Brown vs Board

Henry Shehan  

Brown v Boarding Education 

After the Supreme Court ruling legalized the segregation of railroad cars. Plessy's case was used to justify segregation, and validate the Jim Crow practices. Everything in society is now a reasonable measure to exclude black citizens from all society, throughout the South and even some in the northern states as well. The "separate but equal" doctrine allowed the legal segregation of African Americans in all ways imaginable by their white lawmakers and it is now legally acceptable through the interpretation of the Constitution thanks to the Supreme Court's decision. 

The Court’s decision stated that separate schools are considered unequal, and unonstitutional, but 14 pages did not say any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools. In the Southern States where racial segregation was deeply entrenched, the reaction to Brown among most white people were stubborn. Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as the “Massive Resistance” which was created by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, in order to halt attempts to force them to desegregate their school systems. 

http://projects.leadr.msu.edu/makingmodernus/exhibits/show/plessy-v--ferguson-1896/the-aftermath-of-the-plessy-v- 

    Desegregation of schools can lead to massive disorder, being that black children are more susceptible to bullying and this can lead to violence and insecurity 

Also being that Black children are still living in the effects of slavery, it would take some time beofre they were able to compete with white children in the classroom. Black children will also feel very inferior to white students which can lead to a very bad self esteem. 

The constitution did NOT require black students and white students to attend the same school

Social separation of black and whites was a regional custom, that being said states should be left free to regulate their own social affairs. 

Whites were so far ahead on education from blacks, that blacks needed more time to catch up to white students. Putting white students in the same classrooms as black students meant two things: White students would be held back from learning further, and black students would not understand the concepts that white students were learning due to how far behind they were. Keep in mind, many blacks during this time still didn’t know how to read properly or write, so they needed special education to learn this. Majority of whites already knew how to do these things. 

Historically, whites were, and always had been, more ahead and superior in their education. It was going to take years, decades even, for blacks to catch up. For example, the first black public high school was Paul Laurence Dunbar High, created in 1870. The first African American student to graduate college was in 1890, from Bowdoin College.  The first public school in America was known as the Boston Latin School, built in 1635. This goes to show how far ahead whites were on their education. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/apr23/first-public-school-america/#:~:text=Apr%2023%2C%201635%20CE%3A%20First%20Public%20School%20in%20America,-6%20%2D%2012%2B&text=On%20April%2023%2C%201635%2C%20the,Philemon%20Pormont%2C%20a%20Puritan%20settler.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/22/206622688/the-legacy-of-dunbar-high-school#:~:text=The%20nation's%20first%20black%20public,has%20fallen%20on%20hard%20times.

https://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Amerstud/blackhistoryatkenyon/Individual%20Pages/History%20of%20Black%20Education.htm#:~:text=The%20first%20Black%20American%20student,signifi cant%20numbers%20until%20the%201960s.