African American Discrimination

There was no clarification on what race would be considered white or what would be considered black. During this incident, “Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act.”(Duignan 2017). Judge Ferguson ruled that the separation was fair and did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The state Supreme Court also backed up this decision. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and "The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between the two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition." (History.com Staff 2009). This decision set the key precedent of Separate but Equal in the United States. Racial segregation kept growing.

Lots of areas in the U.S. had segregated schools in 1954, held by “separate but equal.” In 1954, the NAACP was trying to end segregation. They filed class actions schools in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, on behalf of the students and their families, trying to integrate schools. One of the most prominent cases was Brown v. Board of Education. Oliver Brown, the plaintiff, claimed that Topeka’s segregation violated the Equal Protection Laws Clause. He claimed segregated schools were not equal. This case went to the Supreme Court after the lower-level courts ruled that school the school segregations were equal to be constitutional.

The case of brown v. board of education was one of the biggest turning points for African Americans to becoming accepted into white society at the time. Brown vs. Board of education to this day remains one of, if not the most important cases that African Americans have brought to the surface for the better of the United States. Brown v. Board of Education was not simply about children and education (Silent Covenants pg 11); it was about being equal in a society that claims African Americans were treated equal, when in fact they were definitely not. This case was the starting point for many Americans to realize that separate but equal did not work. The separate but equal label did not make sense either, the

Brown v. the Board of Education was a case that helped shaped America’s education system into what it is today. ‘Separate but equal’ is phrase well attributed to the civil rights movement in all aspects of life: water fountains, movie theaters, restaurants, bathrooms, schools, and much more. This phrase was coined legal in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Plessy v. Ferguson said that racial segregation of public facilities was legal so long as they were ‘equal.’ Before this even, Black Codes, passed in 1865 under President Johnson legalized the segregation of public facilities including schools. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified guaranteeing all citizens equal protection under the law. Still, though, blacks were not given equal opportunities when it came to voting, schooling and many other inherent rights. 1875 brought the Civil Rights Act that prohibited the discrimination in places of public accommodation. These places of public accommodation did not seem to include educational facilities. Jim Crow Laws become widespread in 1887, legalizing racial separation. These downfalls were paused by development of the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People that was founded in 1909. This association began to fight the discriminatory policies plaguing the country, especially in the southern areas. Finally Brown v. the Board of Education fought these decisions, stating that ‘separate but equal’ and discrimination allowed by the latter decisions did not have a

The U.S is known for its liberty and equality. However, the Supreme Court once had to decide on the rights for African Americans. Since the abolishment of slavery, one court case before the Supreme Court sided against the African American plaintiff fighting for equal rights. In this case the plaintiff, Homer Plessy was arguing his right to ride in a "white only" train car. Unfortunately, he lost his case in Plessy vs Ferguson. Decades later, another plaintiff, Oliver Brown, also took a case before the Supreme Court. Conversely, in this case, the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff in Brown vs Board of Education. This decision began the integration of schools. Despite the fact that these two cases took place almost 60 years apart, they both dealt with a similar issue.

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) was a landmark Supreme Court Case that overturned the separate but equal ideology established by the earlier Supreme Court Case Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). The Plessy vs. Ferguson court case had a profound affect on the social interaction of racial groups in the late 19th to early 20th century causing tension between the two most prominent races within the United States, the Caucasians and the African Americans, which included Hispanics and other non-white citizens. The Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of Education eradicated legal racial discrimination given to the state government by the implementation of Jim Crow Law in schools and public settings leading to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement which fought to put an end to the white supremacy and give all people especially those of color equal rights and protection under a court of law and in the eyes of government.

In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States was confronted with the controversial Brown v. Board of Education case that challenged segregation in public education. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case because it called into question the morality and legality of racial segregation in public schools, a long-standing tradition in the Jim Crow South, and threatened to have monumental and everlasting implications for blacks and whites in America. The Brown v. Board of Education case is often noted for initiating racial integration and launching the civil rights movement. In 1951, Oliver L. Brown, his wife Darlene, and eleven other African American parents filed a class-action lawsuit against the Board of Education

In the 1954 trial Brown v. Board of Ed the supreme court majority agreed that “separate but equal” was shown to be inherently unequal. When several cases of African American students being denied acceptance into schools arrose, life in public schools changed forever. In a decision that supported by the fourteenth amendment, the U.S. supreme court ruled against the segregation of schools and allowed African Americans to attend white schools.

Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I) was an important Supreme Court ruling during the Civil Rights Era that ruled that laws of segregation in schools to be unconstitutional; a second Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) ruled that public schools, and by extension colleges, must be integrated. These two cases are most often grouped together as a conglomerate case. Brown v. Board was actually made up of four other rulings which spurred it to go on to the Supreme Court. Prior to this case, black and white students were separated, and they attended ‘separate, but equal facilities’ in the Jim Crow South and throughout the United States. These facilities were not only inferior to those that white Americans were privy to, but these places - ranging from schools to public restrooms - were often inconvenient and outdated. After Brown v. Board was passed, it still took many years for desegregation to occur, but because of the efforts of civil rights activists at that time, public schools became

Another win for African Americans was in 1954, with the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, where the Supreme Court called segregation unconstitutional and consequently banned it. This was only the ending of a 16 year struggle for the ruling out of segregation. The abolishment of segregation in public schools did not rely exclusively on this case, but as well as on other cases which contributed to this ban. The case of Brown v. Board of Education was said to have been divided into two cases known as Brown I and Brown II. The Brown I case, was the 1954 abolishment of segregation, in 1955 Brown II, “held local school districts responsible for implementing Brown I and ordered them to desegregate schools ‘with all deliberate speed,’” (Unger). In previous years before the Brown cases, the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP), were accountable for the pro anti-segregation cases against school boards in

In addition, the BLM need for social action is to exploit the anti-black racism, to drive for black people’s rights to live with self-worth and veneration and be incorporated in the American democracy that they helped generate. Altman, Rhodan, and Frizell (2015) explain that “We must recognize the effects of hundreds of years of discrimination. We must challenge our government, our institutions, our police forces, our criminal justice system, our corporations, and our schools and universities to constantly examine their policies to promote diversity and inclusion, to call out discrimination and reduce implicit bias” (p. 120). That being said, discrimination against black Americans is the foundation of this movement. Black American`s rights

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The case of Brown v. the Board of Education court case that began in Topeka, Kansas (Erza, 2009). Grouped with four other cases, Brown was the centerpiece of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.’s (LDF) successful Supreme Court argument that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The case sparked the civil rights movement by destroying the legal basis for segregation set by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

Education was one of things that every parent wanted for their children regardless of whatever situation they were in. Public schools were segregated. In 1954 there was a lawsuit that ended legal segregation in public schools known as Brown V. Board of Education. In the fall of 1950, the NAACP sued on behalf of third-grader Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas (Gates, 2013, p.323). Brown’s parents lived near a white school and wanted their daughter to attend that school because it was closer to their home than any other school that was around them. Thurgood Marshall was one of the lawyers for the NAACP during the time and argued that segregation condemns children, thinking that they lower than the whites that the Court had supposedly threw out in the Plessy case. The Court also heard from other families that were going through the same situation as Brown. May 17th, 1954, the Court ruled in favor of the black students. This decision allowed blacks to attend any public school that they

This inequality and unnecessary act called racism within many school systems can be dated back to 1896 to the Plessy V. Ferguson case which resulted in “separate facilities for education” and an “equal education” (Campbell). This case is what provided us with the term “separate but equal”, this meant that white and black children had to attend separate schools but would supposedly get an equal education. Another case addressing racism in education is the Cumming V. Richmond case in 1899. This case involved three black families who petitioned the court to allow their children to finish their high school education at a white high school, due to the closing of the local black high school which would integrate African Americans and whites under one facility (Campbell). Racial segregation and its unfairness even continued into the 1950’s with the Sweatt V. Painter case involving an African American, Homas Sweatt, who was being denied access to the University of Texas Law School because he was black (Campbell). All of this unfair treatment of separate but equal education continued until 1954 when one of the most popular and familiar cases to all of us occurred, “Brown V. Board of Education”. In this case a young girl from Kansas had to walk 21 blocks to the closet black only school when a

). The President knew that no matter the outcome from this war, Black people would not be treated as equal. The Northern states won the Civil War which unfortunately, would not end the racial discrimination and violence. After the war ended, many Southern States did not change their racist violence towards African Americans. The opposition is explained by Kaczorowski by stating, “Former Confederates tenaciously adhered to a philosophy of state sovereignty and refused to respect national authority. They defiantly resisted the emancipation guaranteed blacks by the Thirteenth Amendment. Southern white supremacists denied the freedmen’s freedom by continuing to treat them as if they were slaves.” (Kaczorowski, 51) The southern states did not care what the federal government wanted, the local governments treated black people as inferior. Even the local police, that is provided to citizens to protect those who live there, did not defend black people who were in danger. “State officers commonly failed or refused to protect the personal safety and property of blacks.” (Kaczorowski, 51) Not only did African Americans get lynched by civilians, they also had limited to no help when attacks occurred. The local governments excluded them by denying rights that other white citizens obtained. For example, “When charged with crimes or sued in the civil courts, blacks seldom received impartial justice” (Kaczorowski, 51). The exclusion is extraordinary for African Americans because they had