To understand the question focusing on the court cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, we must first understand each court case on its own. Plessy v. Ferguson resulted in the year 1896. The case involved the 1890s Louisiana law that basically stated that there were separated railway carriages that were specifically labeled for blacks only and whites only. Plessy v. Ferguson involved Homer Plessy who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black and appeared to look like a white man. Plessy took an open seat on a white only railway car. He was soon arrested for violating the 1890 law. When Plessy was convicted of violating the 1890 law during his trial, he soon filed a petition against the judge, John H. Ferguson. Ferguson…
Before the supreme court case Plessy v Ferguson was put into action African Americans and caucasians had separate everything, due to racial discrimination. Plessy v Ferguson began whenever a man named Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a “white only” car. After going to court multiple times with this case, the supreme court set the doctrine Plessy v Ferguson in place. The doctrine stated that it was constitutional to have separate facilities for both caucasians and African Americans as long as the facilities were “equal”.…
Linda Brown was an African American girl who tried to attend a less-crowded white school close to her home in Topeka, Kansas but, because of her race, she had to travel away of town in order to attend an African American school. In 1951, Linda’s father challenge the segregated law in schools based on the equal protection guarantee in the fourteenth amendment. The district court ruled in favor of the School Board of Topeka based on…
The Imhotep Black Male Initiative was created to aid the success of black males at Kansas State University. This programs seeks to increase the success of Black male students by focusing on retention, persistence, cultural engagement, graduation and subsequent placement in their chosen vocation. Through this initiative, students are connected to faculty/ staff mentors and peers leaders who will help them focus on critical areas. Students who participate are divided into cohorts based on academic level and life experiences. Three to four mentors will serve each cohort, as well as two peer leaders, helping implement strategies to improve retention and graduation rates, as well lay a foundation for future success.…
An insightful argument was constructed that, the time the law came into practice; there was limited number of public schools which taught African Americans. Therefore they argued out that the historical justification for the amendment of the constitution was not essential in the case. The court profoundly argued out that during the drafting of the change of the law by Congress, they did not indicate any clause which would necessitate the combination of public schools (McBride, 2006). Therefore, the Supreme Court affirmed equal education opportunities as guaranteed in the amendment. More importantly, the court argued out that education is a public utility and thus discrimination of children in their quest for knowledge is a denial of their rights, and it contradicts the government pledge to cater for universal education to…
where the belief of separate but equal is constitutional. DuBois similarly helped found the field…
After the Supreme Court struck down ‘separate but equal’ in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 civil rights began to advance at a rate startling to many Southern whites. Whilst opposition was less successful than after the Emancipation Proclamation during the 19th and early 20th century White Citizen’s Councils by ‘unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo’ hindered progress. White Citizen’s Councils were first set up in Mississippi but soon spread across the South. They were founded primarily in opposition to the desegregation of schools and ‘hope[ed] that white people would be outraged that their children had to share classrooms with African-Americans and would organize to…
During his thirty-four year tenure, all of Howard’s schools became fully accredited and Howard became the “best-known and the most successful and respected predominantly black university in the world” (Roe 1-2). Johnson constructed new buildings and upgraded libraries and other academic facilities. Johnson upped the number of African Americans on the facility and actively recruited black scholars. Johnson also pursued Congress to make amendments allowing for an annual federal appropriation for the university. Charles Houston revamped the School of Law into an accredited program and it later became the center of the NAACP’s struggle to reverse Plessey v. Ferguson (1896). Howard trained lawyers in 1954 helped with Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe to make the Supreme Court decision that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, a landmark…
Thompson, K. (2009, July 15). Republican National Committee Chairman Tout “Historic Link” to NAACP. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com…
