Jana P.

Leonard
Lesson Plan
Brown v. The Board of Education

Civil Rights
Desegregation of Public Schools
Brown v. The Board of Education

INTRODUCTION:

 Lesson Subject: The civil rights movement in education in the United States

 Length of Lesson: 90 minutes

 Standards of Learning:

USII.9a The student will demonstrate knowledge of the key domestic and
international issues during the second half of the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries by
a) examining the Civil Rights Movement and the changing role of
women.
USII.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical and geographical
analysis and responsible citizenship, including the ability to
a) analyze and interpret primary and secondary source documents to
increase understanding of events and life in United States history
from 1865 to the present;
b) make connections between the past and the present;
c) sequence events in United States history from 1865 to the
present;
d) interpret ideas and events from different historical perspectives;
e) evaluate and debate issues orally and in writing;
h) interpret patriotic slogans and excerpts from notable speeches
and documents;
i) identify the costs and benefits of specific choices made, including
the consequences, both intended and unintended, of the decisions
and how people and nations responded to positive and negative
incentives.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

 Students will be able to describe the status quo under „Separate But Equal‟ as
authorized under Plessy v. Ferguson.

 Students will be able to visualize some of the impact of segregation on American

Society.

 Students will be able to distinguish between de facto and de jure segregation.

 Students will recognize the consolidated cases that were addressed in the Court‟s
decision in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

 Students will understand that, while Brown legally ended segregation in public
schools, the process of desegregation was both lengthy and contentious.

MATERIALS/TECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED PREPARATION

 Computer with projector and screen and audio capabilities.
 Powerpoint Presentation
 Audio of Plessy Majority opinion excerpt
 Audio of Plessy dissent excerpt
 Video excerpt from PBS‟ The Supreme Court – Brown decision
 Handout regarding the Green v. New Kent County Schools case (from National Park
Service)

TEACHING AND LEARNING SEQUENCE:

Introduction/Anticipatory Set: (20 minutes)

Exercise designed to demonstrate the fallacies inherent in „separate but equal‟ as

well as provide insight into the mental and emotional effects of segregation.

As each student enters the classroom, they are given either a green index card
or a pink index card. There will be more green index cards than pink.

Once students have settled into their seats, teacher will instruct the students to
move and ask all those with green cards to move to the front of the classroom
and all those with pink to the rear of the classroom.

Once this has been accomplished, teacher will pass out a short (1 page) essay
on Brown v. The Board of Education. Each of the students with a green index
card will receive a copy of the essay. Depending on the number of pink cards,
only enough summaries will be distributed to accommodate fewer than half of the
pink. The students with pink will be instructed to share.

The teacher will allow 5 minutes for the students to read the essay. The teacher
will then ask that the papers be passed forward (anticipate a number of
complaints regarding lack of access to the material). Teacher will then announce
a quiz (here even greater protest is anticipated). After a minute or so of

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Brown v. The Board of Education

complaints, teacher will indicate that there will not be a quiz, but will then engage
the students in a discussion about discrimination.

Questions for students:

1. What seems „wrong‟ about this situation?

2. How did it feel when they were being discriminated against? When they
were not discriminated against, but observed the discrimination against
their classmates?
3. How did the fact that they had no opportunity to decide whether to be pink
or green make them feel?

Lesson Development (Use Accompanying PowerPoint Presentation): (60 minutes)

1. Using the powerpoint presentation, the teacher will set out the following terms
and ask the students to describe what each means: (SLIDE 2)
A. Segregation – the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by
enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social
intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory
means;
B. De facto Segregation – segregation that happens “by fact” rather than by
legal requirement. Teacher will ask the question as to how such segregation
might occur.
C. De jure Segregation - 1. By right; of right; by a lawful title: 2. by law.
Teacher will ask students how defacto segregation differs from dejure
segregation.
2. Status quo under Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
A. Teacher will ask students about the date when the emancipation
proclamation was entered by executive order (1/1/1863) as well as the
date that the civil war ended (April 1865);
B. Teacher will briefly discuss the movement of African Americans to the
industrial cities of the north as well as their treatment in the south.
C. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (SLIDE 3) – Teacher will play the following
excerpt from the majority opinion in the case:

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Brown v. The Board of Education

Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to

abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the
attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties
of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both
races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or
politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the
Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the
same plane.

What then was the impact on the public?

