we did was our duty, not only to the people who were discriminated against but also to this so-called democratic country.”