Mohandas K. Gandhi liberated India from oppression. Nelson Mandela liberated South Africa from bondage. Who will help liberate the United States from prejudice? Both Gandhi and Mandela saw the need for change and answered the call to do just that. Though they accomplished a great number of things, they endured many trials and tribulations. However, their persecutions did not outweigh their persistence in changing their nation. Because they saw a problem, because they fought for a solution, and because they never gave up, nations were transformed. Fifty years ago, the beginning of a transformation began, not by one great leader, but by nine high school students. Injustices, incrimination and intimidation literally clouded their vision but did not deter them from their course of action. The Little Rock Nine students demonstrated the power of courage and determination by fighting against prejudice and influencing change. The world still needs strong, courageous individuals to stand up and overcome major obstacles today.
In 1954, The Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education case. The decision established the fact that all segregated schools were unconstitutional and were to be desegregated nationwide (bookrags). Though this integration process would not begin until the 1957-1958 school year, this was a big step for African- Americans. In 1957, nine students had been registered to attend Little Rock's Central High School. Initially, seventeen students had signed up to go to CHS; however, threats and violence became so prevalent that eight students decided against integrating CHS. The nine brave students who determined themselves to attend CHS came to be known as the Little Rock Nine: Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, Eli...
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...t it will prevail. The six students hold pleasant expressions that express their comfort and confidence in Marshall and Bates. Expressions of hope and happiness fill their faces. Melba gazes straight ahead as if she is looking ahead towards a hopeful future (Bettmann/CORBIS).
What if people would keep hope alive? What if people were determined to encourage determination? It’s time that the people of this nation uplift and support each other through every challenge faced. Instead, the nation exhibits the “new racism” by selfishly wanting success, “in terms of cultural, social, and economic status,” for their own (Beals, 1994). Businessmen won’t help their fellow businessman because they may be selfishly consumed with their own to care of help anyone else succeed. It’s time that our nation encourage and support determination in order for the nation to be prosperous.
The Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern states the authority to continue persecuting African-Americans for the next sixty years. The first positive aspect of Brown was was the actual integration of white and black students in schools. Unfortunately, this was not carried out to a suitable degree, with many local authorities feeling no obligation to change the status quo. The Supreme Court did issue a second ruling, the so called Brown 2, in 1955. This forwarded the idea that integration should proceed 'with all deliberate speed', but James T. Patterson tells us even by 1964 ‘only an estimated 1.2% of black children ... attended public schools with white children’2. This demonstrates that, although the Supreme Court was working for Civil Rights, it was still unable to force change. Rathbone agrees, saying the Supreme Court ‘did not do enough to ensure compliance’3. However, Patterson goes on to say that ‘the case did have some impact’4. He explains how the ruling, although often ignored, acted ‘relatively quickly in most of the boarder s...
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education that schools needed to integrate and provide equal education for all people and it was unconstitutional for the state to deny certain citizens this opportunity. Although this decision was a landmark case and meant the schools could no longer deny admission to a child based solely on the color of their skin. By 1957, most schools had began to slowly integrate their students, but those in the deep south were still trying to fight the decision. One of the most widely known instances of this happening was at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. It took the school district three years to work out an integration plan. The board members and faculty didn't like the fact that they were going to have to teach a group of students that were looked down upon and seen as "inferior" to white students. However, after much opposition, a plan was finally proposed. The plan called for the integration to happen in three phases. First, during the 1957-1958 school year, the senior high school would be integrated, then after completion at the senior high level, the junior high would be integrated, and the elementary levels would follow in due time. Seventeen students were chosen from hundreds of applicants to be the first black teenagers to begin the integration process. The town went into an uproar. Many acts of violence were committed toward the African-Americans in the city. Racism and segregation seemed to be on the rise. Most black students decid...
The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted on July 9, 1868. That, by no means meant the end of the struggle, it was only the beginning. In Little Rock, Arkansas at the time that Brown v Board of Education passed, black and white relationships were under the Jim Crow laws. All public facilities were segregated and clearly not equal. The Jim Crow Laws were the basis of everyday interactions between black and white people in the south. Melba Beals and the other “Little Rock Nine” braving the walk towards the doors of Central High School and several others landmark events spearhead the demise of these laws.
In 1954, The Brown vs. The Board of Education decision made segregation in schools illegal. New York City’s attempt to integrate the schools was unsuccessful, leaving them more segregated than before.(Podair 30) By 1966, New York City’s black communities were unhappy with the Board of Education’s control of their school districts because of its repeated unsuccessful attempts at integration. Many white groups, like the Parents and Taxpayers Organization, were also frustrated with the current system and called for “The Neighborhood School.” It was their discontent that motivated the community control of the Ocean Hill Brownsville school district. Because of the city’s civil rights movement and their support from many influential people and groups, the district was granted control .(Podair 82)
Before the decision of Brown v. Board of Education, many people accepted school segregation and, in most of the southern states, required segregation. Schools during this time were supposed to uphold the “separate but equal” standard set during the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson; however, most, if not all, of the “black” schools were not comparable to the “white” schools. The resources the “white” schools had available definitely exceed the resources given to “black” schools not only in quantity, but also in quality. Brown v. Board of Education was not the first case that assaulted the public school segregation in the south. The title of the case was shortened from Oliver Brown ET. Al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. The official titled included reference to the other twelve cases that were started in the early 1950’s that came from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The case carried Oliver Brown’s name because he was the only male parent fighting for integration. The case of Brown v. Board o...
