Brown Vs The Board Of Education - Essay Example

174781   The thesis of this paper is as follows "Brown Vs. The Board of Educations decision was to over turn segregation in schools. Even after thelandmark decision there was still segregation in schools". Please also refer to the Massive resistance, and the southern manifesto, and any other outcomes. The paper must include both primary sources and secondary sources. You must use footnotes or endnotes; you are not allowed to use parenthetical noting. Please be as very detail and very clear as possible because this professor is very hard at grading the papers. I have sources that you should use and they are as follows: Primary Sources 1) http://frwebgate6.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=79209589985+14+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve 2) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZS.html 3) Simple Justice Secondary Sources 1) http://brownvboard.org/summary/ 2) Wikipedia 3) Race and school quality since Brown vs. Board of Education / 4) Brown vs. Board of Education / edited by Orley Ashenfelter In order to be able to look at the situation in the US with regard to the issue of racial segregation in schools it is necessary to examine the case of Brown v The Board of Education 1954 and look at the background behind the case to see why the action was brought and what the outcome of the court decision was. The main impetus behind the action was based on the fact that the segregation of white and Negro children in public schools denied Negro children the equal protection of the laws that was guaranteed under the fourteenth Amendment. The courts determined in this case that the public schools were failing in their undertaking to provide education to both Negro and white children on equal terms. The effect of this case was to get rid of the legal basis that had been in force for segregation in schools and other public facilities. The deciding factors in this case not only concerned children and their education but was also influenced by the fact that there was a human tendency to prejudge and discriminate against others based on their ethnic or religious culture as well as their physical characteristics. The impact of the decision in this case was felt in many social situations and was not limited to education and children. Although Brown v Board of Education is widely recognised for the way that segregation in schools was overruled this was not the first legal challenge on such a policy. In 1849 the case of Roberts v City of Boston was brought by African Americans were racial segregation had been mandated in certain schools. Social reform and the Civil Rights Movement were a direct result of the Brown case and the notion of democracy was enforced as pertaining to all individuals. Although the decision in Brown was given in 1954 it was a further ten years before the ruling was applied in the Deep South. The impact of this delay is that male workers who finished their education before segregation was stopped were less well educated then those whose education occurred after desegregation. Although Brown is largely responsible for the abolition of racial disparities in schools these had already started to disappear twenty years before this case1. Large scale desegregation in the Deep South did not take place until ten years after the decision in Brown and was part of the U S commission on Civil Rights 19672. Much of the campaign towards desegregation was fuelled by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s, with lawyers acting for this group attacking segregation as a cause of the disparities between the educational standards of white and negro children. Before the case of Brown dual education systems were in place there were completely separate schools for whites and blacks. The Southern Education Reporting Service found that there were no black children attending school with white children in southern schools. Similar results were reported in Border States3. It was hoped that the decision in Brown would put an end to all forms of racial discrimination but in particular there was strong opposition to the ruling in the South. There was a massive resistance to the proposed changes and public officials were noted to have fought publicly to preserve laws that were unjust and unconstitutional. Although in the main equal protection has occurred in some social settings there are still areas were the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection is still being violated. These violations have occurred through government enforced racial preferences. Many of those that try to encourage racial preferences are employed in key civil rights office some of which work in the white House. Instead of embracing these clear court decisions striking down racial preferences, however, a shocking new movement of "massive resistance" has re-emerged in defense of the indefensible. True, few advocates of racial preferences are motivated by bigotry, and they do not resort to violence or physical intimidation to enforce their will. But they are, in some ways, more influential than the leaders of the old massive resistance movement. Unlike their forebears of the 1950s and 1960s, who were fighting a losing cause against the combined will of the three branches of the federal government, the modern heirs of the new massive resistance run the federal bureaucracy and federal law enforcement agencies. In fact, they occupy key civil rights offices of the executive branch