1) Validated de jure segregation
2) Continued to be the law until 1965
3) Mandated separate but equal accomodations
4) Impacted lodging, water fountains, restaurants, schools
5) It is interesting to note, however, that the Plessy decision was not
unanimous. Justice Harlan dissented from the opinion, noting
(teacher will play recording of the below portion of the dissent):

I am of opinion that the statute of Louisiana is

inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white
and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit
and letter of the Constitution of the United States. If
laws of like character should be enacted in the
several States of the Union, the effect would be in the
highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution
tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared
from our country, but there would remain a power in
the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the
full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom to regulate
civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of
race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a
large body of American citizens now constituting a
part of the political community called the People of
the United States, for whom and by whom, through
representatives, our government is administered.
Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee
given by the Constitution to each State of a
republican form of government, and may be stricken
down by Congressional action, or by the courts in the
discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the
supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

For the reasons stated, I am constrained to withhold

my assent from the opinion and judgment of the
majority.

2. Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A. Teacher will pose the question - what was life like for African American
children prior to the ruling in Brown? (SLIDE 4)
1. 17 states mandated and 4 permitted segregation of public schools
based on race.
2. Many non-white students had to travel a substantial distance from
home to attend school, walking past „white‟ schools nearby;
3. Many of these schools lacked resources, in effect not equal.
B. Using the powerpoint presentation for emphasis, the teacher will explain
that Brown was actually a consolidation of 5 separate cases: (SLIDE 5)
1. Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
a. Class action suit filed on behalf of 13 parents in Topeka,
KS (20 children were involved);
b. The suit demanded a reversal of the school district‟s policy
of racial segregation in elementary schools;
c. The named plaintiff was Oliver Brown whose daughter
Linda, a third grader, had to walk 6 blocks to catch the
school bus to take her to the segregated elementary
school to which she was assigned, even though another
elementary school (a „white‟ school) was 7 blocks from her
home.
2. Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina)
a. African American children in Clarendon County, SC, were
forced to walk a substantial distance to markedly inferior
schools while white children were bused. The Superintendent
argued that the African American community did not pay
enough taxes to pay for and that it would unfair to ask white
taxpayers to do so.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

b. Named plaintiff, Briggs, was fired and moved to Florida for

next ten years to support his family.
3. Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware)
a. Delaware law mandated segregation in the schools;
b. 2 Plaintiffs (Belton and Beulah – cases were combined);
c. At issue:
1) Belton: Children forced to take public bus to decrepit inner
city school even though excellent white school in the
neighborhood;
2) Beulah: forced to walk to the decrepit school even though
students at the nearby „white‟ school were bused.
d. DE Supreme Court ordered integration of the schools, not
because they disagreed with „separate but equal‟ as
authorized under Plessy, but because they found that the
African-America schools were in no way equal to the schools
provided for white students.
e. NOTE that this is unique among the Brown cases, the appeal
was filed by the losing school system.
4. Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.)
a. A group of 11 young African-American students were denied
admittance into a newly built all white high school even though
there was plenty of room;
b. Basis of the argument was simply that segregation was illegal
as Congress had never authorized segregation in the DC
public schools.
5. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia)
a. After repeated requests for funding at R.R. Moton High School
(the all black high school in Farmville) were denied, the
students, angered at the conditions of the school held a
protest demanding segregation of the County schools.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

b Filing a lawsuit challenging Virginia‟s school segregation law,

their claim was denied by the Virginia Supreme Court but on
appeal to the federal court was combined with the other cases
into Brown.
D. The Decision – Teacher will play the embedded video from PBS‟s The
Supreme Court regarding the decision in Brown. (SLIDE 6)
E. The Aftermath – „With All Deliberate Speed‟
1. Using the powerpoint presentation to provide examples of the
headlines regarding the Brown decision, the teacher will advise
the students that, although the decision purported to end de jure
segregation in public schools, it was not met with overwhelming
support, particularly in the south.
2. Teacher will also (using the powerpoint presentation) discuss the
response of the Virginia government, including the Interposition
Resolution of 1956, the „Little Rock Bill‟ granting the governor the
authority to shut down any school under the protection of Federal
troops and denying state funding to any integrated schools. The
teacher will also discuss the school closures in Prince Edward
County and Norfolk.

Closure/Homework: (10 Minutes)

Teacher will stress that while Virginia resisted desegregation, it was not the only state to
do so, nor are Prince Edward and Norfolk the only systems that were affected.

