The viewer is left to ponder additional pertinent questions: will these three African American students be allowed to attend school? Will they be afforded the same opportunities so freely provided to white children?
Why have we as a society been unable to find a tangible end to race-related disparities? More importantly, what can I do to help end systemic racism? Signature Events. Art of the Pandemic. Featured Event. The NAACP chapter in Topeka recruited 13 black parents to attempt to enroll their children in the school closest to their homes, even if that school was designated for white children only.
One of these parents was Oliver L. Brown, the named plaintiff in the case. When Linda and the other 19 children were refused enrollment based on their race, the 13 parents became the plaintiffs in the case that would come to be known as Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka. Monroe Elementary, where Linda Brown attended, was designated a U. Visit the rehabilitated school and civil rights interpretive center on your visit to Topeka. Sumner Elementary is currently vacant, but plans are in place to turn it into a civil rights memorial and community center. Board of Education , the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the decision and move forward with integrating its schools.
Superintendent Virgil Blossom submitted a plan of gradual integration to be implemented in September of the school year. Arkansas Gov. President Dwight D. Eisenhower stepped in and sent federal troops to aid the integration process and protect the nine students upon their entry to the school.
By the end of September, all nine students had been admitted to Little Rock Central High and were protected by the st Airborne Division. During the school year, the Little Rock Nine endured verbal, emotional and physical abuse from white students. Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into her eyes, and Minnijean Brown was verbally confronted and abused. Although Gov. Faubus continued to fight against desegregation, the Little Rock Nine became symbols of hope in the struggle for integration.
The building also includes a civil rights museum in partnership with the National Park Service, so you dive even deeper into the story of the Little Rock Nine. It is not open to the public, but private tours are available by reservation. As late as , the University of Mississippi in Oxford was still segregated and only admitting white students. James Meredith, a black man, applied for admission to the University of Mississippi, believing it was within his civil rights to attend a public, state-funded university.
District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, alleging that he was denied admission because of his race. The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Meredith did have the right to be admitted to the university, and the United States Supreme Court upheld the appeals court ruling.
On September 13, , when the District Court entered an injunction directing university officials to register Meredith, the segregationist state legislature quickly looked for loopholes to prevent his registration. The federal government fought back against these state legislature decrees, and on September 28, , the Court of Appeals found Mississippi Gov.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had U. Once the police presence was removed on the evening of September 29, a violent riot broke out on campus.
President Kennedy sent the Mississippi National Guard and federal troops to the university to help gain control, but before the violence ended, two people had been fatally shot and many others were injured, including federal marshals who were hit with rocks, bricks and gunfire.
African Americans turned to the courts to help protect their constitutional rights. But the courts challenged earlier civil rights legislation and handed down a series of decisions that permitted states to segregate people of color.
In the pivotal case of Plessy v. Ferguson in , the U. Justice Brown maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to enforce social equality or to abolish distinctions based on race. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. The lone dissenter in this case, Justice John Marshall Harlan, strongly criticized the opinion of the Court. Although he had been a slaveholder in Kentucky before and during the Civil War, Harlan subsequently developed an unyielding commitment to the equal rights of blacks and whites, which were guaranteed by the Constitution.
Harlan said it is the responsibility of the political branches of government to determine whether a public policy is reasonable. Justice Harlan presciently declared that the Plessy decision would become a precedent in support of racial segregation. Consequently, the precedent set by Plessy bolstered pervasive state-ordered racial segregation throughout the South and in some other parts of the country as well. It seems incredible to us today to recall that state laws required black persons to use separate toilets, water fountains, streetcars, and waiting rooms.
They had to attend separate schools and were segregated from whites in prisons, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, parks, theaters, cemeteries, and other public facilities. Legal challenges to racial segregation were defeated in the courts, where the Plessy precedent prevailed until it was overturned unanimously by the U. Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Homer Plessy, although he courageously resisted an unjust law, failed to achieve justice in his own time.
And John Marshall Harlan, strong and brave in his sharp dissent against a popular Supreme Court opinion, endured public contempt and repudiation. In the long term, however, they inspired others to fulfill their common quest for equal justice under the Constitution; and today Plessy and Harlan, not their adversaries, have an honored place in our history.
This former slaveholder from Kentucky fervently defended the constitutional rights of black Americans, many of whom had once been slaves. A product of his times, Harlan harbored racially biased opinions, as certain sentences in this dissenting opinion indicate.
But his commitment to constitutional principles and values, the very idea of equal rights under the law, superseded any reservations he may have held about the capabilities or character of nonwhite Americans.
Most of all, he rejected the very idea of a color-conscious interpretation of the U. Rather, he believed that racial identity was not relevant to constitutional guarantees of civil rights and liberties. Harlan also was well aware that the majority of Americans in his time disagreed with him on issues of race relations, but he looked beyond the responses of his contemporaries.
His dissent was an appeal to Americans of the future, who might be sufficiently inspired and instructed by his words to correct the mistakes of the past and achieve durable justice in the relationships of black and white Americans. 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.
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