Back in the wake of Obergfell v Hodges, I talked with some friends about a news story of a court person refusing to sign off on gay marriages after the Supreme Court allowed them. My friends were confused. They wanted to know: How can they refuse the authority of the Supreme Court?!?! I had a couple historical examples…

1. My hometown city and county schools refused racial integration for years. They landed on Department of Justice lists for not doing it. A segregation academy popped up where parents could send their kids to avoid it and numerous Christian schools manifested for the same. My father was among the first students to move from his black high school to the white one. And the trouble he faced came more from the students and their parents with the teachers looking the other way to allow it. People moved from the city to the county, which resulted in the city schools being basically 90% minority and the county schools being 30% minority.
2. Similar happened with marriages. Loving v Virginia overturned the state law preventing my parents from getting married in 1967. Years later, when my parents applied to get married, the magistrate refused under the overturned law. Was it legal? No. They went to the next state over to find a county who would issue a marriage license. A local county judge with state courts, state supreme court, federal courts, and a US Supreme Court above them refused. Could they have a appealed? Sure. It might have taken years to win, though.

The US South long ignored Supreme Court decisions that support integration. It’s not surprising to see the current administration doing ignoring oppositional decisions because the advisors are fans of the white nationalist forebears who did it during and after the Civil Rights Era. The big teeth are in tradition and doing the right thing.

Eventually, the resistance to the SCotUS decisions fell apart. That segregation academy admitted my brother. The Catholic school integrated and later admitted me.

But, it always rumbled under the surface. My mother had a former student in tears because the judge admonished her as a terrible parent for choosing to have an interracial child. Parents would go to her boss and complain about her having my photo on her desk because kids should not learn miscegenation is possible. People asked if I was adopted because they didn’t know miscegenation was possible. There will never be a post-racial America. White nationalists feeling like they are losing the country will get more active.

Of course, my ability to talk extemporaneously about this stuff probably influences why I think this new UGA Applied History Certificate sounds like the kind of thing I should do:

The University of Georgia has announced a new Applied History Certificate program meant to combine skills in historical study, public policy and political decision making. The program is a joint effort through the School of Public and International Affairs and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ History Department.

Knowing history, especially around government decisions and their impacts, knowing public policy, and how the political sausage is made is a special interest of mine. The podcasts I listen to are all about this stuff. The books I read are often about this stuff.