Students are assigned to read the attached excerpts from the National Park Service‟s
“New Kent School and the George W. Watkins School: From Freedom of Choice to
Integration” lesson plan and be prepared to discuss the questions following the readings.

Assessment

 Formative – During the class, teacher will engage the students in discussion
looking for an understanding and appreciation of the significance of the Brown
decision. Where needed, teacher will „re-teach‟. Follow-up formative
assessment will occur in the subsequent dialogue concerning New Kent.

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 Summative – In the unite test on civil rights, at least one question will address
desegregation in public schools.

References

The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia. Retrieved from

(http://www.vahistorical.org/civilrights/pec.htm).

The Library of Virginia. (2003) Exhibit: Brown v. Board of Education: Virginia responds.

Martin, W. (1998). Brown v. Board of Education, a brief history with documents. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martins.

National Park Service. (n.d.) New Kent and the George W. Watkins School: from
freedom of choice to integration. Retrieved from
(www.nps.gov/history/nr/wwwlps/lessons/104newkent/104newkent.htm).

Public Broadcasting System. (2007) The supreme court.

segregation. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Retrieved December 08, 2010,

from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/segregation.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

Appendix 1:

History of Charles C. Green v. County School Board of New

Kent County, VA

In the mid-1950s, life in New Kent County was divided by a "color

line." Blacks and whites were born in separate hospitals, raised and
educated in separate schools, and buried in separate cemeteries. Such
separation had been legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court's Plessy v.
Ferguson decision in 1896, but only if facilities for the two races were
equal.

During the 1940s, the Virginia State Conference of the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the
state headquarters of the nation's premier civil rights organization, filed
numerous lawsuits to force Virginia to "equalize" the public facilities
used by blacks and whites. These suits were generally successful,
however, the rulings applied specifically to the districts involved
instead of addressing the overall problem. In the 1950s, NAACP
lawyers switched tactics and began attacking segregation outright,
arguing that separation of the races was itself unconstitutional. In 1954,
this new legal strategy led to the consolidation of five cases under one
name, Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka. One of
the five cases came from Virginia: Davis v. Prince Edward County,
Virginia (1952). The Brown decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that segregation in public schools, because separate schools could
never be truly equal, was unconstitutional.

Following this historic ruling, most southern states sought to delay

school integration. Virginia, in particular, resisted in several ways.
Virginia legislators chose to pass a "resolution of interposition" in early
1956. This resolution declared that the Supreme Court's decision to
integrate schools was incompatible with the state constitution and
therefore inapplicable in Virginia. Virginia also led a "Massive
Resistance" movement among southern political leaders, during which
several Virginia localities closed their public schools rather than
integrate them. During one such instance in Prince Edward County,
white students attended private schools while many African American
students moved elsewhere to attend school or did not attend school at
all. For years, black parents fought through the courts to reopen the
schools on an integrated basis. In Griffin v. County School Board of
Prince Edward County (1964), the Supreme Court ordered the county
to reopen its schools on an integrated basis and to desist from operating
a whites-only private school system.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

In the small, rural, eastern Virginia county of New Kent, ten years after
Brown, blacks and whites continued to attend separate schools: the all-
black George W. Watkins and the all-white New Kent. Moreover,
blacks in New Kent County were well aware that their school,
controlled and funded by an all-white school board and all-white
county politicians, was inferior in a variety of ways. The black school
lacked a gymnasium and sports fields, and textbooks and school
equipment were inferior.

Calvin C. Green and his wife moved to New Kent County in 1956 from
nearby Middlesex County. Almost immediately, Dr. Green became
active in the local branch of the NAACP, becoming president of the
local branch in 1960. Partly because of his three school-age sons,
Green pressured the local school board to comply with the Brown
decision in the early 1960s, to no avail. Then in 1964, at a meeting in
Richmond, Green heard attorneys from the State Conference of the
NAACP explain that the recently passed Civil Rights Act of 1964
threatened to cut off federal funding to localities which refused to
develop a plan to integrate their schools. The passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 laid the groundwork for greater federal enforcement
of school desegregation. Title VI of the Act forbade racial
discrimination in any program receiving federal funds. This was a
powerful new weapon for the NAACP, and the association sought to
use it in Virginia (and other southern states) to bring about the
integration of public schools. First, NAACP lawyers needed
determined and courageous individuals to sponsor lawsuits against
their local school boards. Calvin C. Green, among others, volunteered.

