Like I know, it took a while for legislation to follow Board v Education such as Civil Rights Act, Great Society, etc. But crucially, there were significant push by social activists and even politicians for societal change almost immediately after Brown for further civil rights and legislation. And even middle school textbooks point to Brown v Board as the crucial turning point for the Civil Rights Movement. But why not after the 1986 Supreme case? To my recollection, there were no significant state or federal legislation addressing sexual harassment until basically nowadays. American society after the 1986 case just seemed to shrug their shoulders and went off like usual. High profile cases like Anita Hill didn't inspire immediate societal push for change, so what's the difference between the two cases?
May 17th, 1954
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States has made a monumental decision, to side with the plaintiffs in a case that over the years has worked its way up to the SCOTUS. In 1951, several black parents attempted to enroll their children in the nearest schools to their homes, which were segregated white schools. They were denied the ability to do so, and as a result they worked with the NAACP to take their case to the courts. While they were defeated in their district court, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear their case, combining it with many other similar cases around the country.
The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous 9-0, siding with Mr. Brown and the many other plaintiffs in their case. The opinion that all other justices agreed with was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren:
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thus, the Supreme Court has declared that the principle of "separate but equal", found in many state laws in the South, are wholly unconstitutional.
Later the next year, in 1955, another SCOTUS case, which was to follow up Brown v. Board of Education, dubbed Brown II, sent orders to the district courts to begin desegregating schools. With the court cases finished with Oliver Brown and the rest of the plaintiffs, it remains to be seen what will happen with regards to desegregation. With white southerners viciously opposing it, along with their respective state governments, it seems as if desegregation has a long, long way to go from here.
If I’m not wrong, Wallace can forcefully segregate every school in the nation but this implies Brown V Board of Education didn’t happen so didn’t it or is this an oversight.
And as a further question, what were the Supreme Court decisions in this universe and what is the Supreme Court even like.
3 months before he vanished, 28 year old Lloyd Gaines won an important U.S. Supreme Court decision mandating that the State of Missouri admit him into its university law school or build a separate and equal law school for blacks. On a cool, rainy night in March 1939, Lloyd Gaines left his home and told the door attendant that he was on a quick errand to buy some stamps. The 28-year-old Gaines was never seen or heard from again.
As Gaines was known to be a loner, days would pass before anyone realized Gaines was missing. It would take another seven months before his disappearance became public. Newspapers across the country carried his photo. None of those efforts produced any solid leads. In the weeks and months that followed, rumors circulated that Gaines had fallen into the hands of segregationist murderers. Rumors also ranged from him being a schoolteacher in New York to sightings in Mexico City where he supposedly fled to after taking a bribe to drop his lawsuit.
Authorities never looked into Gaines' disappearance, and it's unclear whether his family ever went to police in St. Louis or Chicago to report him missing. Much of his family still resides in St. Louis to this day. They surmise that having migrated from the South where the Ku Klux Klan had a massive stronghold, the remnants of that fear remained during their move and they didn’t want to attract any undue attention. Accordingly, the family never had Lloyd declared legally dead.
Written by reporter Edward T. Clayton, an article published in May 1951 in Ebony magazine remains the most thorough investigation into Gaines' disappearance. Clayton traced Gaines' path from St. Louis to Kansas City and on to Chicago, where he hoped to find work in the late winter of 1939. The story told the “tale of a man who'd grown weary of his role as a civil-rights trailblazer. “ In Chicago, Clayton found Gaines' former neighbors from St. Louis, Nancy Page and her daughter Eddie Mae. For several weeks Gaines was a frequent dinner guest at their home. On March 19, 1939, he promised to repay the pair by taking them out to supper. Gaines never arrived for the scheduled meal.
Nancy Page told Clayton that Gaines appeared distressed and worried in the days leading up to his disappearance noting that it seemed like he was running away from something. Gaines also never reported for his first day of work at a local department store. Meanwhile, fraternity brothers at the Alpha Phi Alpha house where Gaines briefly st
... keep reading on reddit ➡EDIT: Clarification for all: We will be 100% back to normal operations on 10/1/2020. We will likely leave all of these shutdown posts up for the sake of continuing the conversations, even though they break Rule #1. Thank you.
Tonight's post is brought to you by the mod team. The 14th Amendment is one of the most important, as it affords equal protection under the law. It was supposed to help Black Americans after slavery. And as you will learn in the wiki, became the foundation for a lot of court decisions. Probably the most impactful one was Brown v. Board of Education, meant to end segregation in schools. I'm here to tell you as a teacher, we still have highly segregated schools, all across this country.
Section one is about birth citizenship. There has been an uptick in birth tourism to countries like Canada and the US. This well written article says it isn't illegal in the US, but the news shows the government is charging folks somehow.
Our person of color today is Katherine Johnson. I'm a science geek, so I love stuff like this. If you haven't seen the movie Hidden Figures which was based on her and a few other Black women at NASA, you might want to read the wiki on her or watch this very short video tribute NASA made to her after she passed away.
Have a good one everyone.
The title really has the question. She mentions several lectures she's given, but I'm not able to find much right now due to the current events pollution in the search results. Every search for her comes up with her nomination and hearings, for instance.
This Tweet has a video clip where she says this: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1316373104269160449
I also found this article co-authored by ACB that sort of answers the question, but is more about the mental gymnastics needed to justify super precedent with originalism, not Brown specifically: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1619&context=jcl
I just listened to this BBC Podcast today and this middle school education gap statistic blew me away (Quote begins at around the 5:00 mark). This is also an example of why so many people today are calling for a shift in social justice efforts away from race, gender, etc... to more of a focus on the impact of income disparities, regardless of skin color, etc... "Economic inequality is now producing a bigger difference in school achievement than American apartheid once did". Crazy!
Related to my last post, what if the US Supreme Court had decided to uphold the "separate but equal" doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education? How would the rest of the 20th century have unfolded? Would Jim Crow still be the law today?
