The Desegregation Of The United States

The Charles C. Green v County School Board of New Kent County decision of 1968 was a pivotal point in the history of the civil rights movement. It was the court case that finally forced school boards across the country to desegregate their public schools. This did not happen until over a decade after Brown v. Board had deemed segregation unconstitutional and Brown II had sought to abolish it and overturn the “separate but equal” decision of Plessy v. Ferguson. The goal of this paper is to tell the story of how the state of Virginia moved through Brown I, Brown II, and Green v. New Kent County to put an end to segregation in schools.

For this oral history paper, Judy Barnhill was interviewed to convey her experiences during her childhood and adolescent years relating to African American history. She was born in 1945, and she is a white American woman. This paper will be discussing the time periods of Jim Crow segregation, the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation. Jim Crow segregation began during the late 1800’s and continued on until about the 1960’s. It was a time of racial tension and inequality. Many southern states of the time would enforce local laws of segregation on African Americans, which would separate them from the whites in public places such as schools, restaurants, trains, bathrooms, etc. The facilities set up for African Americans were always

the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any

Social movements are one of the primary means through which the public is able to collectively express their concerns about the rights and wellbeing of themselves and others. Under the proper conditions, social movements not only shed light on issues and open large scale public discourse, but they can also serve as a means of eliciting expedited societal change and progress. Due to their potential impact, studying the characteristics of both failed and successful social movements is important in order to ensure that issues between the public and the government are resolved to limit injustices and maintain societal progress.

There were many forms of discrimination in America. Discrimination was everywhere in the 20th century, and the population most affected by this were African Americans. Two of the most critical injustices committed in America during the 20th century were the development of the Jim Crow laws and school segregation. However, these injustices have been rectified as a result of the Civil Rights Movement and the decision of the supreme court of Brown v. Board of Education which brought important changes to African Americans.

In Spite of the devastating history of segregation in the United States. A lot has changed in the past fifty years since segregation ended. The United States shifted from arresting African Americans for using “white only” facilities to integrated schools all over the country. Influential individuals such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr helped pave the way for African Americans to live as equals to along with their white counterparts in the United States of America.

Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, segregation in the United States was commonly practiced in many of the Southern and Border States. This segregation while supposed to be separate but equal, was hardly that. Blacks in the South were discriminated against repeatedly while laws did nothing to protect their individual rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ridded the nation of this legal segregation and cleared a path towards equality and integration. The passage of this Act, while forever altering the relationship between blacks and whites, remains as one of history's greatest political battles.

The book “Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy” by James T. Patterson is about the struggles leading up to the fight for the desegregations of public schools and the outcomes. The struggles accelerated to civil rights movement in the 1950s. Patterson describes in details about the difficult road to the Supreme Court, the outcome of the Supreme Court decision, the resistance by whites people, especially in the Deep South and the struggles to implement the challenging transition. Discriminatory practices were apparent in the United States but it was a lot worse in the Southern States. The Jim Crow Law mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, public transportations, restrooms, restaurants,

Segregation was everywhere including American schools. Plessy vs Ferguson led to schools ‘separate but equal’. Plessy vs Ferguson was bad it said “separate but equal” but that was a contradictory statement because schools were still segregating against black children.(History.com/staff) Next came ‘Brown vs Board of Education’ which determined that Plessy vs Ferguson was unconstitutional.Brown vs Board of Education was when Linda Carrol Brown was rejected to go to an all-white school. George C. E. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, And James M. Nabrit fought the board of education and won which determined that Plessy vs Ferguson was unconstitutional.

The 1960’s was a decade riddled with racism and discrimination towards African Americans, especially in the Deep South. Blacks were barred from voting through poll taxes and literacy tests too difficult even for decently educated whites. All public places became segregated after the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and remained separated through the 60’s and even the 70’s. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks, burning their homes and senselessly lynching thousands of black men, while many city and state governments in the South looked the other way.

The road to the historic desegregation of Little Rock Central High school began in the 1930’s when the NAACP tasked future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall with fighting segregation in schools. By 1950 he had helped to strike down segregation in universities in several states. In 1951, the NAACP aided parents of black children attending public schools in Topeka, Kansas in attempting to overturn the state’s segregation laws. After a three year court battle, the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education Topeka culminated in the abolishment of school segregation laws in 21 states. (Seeds 1)

This motion got the ball rolling; and marked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement which lasted from 1954-1965. As more people called for equality, oppositions to this movement became Specifically, the South remained extremely racist and upheld their Jim Crow laws. Outraged African Americans, and ally white Americans were fed up with the lack of equality and the white resistance. Grassroot social movements that included sit-ins, marches, speeches and sprung up all around the country and brought into light the horrible injustices of racial inequality. Alongside with organizations like the National Advancement for American Colored People, or the NAACP, great things were accomplished during this period. With the victories of court cases like Brown v Board of Education, caused the standing ideology of ‘separate but equal’ to be repealed by the United State Supreme Court and lead to the desegregating of the nation. The end of the Civil Rights Movement was marked by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal to discriminate against people based on their color, race, religion, nationality, or sex. Unfortunately, even with the amazing work done during the second reconstruction era, and much like the original Reconstruction Era, we are left with an imperfect system. There are still holes in the legislation created and there are promises that have yet to be met, and people of color are still disproportionately disadvantaged

primarily the result of challenges made by the NAACP, and the resulting general shifts in

Many African-Americans faced huge struggles years after the civil war. Their journey for racial equality began during the Reconstruction Era. The Civil War gave slaves freedom, a new set of huge challenges were put into play in the South. Under President Andrew Johnson, there were many new southern state legislatures that passed “black codes” to control most of the labor and behavior of the former slaves. Outrage in the North over these restrictive codes destroyed support for presidential reconstruction. There are many events, influential leaders, and court cases that created change in the sixties for African-Americans

The Desegregation of Schools as a Major Problem in the USA in the 1950s Desegregation was introduced as a solution to solving the problem of racial segregation. In order to clearly understand what this involves we need to define what racial segregation is. As the word segregation implies racial segregation therefore, it is discrimination on the basis of race shown through separation from each other, usually in the area of the providing services. However we are going to focus on the area of education in schools.