Civil Rights and schools

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Civil Rights and schools
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After WW2

• Black soldiers returned t find racism still
  existed
• They wanted civil rights
• Race issues no longer confined to the South
• The Blacks wanted an end to Jim Crow Laws

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Topeka, Kansas

• One of the early civil rights cases was what
  school an 8 year old girl should attend
• Linda browns father wanted her to go to the
  nearby and well looked after white school

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Civil rights and Schools

• Oliver Brown, tried to enrol her in the white
  school, but the principal of the school refused.
• Brown went to the (NAACP) and asked for help.
• Other black parents joined and, in 1951, the
  NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid
  the segregation of Topeka's public schools

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Brown V The Topeka Board of Education

• At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated
  schools sent the message to black children that
  they were inferior to whites
• The education board argued that segregated
  schools simply prepared black children for the
  segregation they would face during adulthood

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Brown V The Topeka Board of Education

• In 1896 Plessy Vs Ferguson the Supreme court
  ruled that white and Black people should be
  separate but equal
• However on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court ruled
  that separate education facilities are
  inherently unequal
• Schools were to be desegregated

George E.C. Hayes,Thurgood Marshall, and James
Nabrit, congratulating each other, following
Supreme Court decision declaring segregation
unconstitutional
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Significance of the decision

• First victory for campaigners
• Many whites were very unhappy with the prospect
  of mixed schools, KKK attacks
• Schools even blown up
• By 1956 not one Black child attended a white
  school
• Difficult to enforce decision

Dorothy Counts as she entered Harding High
School, 1957
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Activity

• Describe the effects of the decision by the
  Supreme Court in 1954. (3)