Delawareans recognized: Biden awards presidential honors to 2 local heroes who fought for racial equity

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President Joe Biden bestowed three Delawareans with the nation’s second highest honor Thursday. Two of those recipients were integral to the desegregation of the nation’s schools.

Biden said the medals and the story of the United States is about the heart and hard work of the American people.

“The most important title in America is not president, but citizen,” he said. “It’s ‘We the People.’ These are the words that are the rock upon which this entire nation has been built.”

Louis Lorenzo Redding — Delaware’s first Black attorney and Wilmington federal appeals Judge Collins J. Seitz were both honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously. Earlier this year, Delaware celebrated its role in the 70-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the principle of “separate but equal” in the nation’s  schools.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court appeal stemmed from four cases in Delaware and other states. The challenges by Redding and others were part of a coordinated effort by the NAACP to prove segregation was unconstitutional.

Black families asked the states to allow their children to attend white schools — only to be told no. Redding, who was also a lawyer for the NAACP legal defense, argued the two Delaware school segregation lawsuits. His arguments were the only ones of all the cases that were successful.

Then Chancery Court Chancellor Seitz heard the combined Delaware case in 1951. He visited the Black and white schools and ruled that they were not equal.

After the Delaware Supreme Court upheld Seitz’s ruling, the state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming part of the Brown case. In 1954, the court ruled “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, drawing heavily from the arguments and language from the First State’s case.

Rev. J.B. Redding, Redding’s daughter, told WHYY News at the state’s celebration in May commemorating its contribution to the Brown case that her father was motivated to pursue justice when he witnessed the disparity between Black and white Delawaeans.

“He saw that things were not fair. They were not equal,” she said. “He just was an extraordinarily courageous man. [It] made him want to give the same opportunities to all the people in the area.”

State Supreme Court Justice Collins Seitz Jr., Seitz’s son, who also attended that event, told WHYY News at the time that his father’s role was unique from what other judges did in the Brown cases.

“He ordered the immediate integration of the Delaware schools,” he said. “Most states said, ‘I will give you time to bring the Black schools up to the level of the white schools.’ My father said, ‘No, justice delayed is justice denied.’”

Biden awarded 20 medals in all, including one to his longtime confidant Ted Kaufman, who served the final two years of Biden’s term in the U.S. Senate after he was elected President Barack Obama’s vice president in 2008.

Biden also gave Presidential Citizens Medals to former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, and Congressman Bernie Thompson, D-Mississippi, who chaired the House committee that investigated the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Last year, Biden awarded the medals to people who defended the Capitol from the rioters and safeguarded the right to vote in 2020.

Other awardees include Pittsburgh-native Evan Wolfson, who is an advocate for marriage equality.

The Presidential Citizens Medal is awarded to “citizens of the United States who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”