Kayla Green
Dr. Anne Durst
EDFND 243-02
March 25, 2018
Reading Analysis Three Up until 1954, southern schools in the United States were segregated by race. These schools were legally segregated due to the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, stating that black and white institutions can be separate, as long as they are equal. For decades the NAACP fought for black students to have an equal education. Their hard work paid off in 1954, when the ruling of the Brown v. Board of Education ruled that this segregation was unconstitutional. Even after Plessy v. Ferguson, there were many ways that separate schools were very unequal. In Kristen Green’s novel, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, she displays some of these inequalities.
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The black parents were aware of this overcrowding and addressed it. It took several years for the school board to take action and when they did, it made no difference. She describes the impact of Moton High school being over capacity, “The overcrowding at Moton forced teachers to hold classes in the auditorium…they even led classes in parked school buses” (Green 39). This overcrowding was even after the school for blacks received two additional classrooms. She also talks about the unequal facilities, “It didn’t have a gym, a cafeteria, a science laboratory, or locker rooms. Many of the black high school’s resources were hand me downs…since the black students couldn’t fit on one bus, some children routinely missed their first class,” (Green 39). This was not the case at the white school six blocks away. If the separated schools were equal, Moton would not have had dilapidated buses, nearly 75 kids per classroom, or a lack of facilities. In the white high school, if this issue had …show more content…
Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP, would make a huge impact taking on the Prince Edward case. According to Green, “Marshall saw schools as the entry point for ending all segregation and was looking for a case to take to the Supreme Court,” (Green 46). The NAACP’s strategy for getting the Supreme Court was to choose cases that were well documented and clearly displayed the impact that segregation had on black students. The case of Prince Edward County would be combined with four other cases under Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The combination of these cases provided clear evidence to prove just how unequal sperate schools
During week 12 of class, we were assigned to read three sections of Matthew Delmont's Why Busing Filed. This reading focuses on "busing," which meant that students would be transported to other schools and school districts in order to desegregate schools. This book discusses how "busing" failed due to many white parents opposing it; their values were seen as more important than the rights of black students (Delmont 25). Despite Brown v. Board of Education deeming school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, many schools remained segregated for years. The attention on segregation normally focused on the South.
Linda Brown was 7 years old when her father and 12 other families tried to enroll their children in the all white public school in their neighborhoods. Linda had to walk seven blocks in freezing weather and then take a bus for another two miles. Her trip to school took two hours even though there was a school only three blocks from her home. She was sad and confused that she couldn't go to school with the other kids in her predominantly white neighborhood. Linda's father was a minister and leader in his community.
as long as there is separation there is inequality,? (The Leadership Conference, 2015). (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954) (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954)Davis v. County School of Prince Edward County (1952) was another similar case in which students protested to fight the underfunding of R.B. Moton High School, an all-black school located in Farmville, Virginia. The schools were ordered to desegregate, but since they strongly opposed integration, they closed all public schools instead, (The Leadership Conference,
The Civil Right movement was a broad and diverse effort to attain racial equality, compelled to the nation to live up to its ideal that all are created equal. The movement demonstrated that ordinary men and women could perform extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice to achieve social justice. The event of Brown v. Board of Education and advocates such as Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks greatly impacted the United States. Thurgood Marshall applied to the university of Maryland Law school, however he was turned down because he was and African American. Therefore he decided to go to Howard’s University an all black historical school.
Louis alone are certainly alarming, I am most dismayed by the responses of the children from Morris High. It is evident that the children at Morris High do not fully understand the implications of racial inequality, nor do they regard the immense suffering of children in schools like those in East St. Louis. However, if I were a young white girl from a high class family attending Morris high, I too might have the same outlook. I likely would have been taught to acknowledge the inequalities faced by the minority, but would not have been taught the privileges I have experience for being white. If I were suddenly to start attending East St. Louis schools, however, the inequalities faced by my new peers would become much more apparent.
