preview

Separate But Equal Essay

Decent Essays

The film Separate But Equal reenacts the occurrences during the Brown vs. Board of Education court cases, which countered the previous ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson that had made racial segregation legal. It was written and directed by George Stevens Jr. in 1991 and begins with an African American school in Clarendon County, South Carolina. There, a father speaks out against inequality of the white and black schools. With the support of the Principal of his son’s school, and the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the case grows to become a national issue and in the end the court makes a unanimous decision that racial segregation the public schools is illegal. The film’s dramatic take on this infamous case is extremely …show more content…

Even the NAACP was reluctant to give aid to Rev. DeLaine and Briggs because of the magnitude of racism in Clarendon County. The NAACP was not taking cases regarding the equalization of schools in the 1950s for this reason, however this only drove civil rights activists to attempt full desegregation (Klarman 57). The film exemplified the amount of convincing it took for the NAACP to allow special counselman, Thurgood Marshall, to take the case (Williams 18). In the movie, a woman comes up to Marshall while he is still in the North and warns him not to “reach too far too fast,” in his coming case in Clarendon County. She doesn’t want him to strive for more than equality in schools, but Marshall was growing …show more content…

County School Board case. This court case corrected the more lenient enforcement of desegregation which lead to the option of integration being put on the students themselves (Nichols 159). This would have made the movie even more educational, as it would have shed light on the fact that though laws can be passed, it is whether or not they are enforced that creates change. However, the film is three hours and thirteen minutes, thus it is understandable that George Stevens Jr. did not include this other court

Get Access