GOVT 2305, Module 5 Racial Segregation

Are the two water fountains the same quality? Jim Crow Laws In the late nineteenth century, southern states adopted policies designed to undermine the Civil War amendments. Southern state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws, legal provisions requiring the social segregation of African Americans in separate and generally unequal facilities. Are the two water fountains the same quality?

Jim Crow and Equal Protection Did Jim Crow laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Who or what would answer this question? The U.S. Supreme Court

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court held that laws requiring racial segregation are constitutional as long as the separate facilities are equal. This judicial doctrine was known as separate but equal. Ironically, the U.S. Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to protect corporations from government regulation by declaring that corporations were “persons.”

Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal had to be within state. For the first time, the Court began to examine whether separate is in fact equal. The state of Missouri could not require that black law school applicants attend school out of state. Note: This was more than 40 years after Plessy.

Heman Sweatt, UT, and TSU In Texas, Heman Sweatt, an African American, applied to the UT Law School. Rather than admit him, the state of Texas created a new university with a law school just for African Americans. The university was called Texas State University for Negroes and it was located in Houston. Texas State University for Negroes was subsequently renamed Texas Southern University.

Sweatt v. Painter (1950) In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the Supreme Court ruled that Texas's hasty creation of an African American law school did not satisfy the constitutional criterion of equal protection.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950), the Court ruled against segregation within an institution. The Sweatt Case involved law school; this case dealt with graduate school.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that state laws requiring racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. The decision reversed the Plessy precedent insofar as it affected public schools.

Impact of Brown Brown v. Board of Education prohibited racial discrimination in assigning children to public schools. State laws requiring segregated schools were clearly unconstitutional. What was less clear after Brown was whether the Equal Protection Clause required the side-by-side instruction of students of different races in the same schools and classrooms.

What do you think? Is it important for youngsters to attend schools that are racially diverse or does it matter? The HISD is 27 % African American, 62 % Latino, 8 % white, and 4 % Asian. What does racial integration mean for the HISD?

Taking Race Into Account During the 1970s, the Supreme Court ordered school districts to take race into account in assigning students to schools in order to increase racial integration. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Court held that busing, racial quotas, school pairing or grouping, and gerrymandered attendance zones could all be used to eliminate the remnants of state-supported segregation.

Ignoring Race Since the 1980s, the Supreme Court has abandoned efforts to compel the racial integration of public schools in favor of a stance that requires local officials to ignore race in making school assignment decisions.

Full Circle from Brown In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down a Seattle school assignment procedure that used race as a “tiebreaker” in making student assignments to high schools, even though the goal of the plan was to achieve racial integration rather than segregation. Instead of using the Brown precedent to further efforts to achieve racial integration of public schools, the Court declared that Brown required school districts to follow color-blind school assignment policies.

Re-segregation of Schools Today, African American and Latino students have less contact with white students than their counterparts had in 1970. A third of African American and Latino children sit in classrooms that are 90 to 100 percent black and Latino. Current status of the law: School officials may NOT take race into account in making school assignments in K-12.

What You Have Learned What were Jim Crow laws? What is the significance of Plessy v. Ferguson? How did future cases undermine the Pressy precedent? What was the significance of Brown v. Board of Education? What approaches did federal courts take to enforcing Brown? What is the current status of efforts to racially integrate public schools?