Essay about School Desegregation

“Policy is a plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters: American foreign policy; the company’s personnel policy “( Policy). Policies are important because they help employees establish boundaries for what the company considers acceptable behavior in certain situations. With these workplace policies in place, employees have guidelines to help them understand what their company expects from them ( What is the purpose of a policy ).

Racial segregation can be defined as the practice of restricting people to certain areas of residence or to separate institutions such as schools, churches, and facilities such as parks, playgrounds, restaurants, baths based on race or supposed race.

During the era of slavery, most African-Americans resided in the south, mainly in rural areas. In these circumstances, segregation was not necessary, since the boundaries between free citizens and people in captivity remained clear. In addition, blacks and whites lived in the vicinity of farms and plantations, and geographic isolation made contact between neighbors rare.

However, free people of color, located mainly in cities and towns of the North and South Superior, experienced segregation in several ways ( Segregation). Southern Blacks wanted public schools for their children but they did not demand racially integrated schools. Almost all the new public schools were segregated, apart from a few in New Orleans. After the Republicans lost power in the mid-1870s, conservative whites retained the public school systems but sharply cut their funding.

The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation of blacks was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson,The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute that required railroad companies to provide “separate but equal” accommodations for white and black passengers, and prohibited whites and blacks from using railroad cars that were not assigned to their race.

The segregation of Jim Crow became law after Plessy v. Ferguson in 1986. White leaders questioned the education of African-Americans and segregated schools continued unequally financed. In an effort to alleviate these conditions, African-American parents and teachers came together to make a non-financial asset to improve the conditions of their schools. Parents and teachers worked together to maintain physical structures and also joined together for cultural events and sports programs. Families often paid double tax because they had to pay local taxes and use their own funds to support their own black schools with the limited funds provided ( Ramsey 2017). Black teachers also used their own funds to support their students, despite their lower salaries compared to white teachers. They reflected the human aspect since the African American communities during the segregation put in their hands the economic and social progress of their children ( Ramsey 2017).

Desegregation did not happen overnight. In fact, it took years for some states to get on board, and some had to be brought on kicking and screaming. But before the Court ever got involved with school integration, the desegregation wheels were put into motion by another branch of the government – the president himself. Blacks achieved their goal of overthrowing Plessy in 1954 when the Supreme Court, chaired by a representative of Eisenhower, Chief Justice Earl Warren, rendered his decision Brown v. Board of Education.

“On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The upshot: Students of color in America would no longer be forced by law to attend traditionally under-resourced black-only schools” ( Pruitt 2018). The historical case began with five separate collective lawsuits filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of students of color and their families in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Washington, DC Principal plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas in 1951, after his daughter Linda was denied admission to a white primary school. The supreme court set a historic moment in the decades of the NAACP campaign to combat school segregation. By declaring that school segregation was unconstitutional, nullifying the old “separate but equal” doctrine established almost 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson. The president of the court affirmed that public education was a right that deserved the same protection “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ( Pruitt 2018).

After the decision of the court, the plaintiffs knew that the struggle was far from over. That the decision was a first step in the long and complicated path of dismantling racism. Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP’s legal defense and education fund and lead plaintiff’s attorney, announced that “The fight has just begun.” In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously annulled the segregation in public schools, sparking the movement for civil rights ( Pruitt 2018). But the supreme court did not specify exactly how to end school segregation but asked to hear more opinions about the issue. The ruling did little to achieve the goal of segregation, black students continued to attend schools with poor facilities, out-of-date books and often without basic school supplies. The court gave much of the responsibility for this problem to local school authorities and lower courts. But many of these lower court judges in the south had been assigned by segregationist politicians, they were emboldened to resist desegregation. In Prince Edward County, where one of the five lawsuits was filed, the Board of Supervisors refused to allocate funds for the County School Board, opting to close public schools for five years instead of integrating them ( Pruitt 2018).

In March 1956, 101 of 128 Southern congressmen signed “The Southern Manifesto,” denouncing the decision. Many Southern communities followed their lead, resisting integration with protest and violence” ( Resistance to School Desegregation ).

When the school board of Mansfield, Texas a town of 1500 people admitted 12 black students in the Mansfield high school, white residents took to the streets in protest against the decision made it. On the first day of classes, people who are against the desegregation (white people ) patrol the streets with weapons to ensure that black children to register ( Resistance to School Desegregation ). The violent protests allowed the Mansfield school board to vote in favor of “exhausting all legal resources to delay segregation.” In December of 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered that the Mansfield School District be immediately integrated. However, the Mansfield public schools did not separate until 1965 ( Resistance to School Desegregation ).

The Court unanimously declared that “separate facilities are inherently unequal” and decreed that the “separate but equal” doctrine could no longer be used in public schools. A year later, the Supreme Court demanded that local school boards move “with all deliberate speed” to implement the decision. The 33rd president of the United States Harry Truman issued an executive order to integrate African Americans into the armed forces after the Second World War. Segregation in schools was where the court spent a lot of time debating opinions about desegregation. The court had to issue other opinions first, such as (write legislation that would allow blacks to integrate with whites in the area of ??employment. The court also supported the Congress to prevent racial discrimination in places such as restaurants. Moreover, the court integrated that states could no longer prohibit interracial relationships) before reaching desegregation in schools ( A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States ).

Children of color won a battle that lasted a long time by allowing them to attend better schools than they had. Schools with more comforts for them, less crowded classrooms and teachers better prepared to teach them. This historic victory did not last long, despite the fact that the discrimination against people of color ended years ago and that children allowed them to attend schools that were only for white children. I believe that segregation still exists, especially in our schools. As Mayor Bill de Blasio points out, in prestigious high schools, black and Latino students do not have the same opportunity to attend schools like these.

“The prestigious high schools make 5,000 admissions offers for students entering the ninth grade, but this year only 172 black students and 298 Latino students received offers, which happened in a city where two out of every three eighth graders our public schools are Latino or black. ” Low-income students’ families and color people are facing discrimination, in an article written in 2015 states that school segregation still exists in schools. According to the author of the article, the imbalance of two schools in Syracuse New York is huge. The Westside Academy Middle School has been in need of repairs for decades. This school is located in the poorest area and is attended mostly by black or Latino students. These students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Not far from this school is located Wellwood Middle School, in a suburban district. This school offers to its students a stately auditorium and well-equipped technology rooms. It is attended mostly by white students and only 10 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. “The 700 students have at least five music teachers, band, orchestra, choir, musical theater and dozens of other clubs and activities ” ( Theoharis 2015).

U.S. schools have become more segregated since 1990, and students in major metropolitan areas have been most severely divided by race and income, according to the University of California at Los Angeles’s Civil Rights Project. Although the discrimination is not as it was before, I think it still exists, it is still very noticeable in many places, especially in prestigious schools where our children dream of attending and can not do it. Schools should give black and Latino students the same opportunity as white students have. Many black and Latino students are very smart and deserve to attend these schools.

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