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Civil Rights Movement In Schools

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American public schools and colleges were often at the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but the focus on civil rights in schools began to fade away in the late 1960s as America’s Women’s Rights and Gay Rights Movements, as well as the war in Vietnam, became the hot-button issues of the day. As the 70s carried on, Americans saw the Civil Rights Movement as a moral victory for all- but the Movement was far from over as school students, teachers, and parents were continuing the push to make-up the gap and integrate all races. The development of public schooling in America from 1954 to 1980, as it pertains to racial integration, is important to understand, and can be divided into three …show more content…

Arthur Garrity Jr., through the desegregation of public schools in Chicago This paper will give attention and definition to the causes and effects of the Civil Rights Movement in America’s schools. It will also detail the process of school desegregation, how the definition of ‘integration’ changes over time, and why. 1954-1963 (The Isolation Years) Nine years after the end of World War II, America continues to enjoy economic prosperity and social harmony. In major cities such as Topeka, Kansas, there is a defined line between the races- separated by fountains, diners, buses, and classrooms. America was existing as two different societies: ‘White Society,’ which was a developed, mature culture with a hold on government and almost every desirable job in the nation; ‘Black Society,’ an impoverished, disenfranchised group of people who were kept away from government jobs. After the tumultuous 1940s, the country had somewhat abandoned Isolationism on a foreign scale, but seemed to embrace it more than ever domestically. While most white people felt the separation was a normal, practical way of life, blacks, asians, and hispanics began to push for their right to not be isolated any …show more content…

Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.(1) On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled on the case: by unanimous decision, which was written and read by Justice Earl Warren: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group...Any language in contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.(2) This decision made school segregation illegal, and would begin the ‘domino effect’ of affirmative action for racial equality in America. Isolation was no longer the way of life in America, especially in its schools, unless its white citizens could do anything about

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In the 1950’s through the 1960’s if one was an African-American one would have to walk three to four miles in the scorching heat to go to their all black school. Jim Crow laws were designed to segregate African-Americans and whites. Before, May 17.1954, the court would use the phrase “separate but equal” to justify excluding blacks from white facilities and services. In one Supreme Court case called Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, the Chief Justice and the other eight Associate Justices on the Supreme Court ruled that all U.S. schools had to integrate. Some schools integrated while other schools did not.

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