Slowly Turning Back the Hands of Time “We conclude unanimously that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (qtd. in Irons 163). Many African-Americans waited to hear this quote from Chief Justice Earl Warren after many years of fighting for better educational opportunities by means of school desegregation. African-Americans went through much anguish before the Brown v. Board of Education trial even took place, especially in the Deep South. Little did they know that what looked like the beginning of the end was just another battle in what seemed like an endless war. Brown v. Board of Education was an important battle won during the Civil Rights Movement; however, it did have a major drawback simply because no deadline existed, an issue that author James Baldwin grasped from the moment the decision was made. The South took full advantage of this major flaw and continued to keep its segregated schools with no intention of ever integrating. In order to understand the magnitude of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, one must understand the hardships that African-Americans had to endure. For example, the case of Davis Knight “illuminate[d] racially mixed communities [,] delineate[d] the legal and social responses to attempts at racial desegregation and black enfranchisement during the era of the New Deal and World War II” in 1948 (Bynum 248). Davis Knight was a 23 year old man from Mississippi who appeared to be a “white,” but indeed was a “black man, who later married a white woman by the name of Junie Lee Spradley” (247). The case was presented to the Jones County Circuit Court where Knigh... ... middle of paper ... ...ssays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 209-214. ---. “Take Me to the Water.” 1960. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 353-403. Bynum, Victoria E. “”White Negroes” in Segregated Mississipi: Miscegenation, Racial Identity, and the Law.” The Journal of Southern History 64.2 (1998) 247-276. Harlan, Louis R. “The Southern Education Board and the Race Issue in the Public.” The Journal of Southern History 23.2 (1957): 189-202. Hope II, John. “Trends in Pattern of Race Relations in the South Since May 17, 1954.” Phylon 17.2 (1956): 103-118. Irons, Peter. Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. New York: Viking Penguin, 2002. Reid, Herbert O. “The Supreme Court Decision and Interpretation.” The Journal of Negro Education 25.2 (1956): 109-117.
C. Vann Woodward’s most famous work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, was written in 1955. It chronicles the birth, formation, and end of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states. Often, the Jim Crow laws are portrayed as having been instituted directly after the Civil War’s end, and having been solely a Southern brainchild. However, as Woodward, a native of Arkansas points out, the segregationist Jim Crow laws and policies were not fully a part of the culture until almost 1900. Because of the years of lag between the Civil War/Reconstruction eras and the integration and popularity of the Jim Crow laws, Woodward advances that these policies were not a normal reaction to the loss of the war by Southern whites, but a result of other impetuses central to the time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow immediately became an influential work both in the academic and real worlds because of the dramatic events that coincided with the book’s publication and subsequent revisions. It was inspired from a series of lectures that Woodward delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954 on the Jim Crow policies that the South had reverted to in order to deal with the dynamics of its Negro population. The original publication debuted in 1955, just prior to the explosive events that would occur as part of the civil rights movement climax. Because of these developments in less than a decade, the book’s topic and audience had drastically changed in regard to the times surrounding it. Woodward, realizing the fluidity of history in context with the age, printed a second edition of the book in 1966 to “take advantage of the new perspective the additional years provide” and “to add a brief account of the main developments in ...
The original edition of The Strange Career of Jim Crow had as its thesis that segregation and Jim Crow Laws were a relative late comer in race relations in the South only dating to the late 1880s and early 1890s. Also part of that thesis is that race relations in the South were not static, that a great deal of change has occurred in the dynamics of race relations. Woodward presents a clear argument that segregation in the South did not really start forming until the 1890s. One of the key components of his argument is the close contact of the races during slavery and the Reconstruction period. During slavery the two races while not living harmoniously with each other did have constant contact with each other in the South. This c...
Although some of Woodward’s peripheral ideas may have been amended in varying capacities his central and driving theme, often referred to as the “Woodward Thesis,” still remains intact. This thesis states that racial segregation (also known as Jim Crow) in the South in the rigid and universal form that it had taken by 1954 did not begin right after the end of the Civil War, but instead towards the end of the century, and that before Jim Crow appeared there was a distinct period of experimentation in race relations in the South. Woodward’s seminal his...
