Expansion (1945 - 1965)
Who was educated?
During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, African-American leaders focused on educational opportunities-or more precisely, the unequal educational opportunities offered black children in segregated school systems.
The 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, decreed that separate education systems for blacks and whites were inherently unconstitutional. The Brown case challenged the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that stated that separate but equal educational systems were constitutional.
The Brown case was actually a consolidation of cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. Cases leading up to the Brown decision of 1954 had to argue in each locale that black education was not equal. This demanded repeated efforts basically arguing the same proposition.
Thurgood Marshall argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
A unanimous Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' had no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
The Brown decision, however, did not do a few things. It did not specify how quickly and to what extent desegregation would occur. The Court could not guarantee the enforcement of its decree, and it could not change southern attitudes regarding segregation.
Desegregation proved to be more challenging than over-turning the Plessy decision. Schools districts in some states, as in Virginia, preferred to close the entire educational system rather than desegregate and educate blacks and whites together.
When Little Rock, Arkansas, attempted to desegregate the high school in 1958, Govenor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the desegregation. Faced with a state's blatant disregard for a federal order, President Dwight Eisenhower sent in federal troops and federalized the Arkansas National Guard to allow the school to integrate nine black students.
During efforts at desegregation, whether at Little Rock or elsewhere, African-Americans were met with resistance and hostility.
Efforts to desegregate schools in the North and the South really began in earnest in the late 1960s. Much racial tension and community rancor attended the desegregation of many communities.
Although nation-wide actions to eliminate segregated schools were not taken until the late 1960s, educators in the early 1960s became more attentive to the concept of equal educational opportunity, including equal access to higher education institutions.