On May 17, 1954, Melba's opportunity began to emerge. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In spite of the Supreme Court ruling, Arkansas did not begin to integrate its schools. Eventually, a federal court ordered Central High School in Little Rock to begin admitting black students in 1957 in order to begin the state's process of desegregation. Melba saw this as the perfect chance to make a difference in her hometown. She was one of nine courageous students who decided to try to attend the all-white Central High School. Although all the students knew it would not be easy to be the first black students to integrate, it was a lot more strenuous and difficult than anyone of them had imagined.
Their story started in 1954 when Brown v Board of Education ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. It was the first legal decision that opposed the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine that had become standard since the Plessy v Ferguson case in 1896 which propagated segregation: “'separate' facilities provided for blacks and whites were legally acceptable provided that they were of an 'equal' standard” (Kirk, “Crisis at Central High”). Little Rock, Arkansas, was on...
There was a huge crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas well according to Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. The huge crisis was nine African Americans tried to attend a formerly all white school. These nine African American students were now and forever more known as The Little Rock Nine. The nine student names were Minniejean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Earnest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls. When the African American students tried to enter the school they were stopped by the Arkansas National Guard.
Throughout the 1950s, the NAACP with the help of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall pursued lawsuits against the “separate but equal” policy instated by the Plessy v. Ferguson case. For years, colleges and universities in which there was no African American counterpart avoided court orders to admit black students by hastily setting up “equal” counterparts. But in 1950, the Supreme Court ordered that a black student be admitted to the University of Texas Law School, despite the fact that the state “…had established a “school” for him in the basement” (Foner 953). The court declared that there was no way that this “school” was equal, and demanded that the student be admitted to the law school, sparking an era that called for desegregation. Later, in 1954, a landmark decision came from the Supreme Court as a result of the Brown v. BOE case. In the early 1950s, a man named Oliver Brown went to court to fight that fact that his daughter “…was forced to walk across dangerous railroad tracks each morning rather than being allowed to attend a nearby school restricted to whites” (Foner 953). The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and on May 17, 1954, the court declared that “Segregation in public education…violated the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment” (Foner 954), arguing that the
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States was confronted with the controversial Brown v. Board of Education case that challenged segregation in public education. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case because it called into question the morality and legality of racial segregation in public schools, a long-standing tradition in the Jim Crow South, and threatened to have monumental and everlasting implications for blacks and whites in America. The Brown v. Board of Education case is often noted for initiating racial integration and launching the civil rights movement. In 1951, Oliver L. Brown, his wife Darlene, and eleven other African American parents filed a class-action lawsuit against the Board of Education of Topeka, and sued them for denying their colored children the right to attend segregated white schools. They sought to change the policy of racial segregation in their school district. The plaintiffs collaborated with the leadership of the local Topeka NAACP to overturn segregation in public schools. In the fall of 1951, the parents tried to enroll their children into the neighborhood schools, but they were denied enrollment in the white schools and told to attend segregated black schools. The District Court noted that segregation in public education had a harmful effect on black children, but denied the need to desegregate schools because “the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors” in Topeka, Kansas were all equal. The District Court confirmed the precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson by the Supreme Court in 1896 and upheld state laws permitting, or requiring, segregation in public education.
The United States continued to assimilate and provide greater opportunities for African-Americans, on May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding the case called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was unconstitutional. The opinion of the Court stated that the "segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children”. This historic discission further inflamed the racest in the south, and many ...
Brown v. Board of the Education in 1954 was a landmark decision in the education arena. The decision maintained that schools that separated students by the color of their skin could no longer be maintained. The court saw this as necessary, since in their mind schools for black students would always be inferior. This inferiority would not be caused by lack of resources, although that usually was a contributing factor to the poor quality of the school, physically and performance-wise. As the Supreme Court saw it, s...
Board of Education, Melba Pattillo Beals will always be known as one of the first black students to go to a white school. Her race have hoped of this for years now, and the Little Rock Nine had made it with the support of the general army. People went as far as to hurt them, resulting as far for the government to support nine black students. This is what it takes to charge forward, or to hit a home run like Jackie Robinson.
“Stuff they had in seventh grade and eighth grades, we were just getting as junior and seniors in black school” Teachers would either not have the materials to be able to teach or intentionally teach slow so the African American kids would have a more difficult time in life. At this time in the south schools were kept separate. Schools up north had already integrated prior because racism was not as much a problem as it was in the south. Little Rock was one of the first schools in Alabama to integrate black and whites into the same school. Little Rock admitted nine African American students giving it the name “The Little Rock Nine”. After the federal law was passed by the supreme court in 1964 allowing black students to go to the school of their choice, nothing happened for three long years. The governor of Alabama (Orval Faubus) employed the national guard to blockade the school only admitted white students. This went on until President Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne Division. The national guard backed off and the nine students would attend school. In the beginning it was smooth sailing. People for the most part would not pick on the blacks. This was only because an armed guard would accompany them to and from classes. As time went on there would be less and less security. People would begin to pick on the kid. Most of the time it was
...t there was no real haste to desegregate schools, in Brown II the Supreme Court declared that desegregation should occur ‘with all deliberate speed’, but the events at Little Rock in 1957 proved that the whites were still persisting in segregation.