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Beginning in the 1930's members of the NAACP worked very hard trying to push the idea that everyone regardless of color deserved the same education and to be treated the same.The goal was to desegregate school in a nonviolent way. This had a great impact on education today as it had a big part in the desegregation in school which was outlawed in 1954.

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The massive effort to desegregate public schools across the United States was a major goal of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education. These lawsuits were combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in schools in 1954. But the vast majority of segregated schools were not integrated until many years later. Many interviewees of the Civil Rights History Project recount a long, painful struggle that scarred many students, teachers, and parents.

Three years before Brown v. Board in November 1951, students in a civics class at the segregated black Adkin High School in Kinston, North Carolina, discussed what features an ideal school should have for a class assignment. When they realized that the local white high school indeed had everything they had imagined, the seeds were planted for a student-led protest. Without the assistance from any adults, these students confronted the local school board about the blatant inequality of local schools. When the board ignored their request for more funding, the students met by themselves to plan what to do next. In a group interview with these former students, John Dudley remembers, "So, that week, leading to Monday, we strategized. And we had everybody on board, 720 students. We told them not to tell your parents or your teacher what's going on. And do you believe to this day, 2013, nobody has ever told me that an adult knew what was going on. Kids." They decided on a coded phrase that was read during morning announcements. Every student in the school walked out, picked up placards that had been made in advance, and marched downtown to protest. The students refused to go back to school for a week, and eighteen months later, Adkin High School was renovated and given a brand-new gymnasium. It would remain segregated until 1970, however.

Desegregation was not always a battle in every community in the South. Lawrence Guyot, who later became a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, grew up in Pass Christian, a city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that was influenced by the strong labor unions in the shipyard industry and the Catholic Church. He explains how the Catholic schools were desegregated there: "The Catholic Church in 1957 or '58 made a decision that they were going to desegregate the schools. They did it this way. The announcement was we have two programs. We have excommunication and we have integration. Make your choice by Friday. Now there was violence going on in Louisiana. Nothing happened on the Gulf Coast. I learned firsthand that institutions can really have an impact on social policy."

In an interview about his mother, civil rights activist Gayle Jenkins, Willie "Chuck" Jenkins describes how she demanded that he would be the plaintiff in a school desegregation suit, Jenkins v. Bogalusa School Board in Louisiana. He became the first African American student to attend the white Bogalusa Junior High School in 1967 and remembers how he had one foot in each world, but was increasingly alienated from both: "And I caught a lot of slack, like, from the black community, because they used to say, 'Oh, you think you're something because you're going to the white school.' They didn't know I was catching holy hell at the white school. I had no friends, you know. So, it was just always a conflict." But in the end, he thinks it was worth it. He states, "But it was hard, but you know what? If I had it to do all over again, I would do it exactly the same way. Because it was a cause that was well worth the outcome, even though I feel like people in Bogalusa are still not as accepting as they could be." The high school continued to have a separate white prom and a black prom until very recently. But his mother, Gayle Jenkins, would serve on the Bogalusa School Board for twenty-seven years.

Julia Matilda Burns describes her experiences as a teacher, parent, and school board member in Holmes County, Mississippi. Her husband was an active civil rights worker and her job as a teacher was threatened when she associated with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When her son and other African American children attempted to integrate a school in Tchula in 1965, it was burned down twice. The local white community started their own private white academy, a common plan to evade integration across the South. She continued to teach in a public school and discusses the difficulties rural African American children and young adults face in getting an equal education today.

While Brown v. Board of Education and many other legal cases broke down the official barriers for African Americans to gain an equal education, achieving this ideal has never been easy or simple. The debate continues today among policy makers, educators, and parents about how to close the achievement gap between minority and white children. Ruby Sales, a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) member who later became the founder and director of the nonprofit organization Spirt House, points out that few people look to the past for answers to our current problems in education: "...We have been dealing with the counter-culture of education, and what might we learn from that counter-culture during segregation that would enable black students not to be victims in public schools today. And one of the things that disturbed me so tremendously - and this is about narrative again: these southern black teachers created outstanding students and leaders. And many of them still exist. And no one has bothered to ask them, "How did you do it? What might we learn from you? What were your strategies? How did you deal with complicated situations? How did you invigorate young people to believe that they could make a difference even when the white world said that they couldn't?"

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School Segregation and Integration | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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The massive effort to desegregate public schools across the United States was a major goal of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education.

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Their was many different factors that were apart of the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1968. Brown v. Board of Education was a very cruel court case integrating schools which was a big step in the movement.The sit ins were when a group of students sat in a whites only lunch counter in an attempt to peacefully protest the whites only rule. These all contributed to the fight to end segregation and are import to remember.

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How students impacted the US Civil Rights Movement

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Discover some of the ways that students contributed to the Civil Rights Movement in America from the 1950s to 60s, and why their role was so important.

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After the civil war ended African Americans were on a mission to get the rights they deserve. Trying to abolish slavery ,and ensuring the right to vote regardless of background or skin color. The Jim Crow law was when the supreme court ruled "separate but equal" which started the ball rolling but Plessy v Ferguson allowed black children to go into unsafe schools. It was definitely separate but not all that equal.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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The road to desegregated education in the United States was a long and difficult one, and stands as a testament to the remarkable power, tenacity, and moral clarity of great African American trailblazers who refused to settle for the inherent injustice of "separate but equal."

Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Black Americans fought to realize their rights as guaranteed by the so-called Reconstruction Amendments. These three constitutional amendments-the 13th, 14th, and 15th-abolished slavery (except as a punishment for crime); established the principles of "birthright citizenship" and "equal justice under the law"; and ensured a citizen's right to vote regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." As many states sought to re-establish "white supremacy" in the 1870s, African Americans were disenfranchised and stripped of their newly won civil rights. They often sought justice in the court system, sometimes taking their cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Issued on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court's ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson case created the "separate but equal" doctrine, declaring that racial segregation was constitutional and did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This landmark decision provided the constitutional basis for legalizing racial segregation. In what became known as the Jim Crow era, a collection of state and local statutes quickly followed, the impact of which was painfully felt in every aspect of African American life, including by Black children in the classroom.

Plessy v. Ferguson allowed Black children to be segregated into overcrowded and unsafe school buildings that were often inaccessible by public transportation, forcing students to walk long distances year-round. Classrooms were poorly resourced, without enough desks for every child, and the few books students had were tattered hand-me-downs from white schools. Black teachers were paid only a fraction of the salary of their white counterparts.

African Americans across the country understood the profound impact of segregated and inferior educational practices on Black students. Led by the NAACP's Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP began mounting a legal challenge to "separate but equal" in the 1940s. Known as the "man who killed Jim Crow," Houston trained several attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall, to serve as counsel for African Americans fighting many areas where segregation was practiced, including education, transportation, and housing.

In 1951, the NAACP identified a promising educational case and plaintiff in Oliver Brown, whose daughter was refused enrollment at the elementary school closest to their home in Topeka, Kansas, and instead was forced to ride a bus to a segregated Black school further away.

The Browns joined together with other Black families in Topeka and filed a class-action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. When a federal court ruled against the families on the basis of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Browns-now represented by NAACP chief counsel Marshall-appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

In the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case of 1954, Marshall, Houston, and other prominent Black attorneys argued that segregation was inherently unequal and unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. They also built their case around the groundbreaking work of a husband-and-wife team of psychologists, Drs. Kenneth B. and Mamie Clark.