Green returned to New Kent County and started a petition drive among
black residents. The petition urged the New Kent School Board to
integrate the schools as quickly as possible. Within a short time, Green
obtained the signatures of 540 local black residents and submitted the
petition to the school board. The board refused to comply.

In response to the board's refusal, Green began meeting with attorneys

from the state NAACP and in early 1965 helped develop a lawsuit to
force the New Kent School Board to integrate the county's schools.
Charles C. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County,
Virginia was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Virginia in March 1965. The suit was filed in Calvin Green's youngest
son's name because he had the most years ahead of him as a student in
the county and was most likely to still be in school if the case took a
long time.

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Brown v. The Board of Education

The lawsuit was organized and argued almost entirely by the lawyers of
the state NAACP. Several of Virginia's pre-eminent civil rights
attorneys, including Samuel W. Tucker, Henry L. Marsh III, and Oliver
White Hill participated in the process. The U.S. District Court ruled
against them in 1966, as did the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both
courts ruled that a hastily developed plan, issued in August 1965 by the
New Kent School Board, satisfied the requirement that it begin
integrating the county's schools. Facing the lawsuit filed by Green and
the possible loss of federal funds from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
school board had fashioned a new strategy to address segregation. This
plan, known as a "freedom-of-choice" plan, required that black students
and their parents petition for admittance to the white schools in order to
attend. Such a process invited the possibility of economic and physical
reprisals from whites that opposed desegregation. As a result, the
"freedom-of-choice" plan did not significantly alter the racial
composition of the county's two public schools.

After their loss in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the NAACP chose
to take the Green case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October 1967,
NAACP attorneys argued that the county school board's "freedom-of-
choice" plan illegally placed the burden of integrating the county's
schools on blacks themselves. They also argued that the county sought
to maintain a biracial school system by busing some black students up
to 20 miles to the all-black George W. Watkins School, though the
predominantly white New Kent School was much closer.

In May 1968, more than 14 years after the original Brown decision, the
Supreme Court issued its ruling in Charles C. Green v. County School
Board of New Kent County, Virginia. The Court found that the county
had been operating a dual system of schools as ruled unconstitutional in
Brown, down to "every facet of school operations--faculty, staff,
transportation, extracurricular activities and facilities."¹ Its 1954-55
desegregation decisions put an "affirmative duty" on school boards to
abolish dual schools and to establish "unitary" systems. It disapproved
the county's "freedom-of-choice" school plan for this case. Justice
William J. Brennan, writing for the Court, explained: "The burden on a
school board today is to come forward with a plan that promises
realistically to work, and promises realistically to work now." The
Court ordered the local school board to develop a new plan to "convert
promptly to a system without a 'white' school and a 'Negro' school, but
just schools." It also ordered that the U.S. District Court maintain
oversight of the case and the school board's plan to ensure that
integration would occur in the near future. Shortly thereafter, the New
Kent School Board converted the George W. Watkins School into New

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Brown v. The Board of Education

Kent Elementary School and shifted all the county's high school
students to the formerly all-white New Kent School making it New
Kent High School. Green and the NAACP had won a very important
victory.

Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist later referred to the

Green case (in 1972) as a "drastic extension of Brown."² The case,
though based in New Kent County, affected school systems throughout
the nation. It was in Green v. County School Board that the U.S.
Supreme Court announced the duty of school boards to affirmatively
eliminate all vestiges of state-imposed segregation, thus extending
Brown's prohibition of segregation into a requirement of integration.
Within only a few years, the nation witnessed the culmination of a key
phase of the early civil rights movement--the integration of the nation's
public schools.

Questions for Reading 1

1. Why do you think so many southern whites fought against school

desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s? Why were many of the local
blacks equally determined to integrate the county's schools?

2. List three cases important to the school desegregation decisions

decided by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s and describe
their significance. What were the results of each case?

3. What is the NAACP? What role did the organization play in the
Green case?

4. What was the "freedom-of-choice" plan and why did the New Kent
School Board implement this plan? Do you think the name of the plan
accurately described how it worked in practice? Why or why not?

5. Why was the Brown decision not strong enough to fully integrate
schools? What did the Green decision do that the earlier cases did not?

