| << Chapter < Page | Chapter >> Page > |
The landmark court decision of the judicial phase of the civil rights movement settled the
Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954). In this case, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned its decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson as it pertained to public education, stating that a separate but equal education was a logical impossibility. Even with the same funding and equivalent facilities, a segregated school could not have the same teachers or environment as the equivalent school for another race. The court also rested its decision in part on social science studies suggesting that racial discrimination led to feelings of inferiority among African American children. The only way to dispel this sense of inferiority was to end segregation and integrate public schools.
It is safe to say this ruling was controversial. While integration of public schools took place without much incident in some areas of the South, particularly where there were few black students, elsewhere it was often confrontational—or nonexistent. In recognition of the fact that southern states would delay school integration for as long as possible, civil rights activists urged the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision. Organized by A. Philip
Randolph and Bayard
Rustin , approximately twenty-five thousand African Americans gathered in Washington, DC, on May 17, 1957, to participate in a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.
“Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,” http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_prayer_pilgrimage_for_freedom_1957/ (April 10, 2016).
A few months later, in Little Rock, Arkansas, governor Orval
Faubus resisted court-ordered integration and mobilized National Guard troops to keep black students out of Central High School. President
Eisenhower then called up the Arkansas National Guard for federal duty (essentially taking the troops out of Faubus’s hands) and sent soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division to escort students to and from classes, as shown in
[link] . To avoid integration, Faubus closed four high schools in Little Rock the following school year.
Jason Sokol. 2006.
There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 116–117.
In Virginia, state leaders employed a strategy of “massive resistance” to school integration, which led to the closure of a large number of public schools across the state, some for years.
Ibid., 118–120. Although
de jure segregation , segregation mandated by law, had ended on paper, in practice, few efforts were made to integrate schools in most school districts with substantial black student populations until the late 1960s. Many white southerners who objected to sending their children to school with blacks then established private academies that admitted only white students.
Ibid., 120, 171, 173.
Notification Switch
Would you like to follow the 'American government' conversation and receive update notifications?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|