School desegregation, United States, was a series of measures designed to end the separation of racial groups in American public schools. Beginning in the 1950’s, U.S. courts ruled that laws mandating racial segregation—that is, separating people based on race—in public schools and other facilities were illegal. Legislators passed laws ensuring that minority students could attend the same educational facilities as white students. Such laws provoked angry protests among many white people. Desegregation failed to achieve the lofty ideal of mutual acceptance among different racial groups. Ultimately, however, it helped ensure more equitable access to education among students of all backgrounds.
Background.
Africans and their descendants were enslaved in what is now the United States for more than 200 years before slavery was abolished in the months following the American Civil War (1861-1865). Despite the passage of measures extending civil rights to former slaves, many state governments established laws enforcing segregation of the races in public facilities. The Supreme Court of the United States strengthened segregation in its decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896. In that case, the court supported the constitutionality of a Louisiana law requiring separate but equal facilities for white and Black passengers in railroad cars. For more than 50 years, many states used the “separate but equal” rule to segregate African Americans in public schools and in transportation, recreation, sleeping, and eating facilities. In practice, facilities for Black people were nearly always inferior to those for white people. Schools for African American students were almost always more poorly funded than nearby schools designated for white students. Black students often attended school in older buildings with overcrowded classrooms. Such schools had less-qualified teachers, and the students used worn, dated books and school equipment.
Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1951, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit on behalf of several African American families in Topeka, Kansas. Around the same time, the NAACP also filed suits regarding similar situations in a number of other communities across the United States. In each case, African American parents had been denied the right to enroll their children in schools designated for white children, even if the schools were closer to their homes. In 1954, the Supreme Court heard the Brown case together with four other cases that dealt with these issues. Collectively, the cases are known as Brown v. Board of Education. The court held that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” It also held that segregated schools thus violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids the states to deny any citizen the rights granted by federal law. The decision led to the end of laws in 21 states that allowed racial segregation in public schools. In 1955, the court ordered that public school desegregation be carried out “with all deliberate speed.”
Dismantling segregation.
Many state and local authorities, primarily but not entirely in the Southern States, reacted with defiance to the court’s decision. In 1957, school desegregation made national headlines when nine Black students attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Arkansas National Guardsmen, on the orders of the state’s governor, Orval E. Faubus, blocked the frightened students from entering the school. A few weeks later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower put the Arkansas guardsmen under federal control and sent the U.S. Army to enforce the court-ordered integration of Central High. The following day, Army troops escorted the students into the school. See Little Rock Nine.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination by any program that receives money from the federal government. In the 1970’s, courts in the United States ordered many cities—including those in Northern States—to begin busing students between neighborhoods to integrate public schools. Many white people throughout the country opposed busing and other desegregation efforts. Opposition to busing in Boston, Massachusetts, was particularly bitter. Large numbers of white residents moved from central cities to suburbs to escape desegregation. This migration, sometimes called white flight, and growth in the number of private schools left public schools in many large cities with mostly minority students. Court-ordered busing plans did help integrate many schools. In the 1990’s, however, several Supreme Court decisions limited the cities’ obligations to use busing. By the end of the 1900’s, segregation by custom, if not by law, had again increased in public schools.
