Conversations: Richard Riley
Former S.C. governor, U.S. education secretary on the legacy of Brown
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. “Dick” Riley celebrated his 91st birthday earlier this week, more than 60 years after he was first elected to serve in the South Carolina legislature and almost 35 years since he became the first two-term governor in the state’s history.
Still active in his Greenville law firm, the South Carolina native served in the state House and Senate from 1963 to 1977, then was governor from 1979 to 1987. He was President Clinton’s education secretary from 1993 to 2001.
In the midst of my reporting on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I reached out to Riley for a phone interview in January 2004 and was fortunate to spend 30 minutes on the line with him talking about the landmark legislation. Revisiting my notes from the conversation last year, one quote in particular stood out:
“Integration will not occur to our satisfaction,” Riley said, “until we've lost multiple generations of people. We’ve made progress, but you have to remember that the older people who are in charge of Congress and state legislatures are still products of segregated schools.”
The same remains true more than two decades later, as do a number of the things he touched on in the interview.
During his time as governor, Riley was widely praised for his work to improve education in South Carolina. In the mid 1980s, he helped to push through the Education Improvement Act that added a penny to the state sales tax, all of which went to K-12 schools. Later, his law firm — Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough — represented 36 school districts in the state in a two-decade lawsuit over inequitable funding.
Here are some highlights from our conversation:
What is the legacy of Brown?
There have been three things that significantly improved civil rights during my lifetime. First you have the work of Martin Luther King Jr. coming into the Civil Rights Movement. Then, you have [President] Truman’s decision in 1948 to desegregate the nation’s armed forces, which was a big statement. And then you have the Brown decision.
Brown v. Board was absolutely critical to the Civil Rights Movement. It changed our country around and impacted civil rights around the world. When you talk about human rights and freedom, you’re really talking about education and the civil rights that we have because of Brown.
The greatest civil rights issue for this century is providing a high-quality education for all children. That is the biggest issue we are facing right now, and Brown v. Board set that up.
How did the Brown decision affect you personally?
I finished Greenville High School in 1950, and the year or so before that I was involved as a student in consolidating all the high school districts in my county. We merged 85 school districts into one that year. As a high school student, I looked at some of the one-room schoolhouses [where blacks were taught] and knew that it was just wrong. I became a very strong supporter of the school consolidation bill, which was very controversial.
In 1970, there was a big case in Greenville in which a judge ruled that we had to integrate everything in 30 days, not just schools. And the school system did it. My father was a lawyer for the district, and I was in the state senate then, so I was able to see how it was done.
In the end, [it was] a wonderful example of everything coming together. And it was successful, I think, because they had only 30 days. Sometimes it’s easier to pull something like that off in a short period of time than in a long period of time.
But as we’ve seen and continue to see in Summerton, resistance continues.
It does. When we integrated in the 1970s, all of my children were in public schools. We kept them all in the public schools. I got hate telephone calls. I went on a phone-in radio show and urged people to stay with the public schools because it would benefit everyone. I’ve never been sorry for that. Even today, all of my grandchildren go to public schools.
In your view, what is the single largest issue today that prevents students from being successful?
How we are financing public education is still a large part of the problem. The adequacy of education in poor rural school districts in South Carolina is a case in point. These are poor rural school districts with predominantly African-American kids.
They’ve got teachers teaching out of field, poorer school buildings, a lack of technology, large class sizes, a lack of after-school programs—all of the things we know are necessary for kids to have an adequate education, especially the poor kid who comes from a family where education has not been a part of their past. If we get our education finances straight, get our adequacy straight, then we can take the progress we’ve made and move forward.
Do you think Brown has accomplished what the Supreme Court hoped?
We’ve made a lot of progress since 1954, but we haven’t made nearly enough. You do have to appreciate the courage of those who got this movement going and brought it up. You have to appreciate the courage of the Supreme Court and look and see how far we’ve come.
We still have a form of segregation in many areas—not legal segregation, but de facto segregation. When you see poor kids and minority kids struggling to succeed, you have a kind of double negative that you have to work out to make sure they receive the proper education. One part of that is their lack of resources at home. The other reason for that is what I call a tyranny of low expectations.
All kids can learn. I absolutely believe that, and all the research shows that. But they don’t learn at an equal rate if you don’t have the proper opportunities in the family and the community and in the school and they are not with quality teachers from year to year. It is a tragedy that has taken place over the years: poor kids, white and black and brown, without the opportunities they need for success.
We’ve had peaks and valleys since Brown. ... We still have a ways to go.
A Note to Subscribers
This year I’ve introduced a paid subscription model for “Our Reality Show” with three tiers — monthly, annually, and founding member. If you can upgrade your subscription, that would be a wonderful show of support for my work.
If you can’t, that’s OK too. New and current subscribers can still access all content here for free. Please continue to read, enjoy, and comment because that means the world to me.
If you opt for a paid subscription, I promise to “pay it forward” by donating 25% of all revenue to worthy causes. I also will report those donations back to you.
Thank you for supporting “Our Reality Show.”