Separate But Equal Essay

There were many arguments both for and against school segregation. One was the claim that educational decisions were to be left to the state and local courts, and not to be decided by the Supreme Court. Another was that students should be taught where they are most comfortable learning. It was thought that white children were more comfortable learning with white children and the same goes for African-American children. Also, students must be given and equal learning environment, not the same school. Lastly, the defenders of segregation claimed that African-American students were living with the effects of slavery, and were not able to compete with the white children. (Benoit, 10) (Smithsonian)

“Still Separate, Still Unequal”, written by Jonathan Kozol, describes the reality of urban public schools and the isolation and segregation the students there face today. Jonathan Kozol illustrates the grim reality of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face within todays public education system. In this essay, Kozol shows the reader, with alarming statistics and percentages, just how segregated Americas urban schools have become. He also brings light to the fact that suburban schools, with predominantly white students, are given far better funding and a much higher quality education, than the poverty stricken schools of the urban neighborhoods.

For the greater part of the nineteenth century, black people were slaves for white men. The Fourteenth Amendment was placed into effect to protect the rights of the black community after emancipation. It stated that, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” would be supported under the doctrine. However, this article failed to uphold the rights of the newly freed slaves. The blacks, ridiculed and scorned by the public, were greatly suppressed by the white backlash. The states put into effect laws that would suppress the blacks even further, even though they were protected under the Amendment. The states made stipulations on rights the African Americans were granted, like the right to own land, vote, and even hold certain jobs. Voting was a major controversy for the newly freed slaves, they wanted the chance to be heard through politics. Nevertheless, they were still denied the simple right to vote in many of the states if they could not meet the prerequisites for reading or could not pay a voting tax. They made contracts for them to work for white men, just as if they were slaves and nothing changed. Black people were still waiting for their salvation under this new piece of legislation, but were unable to grasp it through the government. African Americans stood for their newly given rights under the Constitution and were denied by the people who put

In 1951 schools were separated by skin color, or segregated. The Brown v. Board of Education trial was brought to court because a third-grader, Linda Brown, was not allowed to attend the elementary school that was closest to her house. She wa required to take the bus to school across town instead. In the trial the point that “Education for Negroes is almost nonexistent(13).” This is an example of how there were old problems in the Fourteenth Amendment that needed to be changed. Another issue that was brought up in the trial was that, “Segregation… has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of negro children…(19).” Without the proper education at segregated

From the 1930s to the 1950s, African Americans were being severely persecuted and ostracized. The Jim Crow Laws allowed for legal segregation and continued control over blacks in the South. Those laws severely restricted the rights of the African American in the southern half of the United States and essentially continued to restrain them even though the United States Constitution forbid it. The North did not have such laws, but blacks still suffered. When African Americans migrated to the North, they were disillusioned by the fact that they were still not equal. The African Americans were instead delivered a subtler form of the discriminatory actions within the South. African Americans struggled for equality everywhere because of white

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 reasoning behind the court case Brown v. the Board of Education was that separate education was basically unequal. It played a very important part in desegregating schools. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.” This amendment states

There were many arguments both for and against school segregation. One was the claim that educational decisions were to be left to the state and local courts, and not to be decided by the Supreme Court. Another was that students should be taught where they are most comfortable learning. It was thought that white children were more comfortable learning with white children and the same goes for African-American children. Also, students must be given and equal wlearning environment, not the same school. Lastly, the defenders of segregation claimed that African-American students were living with the effects of slavery, and were not able to compete with the white children. (Benoit, 10) (Smithsonian)

One of the laws includes “Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school. Although African Americans were given what whites had it was often of poor quality. For example white schools got better education, better teachers and opportunities than black schools. Sometimes signs were put up just to humiliate African Americans. Trying to “Keep them in their place.” The separate but equal laws were proven unequal in many situations. Voting was affected in a huge way there were many

Economically speaking, not all men and women are created equal within America. After reading Doubly Divided, it is clear that white people have always maintained a wealthier status above non-white groups throughout this country’s history. Even in today’s society, many Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans have high poverty rates and low valued assets when compared to whites, clearly exhibiting a racial wealth gap. However, the Federal Government has greatly contributed to this wealth gap over the last 200 years through a process I call the “take and prevent method”. For example, large amounts of land were taken from Native Americans and given to white farmers under the Homestead Act of 1862. With a major asset gone, the government prevented any further wealth accumulation by forcing Native Americans onto reservations, using corrupted trust fund accounts, and assimilating them into white culture (through the 1887 Dawes Act). As an additional example, the discontinuation of the Freedman’s Bureau and an overturned civil rights act meant that African Americans had their land and rights to ownership taken away as well. And as a measure of prevention, governmental programs such as unemployment, Social Security, and

“Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school” ( Seperate is not equal). The Jim Crow Laws wanted to make it so that African Americans and Caucasians could go to the same school. Blacks and whites were able to be in the same facility at the same time. When this law came into effect racism had taken a turn for the better, and blacks and whites had slowly started working

During the start of the African American civil rights movement, Africans Americans still were faced with Jim Crow laws which segregated them from whites. Under the Jim Crow laws African Americans had different schools, bathrooms, trains, buses and many other things that were separated from the white population. The case, Plessy v. Ferguson went through the U.S. Supreme Court and turned out to make a legal policy “separate but

By the 19th century, many social forms of discrimination existed to keep Black Americans from being equal to White Americans. Laws like separate but equal where put into places to keep Black Americans from being in the same places as White Americans, like; neighborhoods, schools, churches, restaurants, and so on. White Americans also believed that Blacks should not have the right to vote; which led to many black movements for the continuous fight for equality in the nation of freedom. By 1954 the Brown vs. Board of Education case reversed the “separate but equal” doctrine that previously had been set in 1896, allowing children both White and Black children to attend the same schools and same classrooms. In

When African Americans first came to the United States, most of them were brought over to this land from their native homes as slaves, meant to do hard labor on farmlands owned by mostly wicked white plantation owners. They were not treated equally with white people in this country. In fact, African Americans were not even treated as people. Legislation in the United States after the American Revolution determined that a slave only counted as 2/3 of a person. The Dredd Scott Decision by the United States Supreme Court upheld the erroneous belief on the part of early Americans that slaves were "property not people" (Tsesis 2008, page 77). Following the American Civil War and the passage of the 19th Amendment, this changed and African Americans were finally granted citizenship in the United States. However, African Americans were still not anywhere near equal to whites in the United States, particularly throughout the southern states. Jim Crow laws in the south allowed for the segregation of African American and Caucasians in public places, such as bathrooms and schools. Even the United States Supreme Court upheld institutionalized segregation in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Here, the Supreme Court ruled that having separate but equal facilities was still equal. The fact that black schools almost always had fewer and lower quality supplies, limited funds, and less advanced facilities were not taken into consideration with this ruling. This would be the

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