Ever feel like something or someone is unfair to you? Well guess how African Americans felt almost 130 years ago. Whites thought that they were being “equal” to African Americans, but if you look at the past, you can clearly see many differences that made African Americans far from equality to whites, this was segregation. Segregation is wrong because white people seem to be favored over blacks, are also treated poorly from whites, and deserve more than what has been given to them.
To begin with, the whites seemed to violate the 14th Amendment which ensured equal protection under the law for all citizens. Going back to about 1892, Homer Plessy’s case made it through the Louisiana court system, but of course Louisiana tried to get around it,
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After the Supreme Court gave the okay on segregation, Jim Crow laws spread throughout the United States, some places worse than others and separated them from equality even more. Due to the Jim Crow laws blacks were more isolated than ever, “Public schools for black children received less funding, less maintenance, and less teacher training...colored bathrooms were poorly constructed and rarely cleaned”(Source 1, par. 8). Since the new laws came to light, blacks have been treated as if alien. Pro-segrationers also played a major part in this as well, which is most likely why there was poor construction, supplies, and just everything in general for blacks. During September of 1957, nine black students were to attend an all-white school, which was agreed to by the school board years before. With Superintendent Virgil Blossom proposing the plan in the first place the day had finally came, “The School Board voted unanimously in favor of this plan, but when the 1957 school year began, the community still raged over integration”(Source 2, par.2). In the hope that whites would be open to the idea of some new colored students, they treated them with disrespect and raged constantly. Many segregationists had threatened the students and to hold protest against them, also by physically blocking the students from entering inside the high school. For the next few months, the students were …show more content…
People were happier than others of course and the whites liked it like that. They had tried to make the blacks outcast because of color and when the state of Louisiana was taken to court by Homer Plessy, they argued that conditions were equal. As said before, they continued to say that the law did not apply to them and that it was okay, “The 14th Amendment only applied to nationwide laws”(Source 1, par. 2). Although some things that the blacks had were of the same quality of what whites had, that wasn’t always the case. Buildings were poorly built, schools got second-handed stuff, stuff was rarely ever as clean as what whites had. This may be “equal” to whites, but is this really equality? No it isn’t, and African Americans clearly do not deserve these types of conditions to be in at all times. Note that they said “separate, but equal” this is only pushing them away, separating them from society and no one truly deserves
The bright spot of this dark time would have been the fact that many black people were able to live well. The former slaves enjoyed their rights as citizens of the united states. Some moved north while many stayed in the south. Many were able to go and represent their states in Washington D.C.
On May 17, 1954 the case of Brown v. Board of Education, “declared that segregation in schools of black and white students would no longer be constitutional.” After this law was passed, in 1957 nine African American students enrolled in a predominantly white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When word got out that, nine students, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed were attending Little Rock Central High School, the governor of Arkansas sent the Arkansas National Guard to the school. Many of the students that already attended the school also barricaded the doors so they would not enter the school. The students started “throwing stones, spat on them, shouted and yelled death threats.”
Equality is defined as the state of being equal. That’s exactly why the students in Adkin High School in 1951 decided to walkout. The Adkin High School students demanded equality until they got it. These students wanted what local white high schools had. Local white high schools had books with no pages ripped out, new sports equipment, a large gym, and more.
On May 17, 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case, who was argued by NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) attorney Thurgood Marshall occurred. The reason this case took place is because Oliver Brown believed that segregation in public schools was a mistaken act of the school system. The Supreme Court Case was challenging, but what happened before they got to Washington D.C is even more overwhelming. Oliver Brown, born on August 19, 1918 is the father of Linda Brown who was discriminated and rejected a place in Sumner Elementary School which was a near white public school. Other parents along with Oliver tried to apply to put their children in a white school closer to their homes, but the principal
As current time and social status are being challenged and pushed, the Jim Crow Laws were implemented. These state and local laws were just legislated this year, 1877. New implemented laws mandate segregation in all public facilities, with a “separate but equal” status for African Americans. This may lead to treatment and accommodations that are inferior to those provided to white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages.
Next, equality does not always actually mean equality. What that means is that even when we say equality, that does not always mean that things are fair and equal. Think Jim Crow laws, separate but equal, laws that were, at one time, supported by the U.S. government which legalized segregation on the condition that so long as the facilities such as medical care, housing accommodations, education, employment, services, and transportation provided to each race were equal, local governments could legally segregate them; it also provided "equal protection" under the law to all citizens. As most people know or will find, Jim Crow laws did not actually work this way, in that the facilities that were offered were anything but equal, with people of color, especially black people, receiving services that were completely inadequate and left them with little opportunity of upward mobility and facilities that hardly worked. Despite being promised the equality of their white peers, “blacks were largely denied their rightful share of political power and economic opportunity” (Bloom
Segregation was allowed in the United States of America as the 14th amendment abolished slavery, but left gaps on the topic of fair segregation on all levels.
Their schools and buildings were severely underfunded and not properly maintained. Blacks could not socialize with white people in public or they risked being arrested. “A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it
Segregation is when you set a group of people way from another group. Recently many public place have been enforcing segregation this makes many people mad. But segregation isn't bad because it prevents violence among the races in schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, and parks by keeping them way from the other. Also segregation isn't unconstitutional as stated by the supreme court in the Plessy v. Ferguson case on May 18, 1896. The facilities just have to be "separate but equal" for this doesn't go against the 13th or 14th amendment.
The segregation of schools based on a students skin color was in place until 1954. On May 17th of that year, during the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, it was declared that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. However, before this, the segregation of schools was a common practice throughout the country. In the 1950s there were many differences in the way that black public schools and white public schools were treated with very few similarities. The differences between the black and white schools encouraged racism which made the amount of discrimination against blacks even greater.
The ruling thus lent high judicial support to racial and ethnic discrimination and led to wider spread of the segregation between Whites and Blacks in the Southern United States. The great oppressive consequence from this was discrimination against African American minority from the socio-political opportunity to share the same facilities with the mainstream Whites, which in most of the cases the separate facilities for African Americans were inferior to those for Whites in actuality. The doctrine of “separate but equal” hence encourages two-tiered pluralism in U.S. as it privileged the non-Hispanic Whites over other racial and ethnic minority
Lastly, “the defenders of segregation claimed that African-American students were living with the effects of slavery, and were not able to compete with the white children.” (Benoit, 10) The arguments against segregation
In 1896 and 1951 they were continually trying to abolish segregation, but it was not outlawed. Segregation was finally slowing down and diminishing in 1954, though it took some schools 10 years to integrate. Once segregation was outlawed, that still did not contribute to anything. 75% of schools were still segregated, and half of the black population was still financially below the line of poverty. It truly is terrible how it took the human race almost a whole century to actually integrate and accept people for who they are, even though skin colour is a really shallow reason for
According to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) “Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.” These policies created racial segregation between illegal immigrants by promoting that they should not be able to have access to everything a citizen can. Moreover, these policies began to dehumanize this population by taking away basic human rights and opportunities. This brought about the ideal that race and perspectives are not natural more socially constructed by the communities and governments (Lopez, 2000). These individuals already had many challenges or intersects that they needed to overcome by these policies it just added more.
The new laws that the government had set in place made lives for black people very difficult at the time. When this law was put in place, the differences between blacks and whites were very clear. Whites got preferential treatment, just for being white whereas blacks had to struggle with daily