Brown v Board of Education of Topeka: Segregation in American Schools in the United States

Brown v Board of Education of Topeka: Segregation in American Schools

Racial segregation in Southern public schools dates to the 1860s. Before the American Civil War began in 1861, a number of northern states also allowed or required segregated schools. However, throughout the 19th century more than 95 percent of all blacks lived in the South, so segregation there affected an overwhelming majority of America’s black population. After the Civil War ended in 1865, and especially after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the South continued to segregate its schools and other facilities. In the influential case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Supreme Court upheld the practice of segregation as long as the separate facilities were “equal.” By 1900, the South was an entirely segregated society.

In 1909 blacks and whites, led by W. E. B. Du Bois and Arthur and Joel Spingarn, formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization dedicated to fighting for racial equality and ending segregation. The NAACP challenged segregation through its Legal Defense and Education Fund. From 1936 to 1950 the organization won a number of cases leading to the desegregation of law schools and other professional schools at segregated universities in Mississippi, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Texas. The NAACP also had some success in forcing states to equalize public school funding and to pay teachers in black schools at the same rate as those in white schools. But throughout the South, public education for blacks remained terribly inadequate. (1)

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