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and Marcus Garvey, was characteristic of many Black conservatives in the 1950s and
1960s.
This standpoint was also at the root of her opposition to Brown v. Board of
Education. She believed the court’s claim that Black schools were inferior to their White
counterparts was a direct attack on the Black community itself. “The whole matter
revolves around the self-respect of my people,” Hurston wrote in a letter published in
the Orlando Sentinel. She further stated, “I regard the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court
as insulting,” particularly its claim that separating Black children from Whites “generates
a feeling of inferiority.” Drawing on the ideas of Marcus Garvey, which many Black
Nationalists would also later employ in the 1960s, Hurston argued that “there are
adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors” in many Black neighborhoods, and to
suggest that White schools were inherently superior made the decision “insulting rather
than honoring my race.” Unlike many White conservatives who opposed the decision on
the basis of racist fears of integration, Hurston’s racial pride and strict adherence to
Black self-help were the driving forces behind her opposition to Brown. 17
Hurston was not the only Black conservative woman on the national stage during
the 1950s. Thalia Thomas, the assistant chief of the Republican National Committee’s
Minorities Division, traveled over 100,000 miles across the country touting the virtues of
the Grand Old Party throughout the decade. 18 Another was North Carolina Central
University professor Helen Edmonds. With a PhD in History from the Ohio State
University and as the first Black woman to become dean of a graduate school, Edmonds
was one of the most well-known and published Black historians of the 1950s. Like
Hurston, Edmonds’ scholarship was rooted in her firm belief in Black dignity and self-
17
Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix,” Orlando Sentinel, August
11, 1955; Kaplan, 611; Boyd, 423-4; Hemenway, 336.
18
Charles Thomas and Frances Shattuck, The 1956 Presidential Campaign (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institute, 1960), 239; “Ticker Tape U.S.A.,” Jet, January 29, 1959, 11.