“Public schools for black children received less funding, less maintenance, and less teacher training,”(Source 1). Under those circumstances black children did not get as good of an education as white children. There were other issues regarding education to, for example in 1957 when integration started in Central High school segregationist harshly acted on the issue. ” When the black students, known as the “Little Rock Nine,” attempted to enter the Central High
Oliver Brown and many of others thought it wasn’t fair for a child to be denied education and decided to do something about it. Oliver Brow’s daughter was denied access into schools because of her race and he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Mr.Brown took his compliant to higher authority hoping something would change. “Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas” (Brown 2). Browns daughter being denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary school.
The story started when a third grade student Linda Brown had to walk a long distance to attend school. Because of the previous Supreme Court decision that was called separate but equal, she was not eligible to attend classes at any of the schools that were reserved for white colored students even if there were some just right where she was living at. Linda’ father was worried about her little daughter that she had to walk daily next to the railroad. He decided to register his daughter at one of the white schools. Unfortunately, his application was denied under the pretext of
“The most oppressive feature of black secondary education was that southern local and state governments, through maintaining and expanding the benefits of public secondary education for white children, refused to provide public high school facilities for black children.” In sum, Anderson uses this chapter to build a broader argument about the “separate, but equal doctrine” under Plessy v. Ferguson that mandated segregation. More specifically, he situates this argument through case studies in Lynchburg, VA and Little Rock, AR. In the culminating chapter, James Anderson discusses the emergence of historically black universities and black land-grant colleges.
Decades ago, children of various races could not go to school together in many locations of the United States. School districts could segregate students, legally, into different schools according to the color of their skin. The law said these separate schools had to be equal. Many schools for children that possessed color were of lesser quality than the schools for white students. To have separate schools for the black and white children became a basic rule in southern society.
The segregation of schools based on a students skin color was in place until 1954. On May 17th of that year, during the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, it was declared that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. However, before this, the segregation of schools was a common practice throughout the country. In the 1950s there were many differences in the way that black public schools and white public schools were treated with very few similarities. The differences between the black and white schools encouraged racism which made the amount of discrimination against blacks even greater.
IT FOLLOWS THAT with education, this Court has made segregation and inequality equivalent concepts. They have equal rating, equal footing, and if segregation thus necessarily imports inequality, it makes no great difference whether we say that the Negro is wronged because he is segregated, or that he is wronged because he received unequal treatment... Chief legal council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Thurgood Marshall (1908-93) spoke these words on 8 December 1953. Mr. Marshall argued some of the most successful cases for segregation in America before he knew their impact. During the 1940s and 1950s civil rights movement many changes occurred.
Now one would think with such efforts, segregation could be long gone today, but this is far from the truth because in the 80s and 90s, cases such as these faded into obscurity. One of the main reasons being that the Supreme Court concluded that these systems were discriminatory to white students and now because the orders are unfortunately expired, school districts are not held accountable for the lack of less segregated
In today’s world where racial discrimination is rife, though covert, what is needed is a slight push to incite action in people so as to curb this practice in the most effective manner- bringing all its manifestations under the purview of the law. Hence, I chose this movie in order to not only analyze the nuanced facets of the law but also to delineate the relevance of the same in the current context in a hope that it serves as the source for the much-needed push. Plot Synopsis: The movie begins with the portrayal of a ‘black’ public school in South Carolina in the late 1950s and how distance from home to the closest ‘appropriate’ school makes it impossible for students to be on time to school. This predicament drives the principal of the school to approach the authorities and demand for a
Although the share of black children in segregated schools had dropped to 62.9 percent by the early 1980s, the subsequent lack of commitment by the federal government and multiple Supreme Court decisions antagonistic to school desegregation have led to a reversal," notes EPI. Why does that matter? "Promoting school integration is important because — now as a half century ago — segregated schools are unequal schools," the report adds. "The more non-white students a school has the fewer resources it has. A 10 percent-point increase in the share of non-white students in a school is associated with a $75 decrease in per student spending."