Brown V Board Of Education Essay

Brown v. Board of Education was the most influential and important case of the twentieth century in the way it shaped American society by ending de jure segregation in schools. The case promised to end segregation schools with “deliberate speed” and to give African Americans public school students equal opportunity. Yet today, even Supreme Court Justices recognize “it remains the current reality that many minority public school students encounter remarkably inadequate an unequal educational opportunities”. African American students continue to lack equal access to a high quality education and continue to lag far behind their white peers in reading and math proficiency, high school graduation rates, and college completion. Indeed. Many commentators

Ferguson decision, segregation became even more entrenched through a battery of Southern laws and social customs known as “Jim Crow.” Schools, theaters, restaurants, and transportation cars were segregated. Poll taxes, literacy requirements, and grandfather clauses not only prevented blacks from voting, but also made them ineligible to serve on jury pools or run for office. Two years later, the court seemed to seal the fate of black Americans when it upheld a Mississippi law designed to keep black men from casting their vote. Southern states began to limit voting rights to those who owned property, could read well, to those with “good characters,” or to those who paid poll taxes. Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. In Florida, the books couldn’t even be stored together. Though seemingly structured and complete, Jim Crow laws did not account for all of the discrimination blacks suffered during this time. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which revived in 1915, used violence to keep blacks “in their place.” Unwritten rules prevented blacks from having jobs considered “white” in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles. Jim Crow remained unchallenged until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of