The Clarks, who each received their bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University, were the first African Americans to obtain doctoral degrees in psychology from Columbia University. In 1946, they opened the Northside Center for Child Development, the first full-time child guidance center offering psychological and casework services to families in Harlem. There they also continued Mamie's studies on self-identification in Black children, the subject of her master's thesis, and began conducting experiments to examine the psychological effects of segregation on Black children.

In the Clarks' now famous experiments, children were presented with two Black dolls and two white dolls and asked to identify which dolls looked like them and which were "good" or "bad." The studies revealed that Black children preferred the white dolls, identifying them as "nice" while identifying the Black dolls as "bad."

The findings of the Clarks' studies played a major role in the NAACP's arguments in Brown v. Board. The Clarks were called as expert witnesses and testified that segregation damaged the psychological development of African American children and caused them to internalize racism.

Swayed by the Clarks' research and the arguments advanced by Marshall and the Browns' other attorneys, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ordered that school segregation should be dismantled "with all deliberate speed."

As for the courageous men and women at the center of this case, Charles Hamilton Houston passed away before the Brown v. Board case was decided. His words, however, spurred on the efforts of the legal team: "We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might." Later, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark continued to make significant contributions to the field of psychology and to the social justice movement of their time. Their research would later influence the scholarship of the late Dr. Audrey Smedley, a trailblazing social anthropologist-and one of the Museum's earliest Charter Members. Dr. Smedley's pioneering book, Race in North America: Origins and Evolution of a Worldview, traces popularized concepts of race for more than 300 years to show that race is not a product of science, as the Plessy court believed, but in fact a social construct.

The long reach of the social construct identified by Dr. Smedley remains visible in the systemic issues that plague education to this day. While the Brown case established the legal requirement for desegregating schools, that goal remains out of reach in many communities. In 1968, about 77 percent of Black students and 55 percent of Latino students attended public schools that were more than half minority. In 2010, more than 40 years later, 74 percent of Black students and 80 percent of Latino students continue to attend public schools dominated by minority populations. The legal mandate of Brown v. Board may be clear but factors such as income inequality and discriminatory housing patterns continue to perpetuate not only de facto educational segregation, but continuing disparities in the quality of education offered to children.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture shares these and other stories of the heroes who helped overturn legalized segregation in our effort to advance social justice and racial equity. The groundbreaking work of the Clarks and other Civil Rights leaders informs many of the Museum's powerful resources, including our acclaimed Talking About Race initiative. In our collections you can view some of the Black and white dolls the Clarks used in their experiments at the Northside Center for Child Development in the 1960s, similar to those presented in the 1954 Brown v. Board arguments. On the Museum's first floor, you also can see Elizabeth Catlett's 2003 bronze statue Offering Education, created to honor African American educator and activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), who championed desegregation, African American civil rights, and women's suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And in the Museum's Segregation Gallery, you can view the outfit worn by Carlotta Walls LaNier during the "Little Rock Crisis" of 1957 at Little Rock Central High School.

To learn more about the struggle against segregated education-or if you are interested in exploring other powerful but lesser-known stories in African American history-please visit our online Searchable Museum today. This groundbreaking-and 2022 CIO 100 Award-winning-initiative by the Museum brings innovative, immersive digital experiences and evocative content directly into the homes of Members like you.

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The Struggle Against Segregated Education

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The road to desegregated education in the United States was a long and difficult one, and stands as a testament to the remarkable power, tenacity, and moral clarity of great African American trailblazers who refused to settle for the inherent injustice of "separate but equal."

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The two ares where segregation and racism were most taking place were in schools/education and in housing. Schooling was so called equal but their wasn't enough desks for students, the buildings were unsafe , and their weren't many teacher because they weren't getting paid very much .The south was not the place to be in the 1900's the minds were not changing even though laws were people still couldn't wrap their head around giving all children the same education regardless of skin color.

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Citation: C N Trueman "Education and Civil Rights"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 27 Mar 2015. 7 Feb 2018.

Education played a very important part in post-1945 civil rights history. Much time and effort was spent on education - the belief being that in a democracy it was only right and fair that all people regardless of skin colour should have the right to a decent education. This issue of civil rights and education made international headlines with the affair that took place at Little Rock High School in 1957. But education was to remain at the forefront of civil rights even after this event.

In 1945, the two areas where segregation and racism was most obviously applied was in housing and in education. In the southern states, the African Americans lived in the poorest areas with the worst facilities. That they did was symbolic that they had the worst paid jobs that could only afford the most basic of facilities. The worst financed schools were also in these areas so the separation between education and the general standard of lifestyle in America is a clinical one - the two must be seen as being one of a whole. This problem was not only restricted to the southern states either.

Within the south, the general philosophy that had developed since the civil war, was that if African Americans were kept ill-educated they would remain 'in their place' in society. An educated "boy" could become a danger. There was also a belief in some areas that African Americans were not intelligent enough to deserve an education. The shadow of "Jim Crow" cast itself over education in the south. The result of this was very much linked to the poverty most African Americans found themselves in - without a good education, no-one could advance themselves in southern society. Therefore, a poor education guaranteed a poor lifestyle for the African Americans

There had been some movement after the Second World War regarding attitudes. The horror of the death camps in Europe and the abject nonsense of scientific racism had moved by degrees some sections of southern society. The whole element of black equalling backwardness weakened though it did not die out. Military service by African Americans had made young men more assertive and the NAACP built on this development.

In 1896, the Supreme Court had established the ruling of "separate but equal" in education. This was never applied in totality in the south - only the "separate" was. This had been applied to schools and colleges of further education. One of the pioneering civil rights leaders was the lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

Marshall had been rejected by the University of Maryland Law School on racial grounds - they did not accept African Americans there. He was a graduate from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (an all black student college with an all white teaching staff). After his rejection from the University of Maryland, Marshall went to the Howard University Law School. By 1938, he was the chief legal advisor to the NAACP.

After his experiences, Marshall focussed his attentions on "separate but equal" in further education colleges. The south could hardly claim to have equal facilities in higher education. No black college offered any course leading to a Ph.D. Only two offered medical courses. No blacks-only college offered engineering or architecture. Law could only be studied at one or two colleges. Such courses were found in numerous whites-only colleges. Marshall lead the campaign to rectify this under the law with a patient campaign using the Supreme Court and previously stated directives. He also used what was in the Constitution.

In June 1950, the Supreme Court issued two directives.

The state of Texas had set up a 'blacks-only' law school. Its facilities were poor - just three class rooms and three teachers. The Supreme Court ordered the state to admit an African American student to a whites-only law school.
Oklahoma was also banned by the Supreme Court from segregating facilities within its graduate school of education. Up to the order, the college made African Americans use separate libraries, cafes etc. and during lectures they had to sit in an area of the classroom marked "Reserved for Coloureds".

The two decisions set the tone for the future of higher education establishments. The Supreme Court had applied the law as they saw it and there was no higher or more powerful body in America than the Supreme Court. However, what was stated in Washington DC was not necessarily applied in the state where it was meant to apply. What if that state decided to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and carry on as before? How could the Supreme Court enforce its decisions?

Thurgood Marshall next turned his attention to the vexed issue of segregated public schools. 21 American states had segregated schools which were attended by about 40% of school children. The north could not claim to have separate but equal facilities. For the south, any claim that their schools were separate but equal was absurd.