as well as the White House itself. And despite court rulings to the contrary, they continue to insist that government entities can and should use racial preferences to distribute economic and educational opportunities. In 1956 the Southern Manifesto denounced the decision in Brown and the signatories pledged to resist putting the recommendations of Brown into the law for as long as it was possible to do so. Those states which stated that they intended to resist the recommendations were commended by the signatories who were seeking all lawful means to avoid desegregation. The Manifesto in essence interpreted the ruling in Brown as not applicable to them and stated that they would resist all attempts as segregation until there was a specific ruling that meant that desegregation was required of them. This refusal to comply with the ruling was emphasised in 1957 when Governor Faubus refused to allow nine black students to entire the school. This led to President Eisenhower having to resort to deploying federal troops to ensure then court order was enforced. George Wallace also refused to push forward with desegregation. In 1963 he became renowned for his infamous cry of "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Later that year on June 11 Wallace stood in the entrance of the University of Alabama to prevent two black students from registering for classes. At the instructions of President John F Kennedy the Alabama National Guards were dispatched to make Wallace stand aside. The courts attempted to stop these forms of segregation but officials in the south devised new ways of achieving the same result. In the book the Constitutional Law 1986 these discriminatory tactics were commented upon. The authors stated that "Throughout the South, school districts devised a bewildering variety of legal strategies designed to slow or stop desegregation. A few communities took the extreme measure of closing their public schools altogether to avoid desegregation. Others adopted complex pupil placement laws giving local officials discretion to place students in different schools on the basis of supposedly nonracial criteria. Still others utilized ‘freedom-of-choice’ plans whereby students were assigned to their old schools unless they applied for transfer. The common feature of all these plans was that they produced virtually no actual." Over the years there were violent confrontations which led Congress to introduce federal legislation to enforce desegregation. This led to the Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965 which echoed Martin Luther King aspiration that one day children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." This federal involvement helped towards putting an end to race discrimination in the USA although some federal officials were gradually persuaded to transform the guarantee of equal treatment to a requirement of preferential treatment for members of certain favored races. This was viewed by many as reverse discrimination and an attempt to force those who were previously responsible for past discrimination to compensate their victims. In 1961 President Kennedy signed the first affirmative action executive order (No. 10,925). The effect of this order was to prohibit government contractors from discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, color, or national origin. The order stated "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." Despite the attempts to bring about equality throughout the 1970’s race based policies that helped minority races where advanced by federal officials thereby creating an indirect form of discrimination. This was later challenged as a violation of the equal protection guarantee contained in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Discrimination still continued and the decision issued by the Supreme Court in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co1989 led to those who defended racial discrimination to have to adhere to the ‘strict scrutiny test’. In this case the court held that all racial preference programs created by state or local governments, no matter whom they are intended to benefit, are presumptively unconstitutional and must be struck down unless they pass the "strict scrutiny" test. The court in this case went on to say ‘preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake,4" The strict scrutiny test requires that any program must be narrowly tailored if that program makes racial distinctions. Although this would seem to be of little use since the test has been introduced the Supreme Court has never found the government’s interest "compelling" enough or its program "narrowly tailored" to such an end. In more recent times it has been noted that there has been a reversal in desegregation trends5. A study carried out in 1993 showed that there has been an increase in the number of black students in minority schools. This has partly occurred due to the court removing the mandatory requirement of desegregation in the schools. There has also been a general increase in the racial isolation of Latino students6. Much of the trend towards segregation has been blamed on economic disparity and demographic changes in birth rates and patterns of migration and housing. Federal policies on the location of public housing have also been blamed for the increase in a return to minority schools7. A survey conducted in 1994 showed that 89% of the whites and 64% of blacks polled believe that it is better for minority students to attend local schools