Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education

The American civil rights movement is best known for ending segregation laws that separated white people and black people (and other minorities) in public places. Many people assume the movement began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its roots actually go further back to the 1930s and the Great Depression.

Though the Civil War (1861–65) ended the institution of slavery in the United States, it failed to end racism. Segregationist legislation, known as Jim Crow laws, became common in the South following post–Civil War Reconstruction in the 1870s. "Jim Crow" was a derogatory term for black people adopted from a minstrel show caricature of a dimwitted slave. African Americans found themselves treated as second-class citizens, particularly in the post-Reconstruction South. They were subject to state and local Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation of schools, public transportation, parks, cemeteries, restaurants, and public restrooms. Poll taxes and literacy tests were among the legal requirements used to keep them from voting. Racist employment practices ensured African Americans were hired only for the most menial tasks, despite their education level or qualifications for a better job.

The job market became even worse for African Americans during the Great Depression (1929–38). Black people were the first to be laid off when a business or farm hit tough times. Unemployed African Americans received little, if any, public assistance, and President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal plan to create jobs and boost the economy was biased in favor of white people. In truth, most of Roosevelt's programs discriminated against black people, for example by offering white people the first chance at jobs and lowering pay rates for black people. Such inequities were deemed necessary by President Roosevelt. In order to get congressional approval for his New Deal legislation, he needed the support of southern Democrats and could not afford to antagonize them by promoting equality.

As early as 1929, African American leaders began fighting back. The St. Louis Urban League led a national boycott of chain stores that catered primarily to black customers but hired only white people to work there. In 1930 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) started an urgent campaign speaking out against lynching, the savage hanging of black people without a legal trial or authority. Their goal was to secure federal anti-lynching legislation. Their efforts failed to gain support from President Roosevelt, who feared to fight southern Democrats over the race issue. The NAACP also sought to influence American politics and campaigned to prevent the election of racist political nominees.

In 1896 the United States Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson determined that race-based segregation laws for public facilities were legal as long as white people and black people were provided facilities of equal quality. For example, the quality of black schools would need to equal that of white schools, or train cars reserved for black passengers would not be inferior to those reserved for white passengers. Despite the ruling, "separate but equal" facilities for African Americans did not exist. This was particularly true in the public school system, where there were enormous disparities in the quality of the facilities, school supplies, and education provided for white and black students.

This disparity was challenged in the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. This case brought together four separate lawsuits filed by the NAACP representing African American elementary school students. The students had been barred from attending all-white schools in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The NAACP and attorney Thurgood Marshall (who would be the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court) argued racial segregation in public schools was in violation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment. In addition to citizenship, this amendment, ratified in 1868, granted equal civil and legal rights to African Americans.

The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. Chief Justice Earl Warren, a President Eisenhower appointee, wrote the court's decision. He argued that even if the tangible, or physical, aspects of a black school mirrored those of a white school, black students would still feel inferior because their skin color dictated they attend a different school. On the other hand, integrating public schools and having black children learning alongside white children would provide equal levels of opportunity and motivation to succeed. As Warren wrote, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Brown v. Board of Education is among the Supreme Court's most important rulings. Across the country, elementary schools, high schools, and even colleges and universities were compelled to open their doors, however unwilling they were, to students of all races. The process was slow and resistance fierce in some communities. There were legal attempts to delay or prevent desegregation. Violence erupted in some areas as mobs of white pro-segregationists took to the streets in protest or patrolled them armed and ready to stop black children from registering for school. One notable incident took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Nine students known as the "Little Rock Nine" had to be escorted into the high school by federal troops deployed by President Eisenhower. Rather than weakening the growing civil rights movement, this resistance strengthened the determination of its leaders and participants.

The impact of the court's decision extended beyond the American education system. Though the ruling legally applied only to public schools, it demonstrated that the premise of "separate but equal" was unjust because of the mental and emotional effects on victims of racial discrimination. By extension, enforced use of separate water fountains or bathrooms could be just as damaging as forced attendance at separate schools. This meant such laws should be abandoned, too. Moreover, the support of the highest court in the nation emboldened African American leaders to push for reform in other areas of American life.