Reading 1 was compiled from Susan Cianci Salvatore, "New Kent

School and George W. Watkins School" (New Kent County, Virginia)
National Historic Landmark Nomination, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001; Brian
Daugherity, "The NAACP and the Campaign for School Desegregation
in Virginia" (Ph.D. dissertation in-progress, The College of William &
Mary, Williamsburg, VA); Interview with Dr. Calvin C. Green, October
9, 2001, New Kent County, VA; Lassister and Lewis, eds. The

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Moderates' Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in

Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), 1998; Robert
Pratt, The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond
Virginia 1954-89 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), 1992;
and Susan Cianci Salvatore, Waldo Martin, Vicki Ruiz, Patricia
Sullivan, and Harvard Sitkoff, Racial Desegregation in Public
Education in the United States Theme Study (Washington, D.C.:
National Park Service), 2000.

¹ Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), at 435.

² Justice William H. Rehnquist in Keyes v. School District No. 1,
Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (1972).

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Appendix II

Excerpts from the Supreme Court Decision Green v. County

School Board of New Kent County (1968)

--"During the [New Kent County 'freedom-of-choice'] plan's three years of

operation [started August 2, 1965] no white student has chosen to attend the all-
Negro school, and although 115 Negro pupils enrolled in the formerly all-white
school, 85% of the Negro students in the system still attend the all-Negro
school."

--"Racial identification of the system's schools was complete, extending not just
to the composition of student bodies at the two schools but to every facet of
school operations--faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities and
facilities. In short, the State, acting through the local school board and school
officials, organized and operated a dual system, part 'white' and part 'Negro.'"

--"... what is involved here is the question whether the Board has achieved the
'racially nondiscriminatory school system' Brown II held must be effectuated in
order to remedy the established unconstitutional deficiencies of its segregated
system."

--"In determining whether respondent School Board met that command by

adopting its 'freedom-of-choice' plan, it is relevant that this first step did not
come until some 11 years after Brown I was decided and 10 years after Brown II
directed the making of a 'prompt and reasonable start.' Such delays are no longer
tolerable..."

--"Moreover, a plan that at this late date fails to provide meaningful assurance of
prompt and effective disestablishment of a dual system is also intolerable."

--"... the District Court approved the 'freedom-of-choice' plan.... The Court of
Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ... affirmed the District Court's approval of the
'freedom-of-choice' provisions of the plan but remanded the case to the District
Court for entry of an order regarding faculty 'which is much more specific and
more comprehensive' ..."

--"The New Kent School Board's 'freedom-of-choice' plan cannot be accepted as

a sufficient step to 'effectuate a transition' to a unitary system...no whites have
gone to George W. Watkins school and 85% of blacks remain at George W.
Watkins school.... In other words, the school system remains a dual system.
Rather than further the dismantling of the dual system, the plan has operated
simply to burden children and their parents with a responsibility which Brown II
placed squarely on the School Board."

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--"We do not hold that a 'freedom-of-choice' plan might of itself be

unconstitutional, although that argument has been urged upon us."

--"Where a 'freedom-of-choice' plan offers real promise of achieving a unitary,

nonracial system there might be no objection to allowing it to prove itself in
operation, but where there are reasonably available other ways, such as zoning,
promising speedier and more effective conversion to a unitary school system,
'freedom of choice' is not acceptable."

--"... it is evident that here the Board, by separately busing Negro children across
the entire county to the 'Negro' school, and the white children to the 'white'
school, is deliberately maintaining a segregated system which would vanish with
non-racial geographical zoning."

--"The Board must be required to formulate a new plan and, in light of other
courses which appear open to the Board, such as zoning, fashion steps which
promise realistically to convert promptly to a system without a 'white' school and
a 'Negro' school, but just schools."

--"Moreover, whatever plan is adopted will require evaluation in practice, and

the court should retain jurisdiction until it is clear that state-imposed segregation
has been completely removed."

Questions for Reading 2

1. Under the "freedom-of-choice" plan, what percentage of white students chose

to attend the George W. Watkins School?

2. What does the term "dual system" mean?

3. Why did the Supreme Court rule against New Kent County and force it to
desegregate its schools immediately?

4. How many years after Brown II did the Green decision take place? Why is
that significant? What do you think is the overall historical significance of the
Green decision?

5. Why would the federal courts want, or need, to retain jurisdiction over New
Kent County's next plan for integration?

Reading 2 was excerpted from Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968)

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