South Carolina spent 3 times more on white-only schools than black-only schools. It also spent 100 times more on transporting white school children than African American children. Therefore, the white children could go to the best schools as they were bussed there with the cost met by the state, but African American children were limited to schools within their area which were under-funded - simply because the state refused to finance their transport to other schools. The value of white school property in South Carolina was six times that of black school property. The figures were worse for Mississippi and in this state the school year for African Americans was shorter; teachers pay was less and the books they used were those no longer needed by white schools.

In their cause to rid the south of such abuses, the NAACP needed the help of people who lived in the community where such abuses occurred. For African Americans to assist the NAACP so openly in the south within each locality was fraught with danger. To dare to suggest that the status quo should be turned upside down was unacceptable to the whites in the south. Levi Pearson, an African American farmer in South Carolina, was one such person who spoke out against the segregation of schools and assisted the NAACP. The local bank refused to advance him credit so he could not afford to purchase fertilisers; local white farmers who had always lent him equipment at harvest time refused to do so and his crop rotted in the field. Shots were fired at the home he lived in. To many this would have been enough to pull away from the problem and return to anonymity. To men like Pearson, it was treatment like this that spurred him on.

In 1953, five cases against segregation in schools reached the Supreme Court. These involved the education policies of Kansas, Virginia, Delaware, Washington DC and South Carolina. One case was put forward by Levi Pearson. This series of court cases led to one of the most famous of civil rights decisions of the 1950's - Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka.

The Rev. Oliver Brown lived in Topeka, Kansas, and had an eight year old daughter who had to travel 21 blocks to get to her school despite the fact that there was one just 7 blocks from her home. The one nearest her home was for white children only. Her school was decidedly inferior to the one nearest to her. This was not "separate but equal". It was separate and known to be inferior.

The head of the Supreme Court at this time was the liberal Earl Warren. As head of California's judiciary during World War Two, he had been responsible for interning Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbour. They were forced to live in poor conditions and labelled untrustworthy to America. In future years, Warren made it clear that he believed that he had made a poor judgement and that he regretted what he had done.

When it came to civil rights abuses, he had made a promise to do what he could to undo blatant abuses such as those found within education. However, he had to get other members of the Supreme Court on board and this was difficult. There were those who believed that forcing a decision on to the south would only make matters worse; judges such as Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson. They argued that though these abuses were clear to see, any imposition of law on the traditions of the south would see the civil rights movement pushed back. They argued that persuasion was the only method that would succeed - not law enforcement. What would the Supreme Court do if the states refused to accept a decision that banned segregation in schools ?

Warren persuaded those in the Supreme Court that his way - the legal promotion of social equality - was the best and on May 17th 1954, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in schools.

The decision took America by storm - one way or the other. Warren's opponents called May 17th "Black Monday".

The "Chicago Defender", an African American newspaper, called the decision "the second emancipation proclamation...........more important to our democracy that the atomic bomb or the hydrogen bomb."

The status of the Court in America gave the decision huge kudos. There had never been a time when a Supreme Court judgement had not been acted on and many did not expect this to change - even though some southern states were considered to be extreme in their racism. Warren's decision gave judicial legitimacy to the civil rights movement - here was the most powerful judicial body in America (some would argue the most powerful body in America) giving its apparent support to the ending of the abuses that seemed to transcend the south. The Brown v Topeka decision gave the whole civil rights movement a new spark of life. "Without Brown, the civil rights movement would not have been quite the same." (Patterson)

Some southern states complied with the law and publically stated that they would not do anything to interfere with the ruling. The governor of Alabama, Jim Folson, said "When the Supreme Court speaks, that's the law." His equivalent in Arkansas said "Arkansas will obey the law. It always has." By the end of 1957, 723 school districts in the south had desegregated their schools.

However, not all African Americans were happy with the Warren decision. They felt that African Americans, by going to desegregated schools would face segregation within those schools and suffer accordingly. Or that the African Americans in those schools would congregate together and not with white children. So what would have the decision achieved ? Desegregation in theory but not in reality.

Some, such as Zora Neale Hurston, believed that African American children would do better in black-only schools for the very reasons given above. The hostility of the desegregated schools to African American children, she felt, would hold them back. Giving equal facilities and financing to white schools, she felt that African American children in their own schools would progress more as the environment there would be better - no underlying tensions etc. Hurston pointed out that desegregation was not integration.

Could desegregation suddenly undo the thoughts in peoples minds overnight?

Other critics of the Warren decision felt that it was wrong to assume that children were under-performing in black-only schools. It may well be that they were not doing as well as they could with proper funding, but the premise that black-only schools were inherently inferior angered some.

Research by Jencks and Mayer indicates that though schools may have been theoretically desegregated by the Warren decision, the actual character of southern schools did not change - thus supporting the words of Hurston. Desegregation may have been imposed on southern schools but it did not do much to change the overall pattern of society in the south. African American children in these desegregated schools tended to stay together. Integration with white children was rare. Little ghettos grew up in southern schools - exactly as had happened in the towns and cities they lived in.

There were those in the south who were adamantly against Warren's decision. In some states such as Mississippi, the decision gave an extra boost to those racially more extreme than others. Racial moderates gave way to these extremists. Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, claimed that communists were behind the decision. He believed that the African Americans did not instigate the action but that they were lead into in by those "who are intent upon overthrowing American institutions."

Political leaders in South Carolina and Georgia publically stated that they would not adhere to the decision.

Why and how could these states so brazenly ignore a Supreme Court ruling?

The decision in 1954 was followed by silence. No orders had been given for a time in which desegregation should take place. In fact, after the Warren decision, not a lot more came out of the Supreme Court on this issue for the rest of the year. This was enough to encourage some southern politicians to flout the law. Warren had been very keen not to give an immediate schedule for desegregation as he did not want to be seen as bullying the South. He was conscious of the strong belief in state rights in the south and did not want to be seen as using strong arm federal power to impose rulings on states.

Some believe the stance taken by President Eisenhower encouraged those who were anti-desegregation. He felt that federal compulsion would backfire as any changes had to come from the localities. He was also acutely aware of the culture of the south as many of his friends were southerners who openly referred to African Americans as "darkies". Eisenhower never publically endorsed the Warren decision but claimed that he was duty bound to accept it. He believed that educational desegregation would lead to social disintegration:

In May 1955, the Supreme Court finally turned to the issue of implementation. By then, anti-Supreme Court feeling had grown and so had resentment against the Brown v Topeka decision. It was also becoming clear that simply carrying out the decision was fraught with complexities. For this reason, the Supreme Court effectively backed off against enforcement. It failed to set a standard definition of a desegregated school - was a 90/10 ratio white to black acceptable? Should it be 50/50? No one took a decision on this. The Court also refused to set a timetable for desegregation. It stated that:

Though this was open to interpretation (what is "prompt and reasonable"?), what became known as " Brown II" provoked outrage in the southern states. 1955 was a year of much violence. Eight African Americans were lynched in this year alone - out of a total of eleven for the whole of the 1950's. In 1956, a young African American female - Autherine Lucy - was nearly lynched when she tried to enrol at the University of Alabama. The university expelled her and she had to flee the area. The University of Alabama only started to desegregate itself in 1963 despite all the rulings of the Supreme Court. This showed the great weakness of the Court - what if states failed to implement its rulings? What could be done about it?

