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Challenge To Brown v Board of Education

Segregationists didn’t readily accept the 1954 unanimous Supreme Court ruling of Brown v Board of Education.  Southerners knew the decision would be a major disruption in their way of life, and limit the continued second class system for African-Americans. After the decision was announced, President Eisenhower lamented his choice of recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren (Oct 1953 – June 1969). Warren was the former Governor of California and vice presidential running mate in 1948. …

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Success Can Change Everything

It’s been said that one of Justice Thurgood Marshall’s favorite justices was Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833 – 1911), who was known as the “Great Dissenter”. Harlan’s dissent in the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), set him apart from the prevailing opinion of the time about the abilities of African Americans and their intelligence. John Harlan served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1877 until 1911. He was born into a slave holding …

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Dr. King & The Pursuit of Happiness

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968), he and his team was in Memphis to support black sanitation workers. The struggle for economic equality, a transition from the campaigns that the world had come to know from the leader of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement more than a decade before Dr. King’s assassination, enjoyed a series of hard fought battles.  The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, …

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Brown v. Board of Ed.

The United States Constitution guarantees its inhabitants liberty and equal opportunity. Historically, however, these fundamental rights have not always been provided as pledged. The American system of education is one such example. From the earliest times in American history, the U.S. educational system mandated separate schools for children based solely on race. In many instances, the schools for African American children were substandard facilities with out-of-date textbooks and insufficient supplies. Court cases against segregated schools …

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Thurgood & the Team

Attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in the landmark United States Supreme Court case of: Oliver L. Brown et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas   Thurgood Marshall, Chief Counsel, NAACP/Legal Defense Fund (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993); One of America’s premier attorney’s, Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was a great-grandson of a slave. Marshall at the age of 32 won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. …

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Robert L. Carter, Desegregation Architect

“In the United States, we make progress in two or three steps, then we step back, and blacks are more militant now and will not accept second-class citizenship as before.” – Robert L. Carter. The above quote was given to the New York Times in 2004 by one of America’s leading legal minds, practicing law in primarily human rights, civil rights an First Amendment cases. Robert L. Carter was a graduate from Columbia Law School, …

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Zelma Henderson & the Board of Ed

At 12:52 p.m. on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, commonly known as Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. The opinion stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and that the separate but equal doctrine, which allowed states to maintain racially segregated schools, had “no place” in public education. The team of lawyers included Chief Legal Counsel for the NAACP, …

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Homer Plessy’s Legacy

Homer Plessy was an Octoroon, he was also a soldier in the war for African-American civil rights. That war began before the Civil War and before Homer Plessy challenged the segregation laws in Louisiana in 1892. Plessy, like Rosa Parks, was chosen to challenge the segregation laws in public transportation. He boarded a train and sat in a car that was reserved for whites, then ordered to leave the train but refused. Policemen arrived and …

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