Analysis Of The History Of African-American Education And Segregation

Analysis of the History of African-American Education and Segregation Student’s Name Institution Date Analysis of the History of African-American Education and Segregation Segregation was a massive component of the Jim Crow legislation. Segregation refers to the policy of separating African Americans from White Americans. This legislation involved separating drinking foundation for black and whites, separate facilities and educational systems. Facilities that catered to the needs of African Americans were highly inferior due to lack of funding and also a lack of initiative from the white community (Anderson, 2011). In states such as Texas, zoning ordinances prevented blacks from living in some residential areas since they were developed for white Americans only. In 1875, the Enforcement act of 1875 was passed by Radical Republican legislators to abolish Jim Crow laws. However, this act was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1883.The paper will examine the history of African American education within the United States from slavery through issues that involve school choice. This analysis will be associated with the Jim Crow laws and also evaluate on whether segregation currently exists in the society. Analysis of the Jim Crow laws Jim Crow ironically was a white man’s imitation of a singing and dancing black stableman. This portrayal led to white performers giving this name towards a system of segregation in the Southern states of the United States (Anderson, 2011). The concept behind the Jim Crow laws was the doctrine of separate but equal. This was a legal manner to discriminate African Americans in the southern states continuously. This led to the development of two different societies in the United States. African Americans were deprived of similar conditions and also other governmental services that their white American counterparts received (Anderson, 2011). Until 1964, these legislations assisted in maintaining the gap between the races which currently have been closed down significantly. Plessy v. Ferguson In this case, Homer Plessy purchased a first-class train ticket towards Covington. The individual entered a passenger train and sat in a designated area that was explicitly reserved for whites. The train conductor ordered Plessy to vacate the set and seek accommodation in the reserved seats for African Americans (Instructormarks, 2014). When Plessy refused to vacate the seat, he was forcibly ejected from the coach by a police offer and imprisoned. His stay in jail was brief and later arraigned in the local court. The Plessy Versus Ferguson case which occurred in 1896 was a significant decision of the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the importance of racial segregation laws in the Constitution especially for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in term of quality and this was an essential doctrine that was eventually known as separate but not equal (Instructormarks, 2014). This doctrine legitimatized numerous state laws and led to the re-establishment of racial segregation that was passed in the American South towards the end of the nineteenth century. This decision was handed down by a vote of seven to one. This can be considered as one of the most disastrous decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court. Despite their ruling, the decision was never wholly overruled. However, later decisions which began with Brown Versus the Board of Education in 1954 severely weakened this doctrine of separate but not equal to the point that it is typically considered to have been overruled. In Brown Versus the Board of Education case, the Supreme Court made a ruling that the Plessy doctrine of separate but not equal was not constitutional within the context of schools and educational facilities. This doctrine mainly segregated numerous individuals from minority groups, especially African American individuals. Significance The Plessy doctrine focused on legitimizing the state laws that focused on establishing racial segregation in the Southern part of the United States. It provided a rationale for additional segregation laws. This doctrine also legitimized laws in the North. This doctrine was significantly strengthened in 1875 by the Supreme Court that limited the ability of the federal government to intervene in state affairs which led to the Congress restraining states from various acts of racial segregation and discrimination (Anderson, 2011). Therefore, in the Plessey case, it provided legislative immunity when handling issues concerning race and guaranteed the right of various states towards implementation of racially separate institutions which required them only to be equal. The law passed led to considerable differences in funding for segregated schools. This continued into the twentieth century and numerous states continuously underfunded African American schools by providing them with low-quality buildings, suppliers and also educational materials (Hoffer, 2012). Most states in the U.S successfully integrated components of their society which were rapidly adopted, however; this only led to oppression that erased any positive reconstructions that would have assisted the African American educational system. This law is directly associated to the Jim Crow laws, and therefore, both of these legislations and practices spread widely in the United States during a time when African-Americans were migrating from the South to mid-western and northern cities(mrgreen1066, 2011). The law only led to development of separate facilities and institutions which were accorded to the African-Americans were highly inferior compared to those that were provided to the White community. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Gitlin, (2007) stated that the Brown Versus the Board of Education which took place in 1954 was a significant landmark for the U.S Supreme Court whereby the court made the declaring that state laws that established separate public schools to white and black students profoundly unconstitutional. This ruling led to the overturning of the Plessey Versus Ferguson decision in 1896 that allowed states sponsored segregation as it applied to public education (Gitlin, 2007). Eventually, the Court decided that separate educational facilities are not equal. Therefore, the court ruled that this doctrine violated the Equality principle found in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution. This ruling led to the integration of African American students which was a massive victory for the civil rights movement. Also, this decision can be utilized as a model for numerous future impact litigation cases. Unfortunately, the policies created by this ruling did not highlight nor suggest any essential methods for stopping racial segregation in schools. In 1954, there were significant protests by white students that hurled numerous threats and epithets towards their African-American classmates when integrated schooling was finally legalized. In some schools, as many as two thousand white students boycotted going to schools that allowed African-American students to attend. The United States justice system initiated this idea of an integrated school system without demonstrating a highly desegregated American school system and the workforce (Hoffer, 2012). Therefore, the process of desegregating schools became a reality on a macro scale and no individual had expected such a positive shift within the educational system. Upon this decision, many middle and upper-class whites began relocating to suburbs so that t...