Also in 1956, a mob of 2,000 whites stopped African American children entering a school in Clinton, Tennessee. Desegregation was only carried out here after the intervention of the National Guard who used tanks and other military vehicles to ensure that black children could get to their school - though what these children felt once inside their school is difficult to imagine. The same type of obstruction happened in Mansfield, Texas where Texas Rangers were used to implement the law. In all these cases the federal government did nothing stating that they were internal state matters to be resolved by the states - even though they were flouting Supreme Court rulings which had a federal impact.

The issue of desegregation in schools rallied most southern politicians. They claimed that the federal government was imposing itself in areas which it had no knowledge of and that states rights as guaranteed in the Constitution were being violated. This was the most common approach by politicians who played on the known hostility to the federal government that existed in the south. It is not coincidental that Georgia, in 1956, adopted a new state flag - one that had on it the Confederate battle insignia. In March 1956, 22 southern Senators and 82 Representatives issued the " Southern Manifesto " which claimed that the Supreme Court abused its judicial power and that those who signed the document would do all in their power to overturn the decision from Brown v Topeka and that they would do all they could to stop the forcible desegregation of schools in the south.

The less educated whites in the south turned to the KKK - recruitment to the KKK rose dramatically after 1955. Their methods to terrorise African Americans was more basic - house burnings, violence against individuals, church burnings etc. The idea was to get the African Americans to keep to their 'own' schools so that desegregation might exist on the statute book, but that the African Americans would remain in black-only schools and reject going to mixed schools.

States in the south did all they could to by-pass the Warren decision. White children who wanted to attend private schools were given state grants to do so. Teachers who stated that they wished to work in desegregated schools had their teaching licence revoked. "Pupil placement" laws were used whereby children took tests which were assessed by psychologists and these 'professionals' put the children in the appropriate school depending on the results of the tests. The worst example of bypassing Warren came in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Here, all public schools were shut and only private schools were allowed. When African American families refused to accept the schools offered to their children, those children got no education. This went on for three years.

Such abuses could only be settled in court and this took time. Schools were theoretically desegregated in 1954.

By 1962, whites-only schools (and therefore black-only schools) still existed in Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama.

By 1964, less than 2% of African American children attended multi-racial schools in the eleven states associated with the south. Many colleges remained whites-only and these colleges had very few if any African American teachers on their staff.

The north could not claim to be free from this kind of abuse. By 1968, more than 30% of all African American children went to public schools that were 90% non-white. The was de facto segregation but it was not as overt as in the south. African Americans had effectively segregated themselves probably for the reasons which were identified by Zora Neale Hurston. Social engineering was an issue which even the Supreme Court could not make laws on.

The most famous example of a school district, local politicians, local people etc. refusing to accept the Warren decision took place in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

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Education and Civil Rights - History Learning Site

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Education played a very important part in post-1945 civil rights history. Much time and effort was spent on education - the belief being that in a democracy it was only right and fair that all people regardless of skin colour should have the right to a decent education.

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Even after over 6 decades since it was ruled segregation was unconstitutional a lot of school still were extremely segregated. School were not giving African American the respect of a human being and the education every was supposed to be given.This gave meaningful education opportunities to all African American of today.

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The history of classroom segregation in the US reflects the nation's continuing legacy of racism and systemic racial inequality. As recently as the 1950s, racial segregation in schools was the law of the land. More than six decades after the Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional, many schools are still heavily segregated and substantial disparities in school funding along racial lines remain.

As educational leaders search for ways to close achievement gaps and innovate solutions to manage inequitable school funding, they must also confront an ever-growing issue: the resegregation of US schools. Unfortunately, as in the past, the conditions of many schools today continue to separate the haves from the have-nots and further root marginalized groups in positions of disadvantage.

Leaders in education continue to seek ways to ensure that students across all race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background, have equitable access to quality education. This requires addressing the role classroom segregation plays in exacerbating disparities and developing teaching approaches that offset the negative impact of segregation in schools.

A Brief History of Classroom Segregation

As early as the 1930s, members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were looking for strategies to desegregate schools through lawsuits targeting the legal doctrine of "separate but equal." However, not until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 did the US Supreme Court unanimously outlaw state-sanctioned school segregation, ruling it unconstitutional.

From their inception, schools serving students of color received significantly less funding than schools serving white students and faced overcrowding, inadequate supplies, and insufficiently paid teachers.

Such disparities resulted in gaps in the educational opportunities available to Black and white communities. In 1950, only 1 in 10 Black adults graduated from high school compared to 4 in 10 white adults. Especially hard hit were people living in states with a history of Jim Crow laws-Black adults in Mississippi, Georgia, and other Southern states having an average of only about five years of schooling.

Resistance to Integration

Once efforts to integrate schools began, campaigns directed by white community leaders and elected officials to resist and defy the Brown v. Board of Education ruling followed. One of the most famous examples occurred in 1957, when Arkansas governor Orval Eugene Faubus called upon the state's National Guard to block nine newly enrolled Black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School.

Another defiance of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling took place in Cleveland, Mississippi, where local officials devised schemes to stop desegregation by building schools in locations that kept Black students in all-Black schools, and created "dual residencies" that allowed the school district to continue sending students to particular schools based on their race.

Busing

Nonetheless, proponents of integration pressed on, introducing programs and strategies to address the issue. One controversial strategy to end classroom segregation became known as "busing." These programs sought to close opportunity and achievement gaps and make classrooms more diverse by busing students of color to white schools and busing white students to schools made up of students of color

However, many white parents objected to the programs, in fear they would lose access to the better-resourced schools. Because large numbers moved their children to private schools or their families to suburban areas (a phenomenon known as "white flight"), Black families shouldered a disproportionate burden in busing and other integration efforts. Some Black families and political leaders also objected to busing programs on the grounds that they were too disruptive and failed to address deeper, causal issues such as inequities in the housing market.

Benefits of Desegregation

Despite resistance to busing and other efforts aimed at desegregating schools, integration programs delivered meaningful educational opportunities to generations of Americans by helping to address funding inequities that exist between between schools that are predominantly white and those that are predominantly non-white.

Consider the research of University of California, Berkeley, economist Rucker Johnson, who studied the effects of court-ordered school desegregation on socioeconomic and health outcomes.. He found that high school graduation rates for Black students jumped by almost 15 percent when they attended integrated schools for five years. This attendance also decreased those students' chances of living in poverty as an adult by 11 percent. Such improvements correlated with greater access to school resources; Johnson's research found desegregation plans effectively narrowed Black-white gaps in per-pupil school spending and class size.

However, any discussion of the benefits of busing should also acknowledge that the Black students who were bused to previously all-white schools faced immeasurable hardships. Whatever positive outcomes resulted from access to greater resources or exposure to institutions that prepared them for predominantly white postsecondary and professional settings, they were gained in the face of widespread hostility and discrimination from white educators and students alike.

Integrated Schools and Achievement

Research from the National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD) found integrated schools offer many advantages. The coalition reports that integrated schools on average function at a higher level, with greater parent involvement, less teacher turnover, and more and better quality resources. Students at integrated schools not only achieve at higher levels in math, science, language, and reading, but they also benefit in nonacademic ways. The NCSD, citing research from several scholars, lists the following among outcomes that are associated with attending integrated schools:

Decreased levels of racial and ethnic prejudice

Improved ability to navigate multicultural environments

A break in stereotypes and fears about other races and ethnic groups passed down between generations

Better overall health and well-being

Resegregation in Today's Classroom

Despite gains made in the 1970s and '80s to desegregate schools, a series of court rulings ending mandatory desegregation programs have resulted in growing numbers of segregated schools.