---. “Take Me to the Water.” 1972. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 353-403.
C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow looks into the emergence of the Jim Crow laws beginning with the Reconstruction era and following through the Civil Rights Movement. Woodward contends that Jim Crow laws were not a part of the Reconstruction or the following years, and that most Jim Crow laws were in place in the North at that particular time. In the South, immediately after the end of slavery, most white southerners, especially the upper classes, were used to the presence and proximity of African Americans. House slaves were often treated well, almost like part of the family, or a favored pet, and many upper-class southern children were raised with the help of a ‘mammy’ or black nursery- maid. The races often mixed in the demi- monde, and the cohabitation of white men and black women were far from uncommon, and some areas even had spe...
“Simple Justice” was written by Richard Kluger and reviews the history of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation, and African America’s century-long struggle for equality under law. It began with the inequities of slavery to freedom bells to the forcing of integration in schools and the roots of laws with affect on African Americans. This story reveals the hate caused the disparagement of African Americans in America over three hundred years. I learned how African Americans were ultimately acknowledged by their simple justice. The American version of the holocaust was presented in the story. In 1954 the different between how segregation and slavery were not in fashion when compared with dishonesty of how educating African American are separate from Caucasian was justified by the various branches of government.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.
The case of brown v. board of education was one of the biggest turning points for African Americans to becoming accepted into white society at the time. Brown vs. Board of education to this day remains one of, if not the most important cases that African Americans have brought to the surface for the better of the United States. Brown v. Board of Education was not simply about children and education (Silent Covenants pg 11); it was about being equal in a society that claims African Americans were treated equal, when in fact they were definitely not. This case was the starting point for many Americans to realize that separate but equal did not work. The separate but equal label did not make sense either, the circumstances were clearly not separate but equal. Brown v. Board of Education brought this out, this case was the reason that blacks and whites no longer have separate restrooms and water fountains, this was the case that truly destroyed the saying separate but equal, Brown vs. Board of education truly made everyone equal.
John A. Kirk, History Toady volume 52 issue 2, The Long Road to Equality for African-Americans
Patterson, James. “Brown v Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History).” Oxford University Press., 2001.
Board of Education in the states occurred of different times. In the border states, desegregated of schools took place easily. Although most whites in the border states opposed desegregating schools, they did not resent it intensely. In these states politicians recognized Brown’s decision, as well as news-papers, religious organization, labor unions, and teachers’ associations. Blacks had political power, money to bring desegregation lawsuits, and branches of the NAACP were strong. In these states Brown supplies public official with the necessary push to do what they would not have done regularly, but not resist
In 1954 through Brown V. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decided that forced segregation denied African Americans equal protection under the law as stated in the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown mandated equal access and opportunity. This decision created a wave of effects throughout the African American community. Unequal outcomes were fueled by low expectation and cultural incompatibilities along with the drainage of resources such as the removal of the best teachers through reassignment to desegregated schools or through firing (Green et al., 2005). Black students were also bused to predominately White schools disproportionately, causing many African American schools to close (Morris, 1999). Morris further state...
It was adopted in 1868, and had only given certain rights to African Americans, so African American families lead the fight for equality. Brown v. Board of Education stated that public schools must integrate, in which created an enormous controversy throughout the nation. .May 17, 1954 was an important milestone in American history, the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education unanimously outlawed racial segregation in public schools. During the trial, many experts testified the negative effects the discrimination segregation had on learning and furthering one 's’ education. I believe so as well, it makes one think that there is no hope for they themselves to be successful. To some Americans it would not matter if your intelligence outshone anyone, but because of stereotypes white Americans observed as a young child one was still misjudged. Due to the fact that white Americans grew up to believe that African Americans were filthy and uneducated human beings who do not belong in the high rank of society, it was difficult for many white Americans to accept the desegregation in public
Many challenges had to be faced during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s; one of those challenges being the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which tested the ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson back in the year 1896 proclaiming segregation to be constitutional as long as it was “separate but equal”. In this particular case, Thurgood Marshall claimed that forcing African Americans to used separate education facilities was violating the 14th Amendment which gave the right of equality to all citizens under the law of the United States.