The NAACP clearly played a major role in many of the successes of the civil rights campaign in this period. This is evident by their involvement in a series of legal cases regarding civil rights issues, such as their landmark legal case: Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka. This case ruled that segregated schools were, in fact, not ‘separate but equal’ and they did this by referencing the 14th and 15th Amendment in many of his arguments and showing that children at white-only schools in the south had nearly $38 spent on each one of them per year, while the equivalent at a black-only school only had $13 spent on them. Thurgood Marshall, Legal Counsel for the NAACP, also brought in educationalists, psychologists and other professionals, proving that segregated schools caused psychological damage to black students by making them feel inferior. They were responsible for the success as this set a precedent for the subsequent legal cases, and drove forward the campaign for civil rights by boosting morale. Another important case supported by the NAACP was the…
In “The Petitioner’s Brief in Sweatt v. Painter, 1950”, the document explained the NAACP arguments as they were before the Supreme Court. Essentially, it explored three arguments that the NAACP would later employ in future cases regarding segregation. Reprinted within Waldo E. Martin Jr.’s, “Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents”, it offers key insight into the arguments the NAACP used in the Supreme Court. The first argument relates to whether schools established for Blacks fulfills the Equal Protection Clause. The NAACP lawyers made a distinction as they realized that many states in the country do not have the issue of racial segregation in schools. The lawyers referenced a report from the President’s Commission on Higher…
Plessy v. Ferguson is a court case that argued for “separate but equal” doctrine which the Supreme Court decided states could segregate public buildings, rooms, and other accommodations by race in 1896. Basically, the Supreme Court gave the stamp of approval to legally segregate facilities such as schools, streetcars and trains in Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Even though, the Negroes and Whites had their own school, the school for Whites were better than Negoes. The significance of Plessy v. Ferguson was that it lead to Jim Crow laws becoming the law of the land because the Supreme Court ruled that the Jim Crows laws didn’t imply that Negroes were of an…
Anna Julia Cooper was born in 1858 to a slave and a slave owner in North Carolina. She attended St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute for the colored. After she graduated she began advocating for people of color especially for women of color. Cooper strongly believed that the status and well-being of black women was a central part of the progression and equality of the nation. Throughout her life she fought relentlessly to uplift black women in hopes for a more just society for everyone. She famously wrote in her book A Voice from the South, “only the black women can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me”(Cooper 54). Cooper described her teaching profession as “the education of the neglected people,” she felt that education, more specifically higher education, as the path of black women’s advancement (55). She believed that educational development women remove any need for reliance on men (Giddings 138). In 1902 Cooper was promoted to principle at M Street School where she taught math and science. With her firm belief that education was the pathway to progress for people of color, she often rejected her white supervisors’ authorization to teach her students different types of trades, and instead she prepared them for college. Cooper sent her student’s to some of the most respected universities, which helped the M Street School get accreditation from Harvard, but rather than her success be celebrated it was received with hostility from white supervisors and white supremacy that didn’t want to see the advancement of black youth. While Cooper was teaching at the M Street School she was heavily involved in building spaces for black women outside of education. She founded the Colored Women’s League of Washington in 1892, and in1900 she helped open the first YWCA chapter for black women, in…
For almost two hundred years, Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs have played a pivotal role in the education of African-American people, and negro people internationally. These schools have provided the majority of black college graduates at the Graduate and Post-Graduate level; schools such as Hampton University, Morehouse University, Spellman University and Howard University are four universities at the forefront of the advanced education of blacks. For sometime there has been a discussion on whether or not these institutes should remain in existence or if they are just another form of racism. There were also concerning the quality of education provided at these institutions. In my opinion, from the evidence provided in our own world today, HBCUs are very important and significant in the education of black people throughout the nation, and are essential to our society.…
The case of Brown v. Board of Education is a crucial event in the history of the United States, but the question that many are attempting to answer is whether or not the case was so influential because of what it actually did accomplish, or what it intended to. In this investigation, I will research the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which preceded this case and was the origin of ‘separated but equal’ which became the basis for segregation. Also, I will briefly discuss the other Jim Crow laws that dominated the South, so that a comparison can be made to the life of African Americans before and after the ruling of the case. Furthermore, I will research the aftermath of this case and other movements for equality. I plan to investigate the works of various historians on this topic, including the works of Richard Kluger and James Tackach.…