Social Studies Exit Project

Saturday, December 2, 2006

This is a draft document.

What has Brown done for you?
How the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision continues to impact schools today.






Imagine being told what bathroom you could use based on your race? What if you weren’t allowed to attend a certain school because it was a whites only schools simply because of your race? This behavior was legal thanks to the Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) Supreme Court decision that stated separate public facilities were legal as long as they were of equal quality. This decision was overturned by Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1957, that states separate was not equal because it violated the equal protection clauses in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. This monumental decision marked a turning point in the nation's willingness to face the consequences of centuries of racial discrimination.

In the early 1950's racial segregation in public schools was the norm across America. In the city of Topeka, Kansas, a third grader named Linda Brown walked one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her Black only school, while there was school only 3 block away (White only) Her father, Oliver Brown, enraged by his denial to place his daughter in a school only 3 blocks away turned to the Topeka, branch of the NAACP for help. Linda's parents filed suit in federal court on the basis that separate facilities for Blacks were inherently unequal. Unfortunately, the lower courts didn't agree. The NAACP saw this as a perfect opportunity to put into motion the fight for equality with public schools. Armed with cases from other families in Virginia, South Carolina, and Delaware they appealed the courts decision. With this appeal, the momentum to make this a national issue as oppose to one that was limited to the South only was now in place.

Their argument was that even though facilities that were physically equal it did not allow for students to receive an equal education and that segregation itself has an effect on the education of black children. On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court decided that segregation was dehumanizing. [Image of a Child reading in an all black school] “A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system." [The results of the ruling] **

The Ruling and Results

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court voted unanimously against racial segregation in public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the ruling by concluding that, “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.” This meant that it was unfair for Linda Brown or any child to be segregated because of race.

What this ruling meant on a larger scale was that “separate but equal” was in fact unequal, and it finally overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. This meant that all schools in Kansas, and all over the country, had to allow for students of all races to attend and be mixed.(?????)

Doesn’t this sound wonderful? It was a great decision according to many people today, but back then not everyone was happy about this ruling. The new law was going to make a lot of changes in society that some people weren’t ready for or didn’t want. Though it was a giant step, the ruling didn’t say that schools had to desegregate by a certain date. By 1956, only two years later, only 49% of Americans — 61% of Northerners and 15% of Southerners — believed that whites and blacks should attend the same schools. So between the years of 1955 and 1960, there were over 200 more cases for school desegregation! As the desegragation movement began in the South, children needed to be escorted to their schools by officials for their own safety.

The late 1950s and 1960s were a time when this ruling was slowly put into place with the help of many civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Middle Period (1970-1990)

The middle period saw some of the most severe violence following Brown v Board of Education. As the civil rights movement moved through the south, people of color were met by resistance and intolerance. The police often times were the worst offenders.
In 1968, the Supreme Court orders states to dismantle segregated school systems "root and branch." The Court identifies five factors — facilities, staff, faculty, extracurricular activities and transportation — to be used to gauge a school system's compliance with the mandate of Brown. (Green v. County School Board of New Kent County)
In a private note to Justice Brennan, Justice Warren writes: "When this opinion is handed down, the traffic light will have changed from Brown to Green. Amen!"
In 1969, the Supreme Court declares the "all deliberate speed" standard is no longer constitutionally permissible and orders the immediate desegregation of Mississippi schools. (Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education)
In 1988, school integration reached its all-time high; almost 45% of black students in the United States were attending majority-white schools.

Today

Are schools more or less segregated today then they were after the Brown vs The Board of Education decision?
Let's look at what the statistics show- ( just ideas)

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