Rights and Protest: US Civil Rights Movement - Nature of Discrimination

Two main aspects of discrimination

Two main aspects of discrimination

1. Segregation = separation

2. Disenfranchisement

Concept of “Separate but Equal”

• White facilities are higher quality than black facilities -→ supposedly equal in their separation

• Treating African Americans as inferior, second class citizens

Disenfranchisement in Everything

• You can do things but just not engage with them as much (ok)

• In Jim Crow US, the idea of being able to ‘access everything’ is white-centric

  • Only the white people have freedom and full accessibility

  • Basically legally enforced discrimination against African Americans

What was segregated during pre-Brown vs. Board?

• Attendance of public schools

• Use of facilities → restaurants, theatres, hotels, cinemas, public baths etc.

• Use of public transport

• Banning of interracial marriages between whites and African Americans

Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)

• Made Jim Crow Laws constitutional -→ operations varied from state to state

• Introduced the concept of separate but equal -→ was super easy to get around with black schools < white schools

• Was in effect for a long time, so hard to reverse

Inequality of Funding in Schools

• x2-5 more per pupil spending in white schools

• Black school teachers paid less

• Worse facilities

• Shorter school year

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka

• Combination of multiple cases about school segregation

• Defence case said that “school segregation prepares them for the real world”

• Decided that segregation was detrimental to coloured children and gave them less learning motivation

• Desegregation was considered to be more cost-inhibitive and more practical than maintaining separate facilities

• Ordered desegregation but no time limit

Problems and Challenges of Brown vs. Board

• In some states, burden of desegregation was on individual students

• eg. in Florida, need to make individual formal request to school board and give sufficient advance notice

• Eisenhower: “no exact commencement or completion date should be required” -→ he had to use federal power to force states to comply

• Only a partial victory

Blossom Plan

• Created by the Little Rock school board to prevent Little Rock Nine from attending

• Gradualist

• School superintendent chooses which black students get to go

• Complying with Brown on a minimal level

NAACP Response to the Blossom Plan

• Not fast enough, want to push for immediate integration

• Federal court rules Blossom Plan meets requirements

• Central High (the school in question) was already mostly white -→ rich affluent area

Opposition to Little Rock Nine

• Little Rock school board

• Governor Orval Faubus -→ may have manufactured the crisis at Little Rock, used national guard to keep them out from the school

• Capital Citizens Council: white adults who did rallies and speeches

Little Rock Nine Case Study

• 9 students allowed to attend Central High

• Segregationists requested help from Faubus by citing there was violence

• National Guard brought in -→ demonstration of state vs. federal authorioty, Eisenhower couldn’t directly interfere

• Little Rock Mayor asked Eisenhower to send troops in -→ 101st Airborne Division enforce integration and escort the 9 students to school