50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

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50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

• A Teaching Opportunity

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Web Sites

• Robert H. Jackson Center
• Teach American History
• Digital Classroom

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Web Sites

• Jim Crow History (interactive simulation)
• National Park Service (for younger students)
• Brown 50th Anniversary Commission
• Amarillo Museum of Art
• Facts and Myths

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Provide Historical Context

• Unless they appreciate what Blacks have been
  through, they will not understand the
  significance of Brown

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Activate prior knowledge

• Brainstorm
• Time lines
• Matching quiz
• Get students thinking about what they already
  know about African-American history

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State and Local Legislatures

• Polling places far from Black neighborhoods
• Polling places changed at last minute
• Access roads/ferries shut down
• Gerrymandering
• Special ballots and boxes
• Show registration and poll-tax certificates
• No than 2-1/2 minutes in polling booth

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Lack of Political Power

• Only 2.5 of eligible African-Americans in SC,
  GA, AL, FL, MS, LA, AK, and TX voted in 1940
  presidential election
• 4 out of 5 Black Americans lived in these states
• Without political power, Black neighborhoods
  lacked public streets and street lights, sewage
  and garbage disposal, health, education, and
  recreational facilities

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Federal Legislature

• Review Reconstruction legislation
• Civil Rights Acts
• Freedmens Bureau

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Federal Legislature

• Review Reconstruction amendments
• 13th ends slavery
• 14th bestows citizenship states must provide
  due process and equal protection of the laws
• 15th voting rights for Black males

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What had the Congress done lately?

• Challenge the students to come up with a piece of
  federal legislation in the post-Reconstruction
  era that benefited Blacks.

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Ask students to draw conclusions

• Why hadnt Congress done anything to help
  African-Americans since the end of
  Reconstruction?
• Even anti-lynching legislation has stalled in
  Congress

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Without Sanctuary
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Executive Branch

• Hayes and Compromise of 1877
• TR and BTW
• Tafts promise to the South support for states
  rights
• Harding - dangers in racial differences backed
  restrictive immigration

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Executive Branch

• FDR and New Deal
• HST - Civil Rights Commission integration of
  federal government and military FHA
• Ike - denounced extremists on both sides
  opposed integration below platoon level

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Supreme Court

• Dred Scott (1857)
• Hall v. Decuir (1877)
• Slaughterhouse Cases (1879)
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
• Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

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Supreme Court

• Cumming v. Richmond Bd. of Ed. (1899)
• Berea College v. Kentucky (1908)
• Guinn v. U.S. (1915)
• Corrigan v. Buckley (1926)
• Grovey v. Townsend (1935)

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Supreme Court

• Missouri ex rel. Gaines v Canada (1938)
• Smith v. Allwright (1944)
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
• McLaurin v. OK Bd. of Regents (1950)

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Supreme Court and Civil Liberties

• American Comm. Assn. v. Doud (1950)
• Feiner v. New York (1951)
• Dennis v. U.S. (1951)
• Adler v. Bd. Of Ed. Of City of NY (1952)

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Make A Prediction

• Based on your knowledge of the Supreme Courts
  treatment of African-Americans, how do you think
  it will rule on school integration?

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Separate but equal?

• Pleasant Grove School, Chester County, SC
• County furnished teachers and coal
• No toilet facilities, just ashes from fireplace
• Mt. Arat School, Chester County,SC
• Toilet facilities for boys was woods across RR
  tracks and highway
• 68 pupils in a 20x16 room, no tables, no desks
• Richburg School, Chester County, SC (for whites)
• 6 rooms, 6 teachers, assembly hall, piano,
  individual desks, janitorial service

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1932-33, SC spent 331,932 transporting 29,624
white elementary students, and only 628
transporting 87 Black elementary students
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Discrimination not limited to the South

• Newark, NJ - students had to pass a swimming test
  to graduate pool only open on Friday afternoons
  for African-Americans
• New York State retained a permissive school
  segregation law until 1909.

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Still, not all Blacks favored integration

• W.E.B. DuBois
• Fear of harassment
• Black teachers afraid of losing jobs
• When Brown was first argued at District Court,
  courtroom was barely half full.

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The Cases

• Bolling v. Sharpe
• Briggs v. Elliot
• Brown v. Board of Education
• Parker v. University of Delaware