A study from the Civil Rights Project found that the number of schools in which students of color make up 90 percent or more of the student population has tripled since 1988. Today, more than 40 percent of Black and Hispanic students attend schools where 9 out of 10 students are students of color. According to the Civil Rights Project study, "Black students in the South are less likely to attend a school that is majority white than about 50 years ago." In fact, the study reports, the percentage of Black students attending schools in which white students make up at least 50 percent of the student body dropped from 44 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 2011.

This return to segregation is a return to the original problem: separate and unequal. More specifically, the problem is not that predominantly Black and Hispanic schools exist, but rather that predominantly Black and Hispanic schools continue to face economic, social, and structural challenges that predominantly white schools do not. Most schools serving majority nonwhite student populations are in low-income areas, and due to funding systems that rely on property taxes to finance education, these schools receive much less money. A report from Edbuild estimates that school districts serving mostly students of color receive $23 billion less than districts serving equal numbers of white students.

A system that relies so heavily on community wealth favors districts that can concentrate resources at the expense of larger populations; average enrollment in white districts is just over 1,500 students, while nonwhite districts serve over 10,000 students, according to Edbuild. Average revenue per student in nonwhite school districts is $2,226 lower than in white school districts.

Effects of Resegregation

Just as desegregation produces positive results for students of color, the shift away from re-integration produces noted declines for them. In the study "Ending to What End? The Impact of the Termination of Court-Desegregation Orders on Residential Segregation and School Dropout Rates," researcher David D. Liebowitz found that in districts that discontinued integration programs, dropout rates immediately jumped for Black and Hispanic students compared to those districts where programs remained intact.

Strategies to Address Segregation

Much of segregation, whether in schools or neighborhoods, traces back to a history of discriminatory policies. For example, redlining, the practice of denying loans to people of color trying to purchase homes in predominantly white neighborhoods, prevented many families of color from moving into areas with well-funded schools.

Overcoming such legacies has proven a painfully slow process. However, some leaders in education point to solutions that can help address problems of inequity even if they can't change segregated housing patterns. San Antonio Independent School District's Diverse by Design program has set into place several initiatives to bolster integration in schools including:

Addressing transportation needs

Building schools using a 50-50 enrollment model based on family income

Redrawing attendance zone lines or eliminating them altogether

Adding specialized academic programs to encourage enrollment

In addition to these solutions, educators can use classroom strategies to help offset the negative effects of segregation. Founding principal of Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, DC, Nataki Gregory argues that even though public policy and systemic racism have caused segregation, "culturally relevant teaching practices, teacher coaching and strategic use of technology could help us overcome the barriers that our neighborhoods present to desegregation."

In the article "4 Ways Teachers in Segregated Classrooms Can Desegregate Their Students' Learning," Gregory presents ideas to offset the effects of classroom segregation. Some of them include:

Strategic use of technology: Use the internet and meeting platforms like Zoom in the classroom to connect with schools across the city and country. While teaching students about European colonization of the Americas, for instance, connect with other classrooms to explore the differences and similarities about what's being taught. Follow up with discussions exploring the different perspectives on the topic and how to discuss ideas with those holding conflicting viewpoints.

Focus questions and activities on the world: Rather than relying on textbooks to direct activity, drive student engagement by exploring topics relevant beyond the walls of the classroom and investigating issues that students find meaningful.

Establish a culture of coaching in schools: Teachers need encouragement and feedback to improve their teaching practice. Coaching can offer this, and it can give teachers a chance to discuss their mindsets and discover their own racial biases that might get in the way of activating the potential of all their students.

Transform Education Through Leadership

Tackling challenges like classroom segregation calls for well-prepared leaders. To ensure all students have access to schools where they can grow and thrive, educators must know how to disrupt the status quo with creative solutions to problems and inequities.

American University offers a comprehensive degree program that cultivates skills in system change, personal leadership, social justice and anti-racism, and policy and research. Explore how a Doctorate in Education Policy and Leadership equips aspiring educational leaders to transform American education.

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Impact of Classroom Segregation on Student Education | American University

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The history of classroom segregation in the US reflects the nation's continuing legacy of racism and systemic racial inequality.

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Plessy v. Ferguson established the saying "separate but equal". Which means segregation was still legal but everyone was getting equal opportunities and education. But the white only establishments were far better and more effective. While this was not what African American were hoping for but it did jump start more groups to fight harder for their rights.

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Transcript

(Transcription of the Judgement of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)

Supreme Court of the United States,
No. 210, October Term, 1895.
Homer Adolph Plessy,
Plaintiff in Error,
vs.
J.H. Ferguson, Judge of Section "A"
Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans
In Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana

This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, and was argued by counsel.

On consideration whereof, It is now here ordered and adjudged by this Court that the judgement of the said Supreme Court, in this cause, be and the the same is hereby, affirmed with costs.

per Mr. Justice Brown,
May 18, 1896.

Dissenting:
Mr. Justice Harlan

(Transcription of Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)
U.S. Supreme Court
PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
May 18, 1896.
This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari originally filed in the supreme court of the state by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts:

That petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state of Louisiana, of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him, and that he was entitled to every recognition, right, privilege, and immunity secured to the citizens of the United States of the white race by its constitution and laws; that on June 7, 1892, he engaged and paid for a first-class passage on the East Louisiana Railway, from New Orleans to Covington, in the same state, and thereupon entered a passenger train, and took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated; that such railroad company was incorporated by the laws of Louisiana as a common carrier, and was not authorized to distinguish between citizens according to their race, but, notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and imprisonment, to vacate said coach, and occupy another seat, in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach, and hurried off to, and imprisoned in, the parish jail of New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of having criminally violated an act of the general assembly of the state, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made and provided.

The petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of the city for preliminary examination, and committed for trial to the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, where an information was filed against him in the matter above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in conflict with the constitution of the United States; that petitioner interposed a plea to such information, based upon the unconstitutionality of the act of the general assembly, to which the district attorney, on behalf of the state, filed a demurrer; that, upon issue being joined upon such demurrer and plea, the court sustained the demurrer, overruled the plea, and ordered petitioner to plead over to the facts set forth in the information, and that, unless the judge of the said court be enjoined by a writ of prohibition from further proceeding in such case, the court will proceed to fine and sentence petitioner to imprisonment, and thus deprive him of his constitutional rights set forth in his said plea, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was being prosecuted; that no appeal lay from such sentence, and petitioner was without relief or remedy except by writs of prohibition and certiorari. Copies of the information and other proceedings in the criminal district court were annexed to the petition as an exhibit.

Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue, and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the supreme court.

To this order the respondent made answer, transmitting a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and averring that, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, the said Plessy declined and refused, either by pleading or otherwise, to admit that he was in any sense or in any proportion a colored man.

The case coming on for hearing before the supreme court, that court was of opinion that the law under which the prosecution was had was constitutional and denied the relief prayed for by the petitioner (Ex parte Plessy, 45 La. Ann. 80, 11 South. 948); whereupon petitioner prayed for a writ of error from this court, which was allowed by the chief justice of the supreme court of Louisiana.

Mr. Justice Harlan dissenting.

A. W. Tourgee and S. F. Phillips, for plaintiff in error.

Alex. Porter Morse, for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice BROWN, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. Acts 1890, No. 111, p. 152.

The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads. No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.'