even if the most of the students attending that school are of the same race rather than transferring them to racially balanced schools outside their community8. The recent case involving Milo Sheff centred on this new form of segregation. The case emphasised the disparity between the educational opportunities provided in city public school and those provided by Hartfords more affluent metropolitan area schools. The plaintiff in this case sought a ruling that state officials must address the economic and racial isolation in the schools and must ensure that additional resources are provided to ensure that Hartford students are provided with equal educational opportunities9. The Supreme Court in Connecticut ruled in the favour of the plaintiff’s in 1996 stating that school segregation violates the states constitution no matter the cause of the segregation10. This was followed in 1997 by the Governors Education Improvement Panel recommending that Connecticut should require school districts to accept students from anywhere in the state, and should pay more for school construction projects that bring black and Hispanic students into mostly white districts11. It would appear from the above that despite the ruling of Brown in 1954 that segregation still occurs and is on the increase once again in the USA. In 1995 the case of Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña led the Supreme Court to rule that all federal preference programs are presumptively unconstitutional. . The Supreme Court ruled that all race-based preference programs, "imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor," including the highway construction set-aside program at issue in that case, must be struck down unless it passes strict scrutiny. Many considered that the era of racial preferences was over following the ruling in the above case. This has however been proven not to be the case. The Dellinger Memorandum is evidence that segregation on racial grounds still continued after the case of Adarand. The Dellinger Memorandum focussed on the fact that the Supreme Court had not gone so far as to declare all the existing preference programs unconstitutional and had left to the lower courts the task of determining which of them passed strict scrutiny. The Dellinger Memorandum attempted to turn the rare exception, where racial classifications might be necessary to redress instances of past governmental discrimination, into the rule. The memorandum also promoted the notion that diversity might be acceptable as a goal if the government had some further objective beyond the achievement of diversity itself. During the administration of Clinton there was a review of federal based racial discrimination programs. Despite the findings the administration preserved every program by using their own interpretation of the Adarand case. The administration was, however, forced to drop the Pentagon program which was known as ‘rule of two’. Under this rule if a Pentagon procurement officer could identify two or more qualified minority contractors whose bids were not more than 10 percent above the contract’s fair market value, the contract would have to be set aside for bidding exclusively by "disadvantaged" business enterprises. The conclusion that can be drawn from the above is that despite attempts at desegregation brought about by the case of Brown that there is still much discrimination in the USA and still wide discrepancies in the treatment of others on the basis of race. References Card and Krueger, 1992 School Quality and Black-White Relative Earnings: A Direct Assessment," NBER Working Paper 3713. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research Civil Rights 1967 Racial Isolation in the Public Schools, Vol. and II. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Donohue, Heckman, and Todd, 2002 "The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960," 117 Quarterly Journal of Economics 225–68 Eaton, Susan. "The New Segregation: Forty Years after Brown, Cities and Suburbs Face a Rising Tide of Racial Isolation," Harvard Education Letter, Vol. X, No. 1, Jan./Feb. 1994 Gary Orfield et al., "The Growth of Segregation in American Schools: Changing Patterns of Separation and Poverty Since 1968." National School Boards Association, December 1993, based on data from US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. Margo, 1990 "Educational Achievement in Segregated School Systems: The Effects of ‘Separate-but-Equal’," 76 American Economic Review 794–801. Miller, Lamar P. "A Brown-Out Since 1954?" Education Digest, April, 1996. National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s 1965. Statistical Summary, State by State, of School Segregation Desegregation in the Southern and Border Area from 1954 to the Present. Nashville, TN: Southern Education Reporting Service Rabinovitz, Jonathan. "School Choice Is Proposed As Counter to Segregation," The New York Times, Jan. 23, 1997. Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 1978 The American Civil Liberties Union, "Connecticut Supreme Court Rules That Racial and Ethnic Segregation In Hartford Area Schools Violates State Constitution," World Wide Web, Press Release, July 9, 1996. USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, conducted April 22-24, 1994 White, Jack E. "Knee Jerk Conservatism," Time, July 22, 1996. http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/8/2/213 http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZS.html http://brownvboard.org/summary/ Read More