Linda Stockman

Capstone: Access to Education

February 24, 2020

Access to education is one of the fundamental rights that the United States offers to

young children. The Bill of Rights states that all children have a right to free public education.

The Constitution also states that all children be given “equal educational opportunity no matter

what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or

non-citizen”. Race still affects our education system. Segregation and how it affects the district

school systems is important to understanding the divide in education opportunities.

The history of racism and class in the education system is fundamental to understanding

the domino effect that has impacted our modern school systems. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was a

supreme court case that ruled that racial segregation was legal as long as the facilities for both

races were equal. The case challenged the Louisiana Separate Car Act (1890), which required all

railroad cars to provide “equal but separate accommodations” for whites and African Americans

and prohibited passengers from entering the other cart. Homer Plessy was seven-eighths white

and one-eighth African American. He purchased a ticket within Louisiana and took a seat

reserved for white passengers. He was arrested after he refused to move to the car for African

Americans. He was charged with violating the Separate Car Act. Judge John H. Ferguson

dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. The Supreme court ruled that the

protections of the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to political and civil rights, not political

rights. “Jim Crow Laws” were created to separate African Americans from the same facilities as

white, such as; buses, bathrooms, schools, jobs, stores, and restaurants. The “Jim Crow Laws”

set the precedent for “separate but equal”, this continued to be used as law for six decades.
 The most famous case that came out of the civil rights act was Brown v. Board of

Education (May 17, 1954). Brown v. Board of Education was a Supreme court case that ruled

unanimously that racial segregation was unconstitutional. Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit

against the Board of Education of Topeka after his daughter Linda Brown was denied entry into

the all-white elementary school. Brown claimed that the elementary schools for African

American students were not equal to the white schools. Segregation violated the “equal

protection clause” of the 14th Amendment, which states that no state can “deny to any person

within the jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. The US District Court in Kansas agreed

that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and

contributed to “a sense of inferiority”, but still followed the rules of “separate but equal”. Four

other cases were filed with the supreme court and put under the name Brown. Board of

Education of Topeka. In the beginning, the justices were divided on how to rule on school

segregation. Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson held the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand.

In September 1953, Vinson died and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl

Warren who was the governor of California. He succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict

against school segregation the following year. On May 17, 1954, the decision was made and

Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no

place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the

plaintiff was being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th

Amendment.” The case was one of the milestones in the civil rights movement that proved that

the “separate but equal” rule was not equal at all.

Little Rock, Arkansas was a fundamental image that showed the United States that

African Americans could be educated in a white school. In the summer of 1957, nine students
were enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which at this time was still a segregated

school. The US supreme court supported the students’ enrollment because of the Brown v. Board

of Education case that ruled that segregated schooling to be unconstitutional. The nine students

were warned by the board of education to not attend the first day of school, they arrived on the

second day accompanied by interracial ministers. They encountered a white mob who began

shouting, throwing stones, and threatening to kill them. The Arkansas National Guard was sent

by Arkansas Governor Orval Eugene Faubus to block the entrance of the school. Faubus had

declared his opposition to integration and his intentions to block the students from entering the

school. Little Rock drew international attention to racism and civil rights in the United States.

The students were called the “Little Rock Nine” by television networks all over the country.

President Eisenhower, Governor Faubus, and the Little Rock Mayor, Woodrow Mann, discussed

how to continue over the course of 18 days, the students stayed home as they discussed the

situation. On September 23, the students were allowed to return to school. They entered through

a side door to avoid the protesters. They were discovered and were then protected by US

soldiers. Eisenhower publicly stated that he did not want to use federal troops to enforce

desegregation. He saw the threat of violence that the students faced and sent the elite 101st

Airborne Division and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal command. The Little

Rock Nine continued to attend school and were harassed by their fellow white students. One of

the students was expelled for fighting back but the remaining eight stayed and finished the

academic school year. Governor Faubus was reelected in 1958 and closed all of Little Rock’s

schools. Many schools followed Little Rock’s example and started closing their public schools.

They implemented a “school choice” program that subsidized white students’ attendance at
private segregated schools. Little Rock Central School did not reopen with a desegregated

student body until 1960. Efforts to integrate schools continued throughout the 1960s.

Redling is an important term that still affects the geographical profile of race that relates

to the school systems. Redlining refers to red- marked boundaries the federal government used in

mortgage reviews. It is an illegal

discriminatory practice in which a

mortgage lender denies loans or an

insurance provider restricts services to

certain communities because of their race,

gender, or sexual orientation. Before the

practice of redlining began, racial

homogeneity was preserved in suburban

communities by zoning laws that preserved

residential segregation. The map to the

right shows the current situation of

redlining in Rochester, NY. The green

dots, that represent the black community,

are all concentrated around each other.

Next to this cluster of green is the cluster

of blue, which represents the white population. There is a definite line that separates the two

communities down the center of the map. The blue also moves up the right side of the map and

starts to spread out. In contrast, the green dots are centered in the middle of the map, the blue

dots surround them.

 Even though these moments in history, minority students have continued to be separate

but equal. Minority students still attend schools that are two-thirds of minorities. Most of these

schools are located in central cities and funded well below the ones in neighboring suburban

districts. Analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York,

Louisiana, and Texas have found that schools serving greater numbers of students of color had

significantly fewer resources than schools serving white students. Inadequate school finances

continue to harm minority and economically disadvantaged students through all levels of

schooling. Studies have also shown that these students are concentrated in the South. Those

states have the lowest capacities to finance public schools. Many states with the widest

disparities in education are located in large industrial states. Many students in these states are

located in the property-poor urban districts which suffer the worst educational expenditures

because of their low-income families. In urban schools, schools with high concentrations of low-

income families and minority students are often separated into schools with students in the same

financial bracket. These inequalities leave these students with lower- quality books, curriculum

materials, laboratories, and computers. They are also forced to endure larger class sizes, less

qualified and experienced teachers, and less access to a high- quality curriculum.

These moments in history, even though they did push the civil rights movement forward,

students in low-income areas are still affected by the past. Starting at a young age, these students

experience inadequate learning facilities and materials. These effects of a poor learning

environment continue to follow them through all areas of his life.

 Sources

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Separate-Car-Act

https://www.britannica.com/topic/separate-but-equal

https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka

https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/central-high-school-integration

https://time.com/4948704/little-rock-nine-anniversary/

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2016/10/20/rochester-ny-redlining-

map/92456536/

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/

https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OPE/AgenProj/report/theme1a.html