By the second section it was enacted 'that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison, and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison; and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he or she is assigned by the officer of such railway, said officer shall have power to refuse to carry such passenger on his train, and for such refusal neither he nor the railway company which he represents shall be liable for damages in any of the courts of this state.'

The third section provides penalties for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railway companies to comply with the act, with a proviso that 'nothing in this act shall be construed as applying to nurses attending children of the other race.' The fourth section is immaterial.

The information filed in the criminal district court charged, in substance, that Plessy, being a passenger between two stations within the state of Louisiana, was assigned by officers of the company to the coach used for the race to which he belonged, but he insisted upon going into a coach used by the race to which he did not belong. Neither in the information nor plea was his particular race or color averred.

The petition for the writ of prohibition averred that petitioner was seven-eights Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him; and that he was entitled to every right, privilege, and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race; and that, upon such theory, he took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated, and was ordered by the conductor to vacate said coach, and take a seat in another, assigned to persons of the colored race, and, having refused to comply with such demand, he was forcibly ejected, with the aid of a police officer, and imprisoned in the parish jail to answer a charge of having violated the above act.

The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts both with the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, abolishing slavery, and the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits certain restrictive legislation on the part of the states.

1. That it does not conflict with the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument. Slavery implies involuntary servitude,-a state of bondage; the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services. This amendment was said in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude, and that the use of the word 'servitude' was intended to prohibit the use of all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name. It was intimated, however, in that case, that this amendment was regarded by the statesmen of that day as insufficient to protect the colored race from certain laws which had been enacted in the Southern states, imposing upon the colored race onerous disabilities and burdens, and curtailing their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value; and that the fourteenth amendment was devised to meet this exigency.

So, too, in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to colored people, cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the applicant, but only as involving an ordinary civil injury, properly cognizable by the laws of the state, and presumably subject to redress by those laws until the contrary appears. 'It would be running the slavery question into the ground,' said Mr. Justice Bradley, 'to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to make as to the guests he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab or car, or admit to his concert or theater, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business.'

A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude. Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection.

2. By the fourteenth amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are made citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside; and the states are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The proper construction of this amendment was first called to the attention of this court in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, which involved, however, not a question of race, but one of exclusive privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to the exact rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but it was said generally that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the states. The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguish d from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.

One of the earliest of these cases is that of Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, in which the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts held that the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the other schools. 'The great principle,' said Chief Justice Shaw, 'advanced by the learned and eloquent advocate for the plaintiff [Mr. Charles Sumner], is that, by the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, all persons, without distinction of age or sex, birth or color, origin or condition, are equal before the law. ... But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment; but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.' It was held that the powers of the committee extended to the establish- ment of separate schools for children of different ages, sexes and colors, and that they might also establish special schools for poor and neglected children, who have become too old to attend the primary school, and yet have not acquired the rudiments of learning, to enable them to enter the ordinary schools. Similar laws have been enacted by congress under its general power of legislation over the District of Columbia (sections 281- 283, 310, 319, Rev. St. D. C.), as well as by the legislatures of many of the states, and have been generally, if not uniformly, sustained by the courts. State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 210; Lehew v. Brummell (Mo. Sup.) 15 S. W. 765; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36; Bertonneau v. Directors of City Schools, 3 Woods, 177, Fed. Cas. No. 1,361; People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 337; Dawson v. Lee, 83 Ky. 49.

Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389.

The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the negro and those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theaters, and railway carriages has been frequently drawn by this court. Thus, in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, it was held that a law of West Virginia limiting to white male persons 21 years of age, and citizens of the state, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step towards reducing them to a condition of servility. Indeed, the right of a colored man that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race, and no discrimination against them because of color, has been asserted in a number of cases. Virginia v. Rivers, 100 U.S. 313 ; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 ; ush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110 , 1 Sup. Ct. 625; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904. So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color, we have held that this meant that persons of color should travel in the same car as white ones, and that the enactment was not satisfied by the company providing cars assigned exclusively to people of color, though they were as good as those which they assigned exclusively to white persons. Railroad Co. v. Brown, 17 Wall. 445.

Upon the other hand, where a statute of Louisiana required those engaged in the transportation of passengers among the states to give to all persons traveling within that state, upon vessels employed in that business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the vessel, without distinction on account of race or color, and subjected to an action for damages the owner of such a vessel who excluded colored passengers on account of their color from the cabin set aside by him for the use of whites, it was held to be, so far as it applied to interstate commerce, unconstitutional and void. Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U.S. 485 . The court in this case, however, expressly disclaimed that it had anything whatever to do with the statute as a regulation of internal commerce, or affecting anything else than commerce among the states.

In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 , 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was held that an act of congress entitling all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances, on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement, and made applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude, was unconstitutional and void, upon the ground that the fourteenth amendment was prohibitory upon the states only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by congress for enforcing it was not direct legislation on matters respecting which the states were prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but was corrective legislation, such as might be necessary or proper for counter-acting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts. In delivering the opinion of the court, Mr. Justice Bradley observed that the fourteenth amendment 'does not invest congress with power to legislate upon subjects that are within the domain of state legislation, but to provide modes of relief against state legislation or state action of the kind referred to. It does not authorize congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights, but to provide modes of redress against the operation of state laws, and the action of state officers, executive or judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the amendment. Positive rights and privileges are undoubtedly secured by the fourteenth amendment; but they are secured by way of prohibition against state laws and state proceedings affecting those rights and privileges, and by power given to congress to legislate for the purpose of carrying such prohibition into effect; and such legislation must necessarily be predicated upon such supposed state laws or state proceedings, and be directed to the correction of their operation and effect.'

Much nearer, and, indeed, almost directly in point, is the case of the Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348, wherein the railway company was indicted for a violation of a statute of Mississippi, enacting that all railroads carrying passengers should provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations. The case was presented in a different aspe t from the one under consideration, inasmuch as it was an indictment against the railway company for failing to provide the separate accommodations, but the question considered was the constitutionality of the law. In that case, the supreme court of Mississippi (66 Miss. 662, 6 South. 203) had held that the statute applied solely to commerce within the state, and, that being the construction of the state statute by its highest court, was accepted as conclusive. 'If it be a matter,' said the court (page 591, 133 U. S., and page 348, 10 Sup. Ct.), 'respecting commerce wholly within a state, and not interfering with commerce between the states, then, obviously, there is no violation of the commerce clause of the federal constitution. ... No question arises under this section as to the power of the state to separate in different compartments interstate pas- sengers, or affect, in any manner, the privileges and rights of such passengers. All that we can consider is whether the state has the power to require that railroad trains within her limits shall have separate accommodations for the two races. That affecting only commerce within the state is no invasion of the power given to congress by the commerce clause.'

A like course of reasoning applies to the case under consideration, since the supreme court of Louisiana, in the case of State v. Judge, 44 La. Ann. 770, 11 South. 74, held that the statute in question did not apply to interstate passengers, but was confined in its application to passengers traveling exclusively within the borders of the state. The case was decided largely upon the authority of Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 66 Miss. 662, 6 South, 203, and affirmed by this court in 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348. In the present case no question of interference with interstate commerce can possibly arise, since the East Louisiana Railway appears to have been purely a local line, with both its termini within the state of Louisiana. Similar statutes for the separation of the two races upon public conveyances were held to be constitutional in Railroad v. Miles, 55 Pa. St. 209; Day v. Owen 5 Mich. 520; Railway Co. v. Williams, 55 Ill. 185; Railroad Co. v. Wells, 85 Tenn. 613; 4 S. W. 5; Railroad Co. v. Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 4 S. W. 5; The Sue, 22 Fed. 843; Logwood v. Railroad Co., 23 Fed. 318; McGuinn v. Forbes, 37 Fed. 639; People v. King ( N. Y. App.) 18 N. E. 245; Houck v. Railway Co., 38 Fed. 226; Heard v. Railroad Co., 3 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 111, 1 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 428.

