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The Importance Of Segregation In Public School

Decent Essays

In 1948, a black American, George McLaurin, was accepted to the University of Oklahoma but treated with much disrespect. He sat in a desk roped off from the others in class, he ate lunch by himself, and he studied in a separate library. This is just one of the many things that occurred during the time of ‘separate but equal’. Due to the poor conditions in black schools under ‘separate but equal’, the main argument of the NAACP attorneys cases was to end segregation in schools, leading to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to integrate black and white public schools.
The school conditions for blacks under the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine were awful. School terms for blacks were only 6 months, class sizes were large, …show more content…

Also, blacks were treated much lesser than whites in the south. Public school in Atlanta, Georgia spent $570 on every white student and $228 on every black student, and since blacks weren't getting a good education, the only jobs they could get were maids, laborers, and farm workers (12). Overall, because of segregation in the South, black school conditions were exactly the opposite of the nice whites only public schools.
The goals of the NAACP attorneys in filling the five cases were to end segregation in public schools in the south. During the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County Case in Virginia, 117 students argue about the run-down, overcrowded school shacks that they attend (14). Secondly, in the Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart Case and the …show more content…

This greatly impacted public schools across America and the south prepared for change, protests, and violence. Governors and lawmakers didn't want to push school changes because the majority of voters were white (19), North Carolina passed a law making it so that if a school system refused to integrate, parents had to file an individual lawsuit (20), the governor of Arkansas ordered the National Guard to prevent nine students from entering Little Rock Central High School (23) and, James Meredith had the right to attend University of Mississippi but even after the integration, the school remained all white and they wouldn't let James in (25). Although people reacted to the Supreme Court decision in a vile way, great things came out of it out of it. By 1972, 90% of schools were integrated and all of these acts helped lead to the Civil Rights Act which Lyndon Johnson signs and makes segregation everywhere

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