While we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the second section of the act that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs is a valid exercise of the legislative power. Indeed, we understand it to be conceded by the state's attorney that such part of the act as exempts from liability the railway company and its officers is unconstitutional. The power to assign to a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who, under the laws of the particular state, is to be deemed a white, and who a colored, person. This question, though indicated in the brief of the plaintiff in error, does not properly arise upon the record in this case, since the only issue made is as to the unconstitutionality of the act, so far as it requires the railway to provide separate accommodations, and the conductor to assign passengers according to their race.

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in an mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is 'property,' in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so, for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man, and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called 'property.' Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man, and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.

In this connection, it is also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring colored people to walk upon one side of the street, and white people upon the other, or requiring white men's houses to be painted white, and colored men's black, or their vehicles or business signs to be of different colors, upon the theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 , 6 Sup. Ct. 1064, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco, to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality, violated the provisions of the constitution of the United States, if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will, and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places, without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. It was held to be a covert attempt on the part of the municipality to make an arbitrary and unjust discrimination against the Chinese race. While this was the case of a municipal ordinance, a like principle has been held to apply to acts of a state legislature passed in the exercise of the police power. Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465 ; Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U.S. 677 , 16 Sup. Ct. 714, and cases cited on page 700, 161 U. S., and page 714, 16 Sup. Ct.; Daggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548, 3 N. E. 538; Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485; State v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665; Hulseman v. Rems, 41 Pa. St. 396; Osman v. Riley, 15 Cal. 48.

So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the acts of congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. As was said by the court of appeals of New York in People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 448: 'This end can neither be accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with the general sentiment of the community upon whom they are designed to operate. When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights before the law, and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has accomplished the end for which it was organized, and performed all of the functions respecting social advantages with which it is endowed.' Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to constitute a colored person, as distinguished from a white person, is one upon which there is a difference of opinion in the different states; some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race (State v. Chavers, 5 Jones [N. C.] 1); others, that it depends upon the preponderance of blood ( Gray v. State, 4 Ohio, 354; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665); and still others, that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths (People v. Dean, 14 Mich. 406; Jones v. Com., 80 Va. 544). But these are questions to be determined under the laws of each state, and are not properly put in issue in this case. Under the allegations of his petition, it may undoubtedly become a question of importance whether, under the laws of Louisiana, the petitioner belongs to the white or colored race.

The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.

Mr. Justice BREWER did not hear the argument or participate in the decision of this case.

Mr. Justice HARLAN dissenting.

By the Louisiana statute the validity of which is here involved, all railway companies (other than street-railroad companies) carry passengers in that state are required to have separate but equal accommodations for white and colored persons, 'by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.' Under this statute, no colored person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons; nor any white person to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to colored persons. The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of is race. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race, he is subject to be fined, or to be imprisoned in the parish jail. Penalties are prescribed for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railroad companies to comply with the provisions of the act.

Only 'nurses attending children of the other race' are excepted from the operation of the statute. No exception is made of colored attendants traveling with adults. A white man is not permitted to have his colored servant with him in the same coach, even if his condition of health requires the constant personal assistance of such servant. If a colored maid insists upon riding in the same coach with a white woman whom she has been employed to serve, and who may need her personal attention while traveling, she is subject to be fined or imprisoned for such an exhibition of zeal in the discharge of duty.

While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act 'white and colored races' necessarily include all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that state. So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separation of the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race.

Thus, the state regulates the use of a public highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the basis of race.

However apparent the injustice of such legislation may be, we have only to consider whether it is consistent with the constitution of the United States.

That a railroad is a public highway, and that the corporation which owns or operates it is in the exercise of public functions, is not, at this day, to be disputed. Mr. Justice Nelson, speaking for this court in New Jersey Steam Nav. Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. 344, 382, said that a common carrier was in the exercise 'of a sort of public office, and has public duties to perform, from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without the assent of the parties concerned.' Mr. Justice Strong, delivering the judgment of this court in Olcott v. Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678, 694, said: 'That railroads, though constructed by private corporations, and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had any existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railroad. Clearly, it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose by such an agency is taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies taking property for a private use. Yet it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such a road, making compensation to the owner. What else does this doctrine mean if not that building a railroad, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use?' So, in Township of Pine Grove v. Talcott, 19 Wall. 666, 676: 'Though the corporation [a railroad company] was private, its work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by the state.' So, in Inhabitants of Worcester v. Western R. Corp., 4 Metc. (Mass.) 564: 'The establishment of that great thoroughfare is regarded as a public work, established by public authority, intended for the public use and benefit, the use of which is secured to the whole community, and constitutes, therefore, like a canal, turnpike, or highway, a public easement.' 'It is true that the real and personal property, necessary to the establishment and management of the railroad, is vested in the corporation; but it is in trust for the public.'

In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States.

The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged. But, that amendment having been found inadequate to the protection of the rights of those who had been in slavery, it was followed by the fourteenth amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty, by declaring that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' and that 'no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These two amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating in the political control of his country, it was declared by the fifteenth amendment that 'the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.'

These notable additions to the fundamental law were welcomed by the friends of liberty throughout the world. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. They had, as this court has said, a common purpose, namely, to secure 'to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.' They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, 'that the law in the states shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the states; and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.' We also said: 'The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity or right, most valuable to the colored race,-the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored; exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy; and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.' It was, consequently, adjudged that a state law that excluded citizens of the colored race from juries, because of their race, however well qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of jurymen, was repugnant to the fourteenth amendment. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 306 , 307 S.; Virginia v. Rives, Id. 313; Ex parte Virginia, Id. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 , 386; Bush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110, 116 , 1 S. Sup. Ct. 625. At the present term, referring to the previous adjudications, this court declared that 'underlying all of those decisions is the principle that the constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the general government or the states against any citizen because of his race. All citizens are equal before the law.' Gibson v. State, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904.

The decisions referred to show the scope of the recent amendments of the constitution. They also show that it is not within the power of a state to prohibit colored citizens, because of their race, from participating as jurors in the administration of justice.

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute, is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. 'Personal liberty,' it has been well said, 'consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever places one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.' 1 Bl. Comm. *134. If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so; and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.

It is one thing for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. If a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on one side of a street, and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? Why may it not require sheriffs to assign whites to one side of a court room, and blacks to the other? And why may it not also prohibit the commingling of the two races in the galleries of legislative halls or in public assemblages convened for the consideration of the political questions of the day? Further, if this statute of Louisiana is consistent with the personal liberty of citizens, why may not the state require the separation in railroad coaches of native and naturalized citizens of the United States, or of Protestants and Roman Catholics?

The answer given at the argument to these questions was that regulations of the kind they suggest would be unreasonable, and could not, therefore, stand before the la . Is it meant that the determination of questions of legislative power depends upon the inquiry whether the statute whose validity is questioned is, in the judgment of the courts, a reasonable one, taking all the circumstances into consideration? A statute may be unreasonable merely because a sound public policy forbade its enactment. But I do not understand that the courts have anything to do with the policy or expediency of legislation. A statute may be valid, and yet, upon grounds of public policy, may well be characterized as unreasonable. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, 'the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment.' Sedg. St. & Const. Law, 324. There is a dangerous tendency in these latter days to enlarge the functions of the courts, by means of judicial interference with the will of the people as expressed by the legislature. Our institutions have the distinguishing characteristic that the three departments of government are co-ordinate and separate. Each much keep within the limits defined by the constitution. And the courts best discharge their duty by executing the will of the law-making power, constitutionally expressed, leaving the results of legislation to be dealt with by the people through their representatives. Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Sometimes they are to be construed strictly, sometimes literally, in order to carry out the legislative will. But, however construed, the intent of the legislature is to be respected if the particular statute in question is valid, although the courts, looking at the public interests, may conceive the statute to be both unreasonable and impolitic. If the power exists to enact a statute, that ends the matter so far as the courts are concerned. The adjudged cases in which statutes have been held to be void, because unreasonable, are those in which the means employed by the legislature were not at all germane to the end to which the legislature was competent.

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.

It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not included nor intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at time of the adoption of the constitution, they were 'considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.' 17 How. 393, 404. The recent amendments of the constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race,-a superior class of citizens,-which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the states in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the states are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.

The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned. This question is not met by the suggestion that social equality cannot exist between the white and black races in this country. That argument, if it can be properly regarded as one, is scarcely worthy of consideration; for social equality no more exists between two races when traveling in a passenger coach or a public highway than when members of the same races sit by each other in a street car or in the jury box, or stand or sit with each other in a political assembly, or when they use in common the streets of a city or town, or when they are in the same room for the purpose of having their names placed on the registry of voters, or when they approach the ballot box in order to exercise the high privilege of voting.

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. It is scarcely just to say that a colored citizen should not object to occupying a public coach assigned to his own race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he does object, and he ought never to cease objecting, that citizens of the white and black races can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens,-our equals before the law. The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

The result of the whole matter is that while this court has frequently adjudged, and at the present term has recognized the doctrine, that a state cannot, consistently with the constitution of the United States, prevent white and black citizens, having the required qualifications for jury service, from sitting in the same jury box, it is now solemnly held that a state may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger coach on a public highway, or may require that they be separated by a 'partition' when in the same passenger coach. May it not now be reasonably expected that astute men of the dominant race, who affect to be disturbed at the possibility that the integrity of the white race may be corrupted, or that its supremacy will be imperiled, by contact on public highways with black people, will endeavor to procure statutes requiring white and black jurors to be separated in the jury box by a 'partition,' and that, upon retiring from the court room to consult as to their verdict, such partition, if it be a movable one, shall be taken to their consultation room, and set up in such way as to prevent black jurors from coming too close to their brother jurors of the white race. If the 'partition' used in the court room happens to be stationary, provision could be made for screens with openings through which jurors of the two races could confer as to their verdict without coming into personal contact with each other. I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be held to be consistent with the constitution.

I do not deem it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was made in argument. Some, and the most important, of them, are wholly inapplicable, because rendered prior to the adoption of the last amendments of the constitution, when colored people had very few rights which the dominant race felt obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion, in many localities, was dominated by the institution of slavery; when it would not have been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far as the rights of blacks were concerned, race prejudice was, practically, the supreme law of the land. Those decisions cannot be guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the supreme law, which established universal civil freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States, and residing ere, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national and state, and placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all men before the law.

I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that state, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several states of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law, would, it is true, have disappeared from our country; but there would remain a power in the states, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the 'People of the United States,' for whom, and by whom through representatives, our government is administered. Such a system is inconsistent with the guaranty given by the constitution to each state of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

For the reason stated, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment of the majority.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."

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Little rock nine was a group of nine students that were the first to enter an all white school. The teens were harassed and a mob was sent to prevent them from going into school.The teens lives were in danger but they still fought and did manage to attention a few hours of school. Finally enough was enough and army troops were sent out to guide the nine students into school and they began attending regularly. This impacted society and the world showing the you can peacefully protest and make a large impact.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.

But the gears of change grind slowly. It wasn't until September 1957 when nine teens would become symbols, much like the landmark decision we know as Brown v. The Board of Education, of all that was in store for our nation in the years to come.

The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools. This idea was explosive for the community and, like much of the South, it was fraught with anger and bitterness.

On September 2, 1957 the night prior to what was to be the teens' first day in Central High classrooms, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the state's National Guard to block their entrance. Faubus said it was for the safety of the nine students.

On September 4, just 24 hours after a federal judge ordered the Little Rock Nine to begin attending Central High immediately, a belligerent mob, along with the National Guard, again prevented the teens from entering the school.

Sixteen days later a federal judge ordered the National Guard removed. Once again on September 23, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter the school. Though escorted by Little Rock police into a side door, another angry crowd gathered and tried to rush into Central High. Fearing for the lives of the nine students, school officials sent the teens home. They did, however, manage to attend classes for about three hours.

Finally, 52 years ago today, on September 25, 1957, following a plea from Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene. Personally guarded by soldiers from the National Guard soldiers and the Army's 101st Airborne, the Little Rock Nine began regular class attendance at Central High.

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The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools.

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Some leaders that had a large impact in the civil rights movement were JFK , Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins. JFK gained a ton of support from black voters after calling the rascal issue a "moral crisis" and that it was a big problem that needed to be solved.A Philip Randolph had 5 key civil rights organization and sent letters and articles to the president Roy Wilkins headed the oldest and largest of the civil rights organization the NACCP. The men had large and important roles in the civil rights Movement.

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In the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy received strong, perhaps decisive, support from black voters. Nonetheless, at the outset of his administration, Kennedy deferred civil rights legislation to avoid alienating southern Democrats, whose votes were essential to the passage of his overall domestic program. He relied instead on the use of executive authority to implement a number of progressive measures. Most civil rights leaders, however, urged a more aggressive approach.

Finally, in June 1963, Kennedy committed the full powers of his office to the cause of equal rights. He gave a televised address on the problem of racial discrimination, calling it "a moral crisis" and submitted comprehensive civil rights legislation to Congress.

When civil rights leaders announced plans for a march on Washington that summer, Kennedy initially opposed the idea, fearing a large demonstration in the capital could turn violent and jeopardize the civil rights bill. After a meeting with the leaders, he was persuaded that the March was "in the great tradition" of American protest.

The main leaders of the March were A. Philip Randolph (who had initiated the idea), the heads of the five key civil rights organizations, plus longtime activist Bayard Rustin. Each one played an important part in America's struggle for civil rights. Letters and articles sent to the president and his staff by these seven leaders provide insights into their individual personalities and viewpoints, and into the roles of the different organizations. Telegrams, which were often sent at times of crisis and decision, vividly capture the urgency of the moment.

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Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights

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Letters and telegrams from key figures help tell the story of the civil rights movement during the Kennedy years. Documents included are from James Farmer, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young Jr.

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Brown v Board of Education was a big decision that the supreme court, Ruling segregation was unconstitutional and overruled the "separate but equal" principle. This made it legal for all children to attend school together and get the same education changing lives forever.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Opinion; May 17, 1954; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the “separate but equal” principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. On May 17, 1954, U.S.