Education Inequality From The 1870's To 1954-a Brief History By Comp, 2008

EDUCATION (IN)EQUALITY FROM THE 1870’S TO 1954 A BRIEF HISTORY

by David Comp 2008 ©

As early as 1849, African Americans began waging a legal battle for the desegregation of schools and educational equality.1 It wasn’t until May 17, 1954, however, when the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case2 that educational equality became a legal right for African Americans across the United States. The Brown v. Board case reversed the historical 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson Supreme Court case which allowed for public segregation under the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine.3 In the court’s ruling on Brown v. Board, Supreme Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the opinion of the court and stated: We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.4 The Brown v. Board decision marked an important milestone in the rights of African Americans being recognized in the United States. The decision, however, did not put an end to the struggles that African Americans have endured for so many years. The fight for civil rights and the actual desegregation of schools across the United States proved to 1

On December 4, 1849 the Roberts v. The City of Boston case was heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Benjamin Roberts sued the city of Boston because his five-year old daughter Sarah was banned from the local primary school because she was Black. The court ruled in April of 1850 in favor of the school committee and Boston’s schools remained segregated. Cited from The African American Registry. 2005. Roberts vs. City of Boston begins; Ladson-Billings, G. “Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price we Paid for Brown.” Educational Researcher 33, no. 7 (2004): 4. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1462/Roberts_vs_City_of_Boston_begins. 2 Full name of case and citation: Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483. 3 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Chief Justice Brown Opinion of the Court, Supreme Court of the United States. Supreme Court Collection, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZS.html. 4 Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

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be significant and challenging for African Americans well beyond the Brown v. Board decision in 1954. A brief history of the schooling of African Americans from the mid- to late-1800’s to 1954 will be presented to provide an important background and context to the Brown v. Board case. In Pennsylvania, the 1870’s was a time of important legislative movement. In 1870, the Republicans in the state legislature of Pennsylvania introduced legislation to end discrimination of African Americans in schools and in 1874 an antidiscrimination bill passed the state senate.5 By 1881, a county court ruled on a case brought by an African American father, Elias H. Allen, who wanted his children to attend a White public school in Meadville, Pennsylvania and determined that “the Pennsylvania segregation law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” and required that African American children be admitted to public schools that were closest to their homes.6 Vincent Franklin reports that the Philadelphia school system in 1908 consisted of nine Black public schools yet a majority of Black children attended mixed schools. A complicating factor during this time period was that African American teachers were not allowed to teach White children in the Philadelphia public school system. Several research studies by individuals such as Byron Phillips and Howard Odum focused on intelligence and compared White and African American school aged children. The “results” showed that African American children were “retarded” more than White children were which further fueled the argument that African American and White children were to be schooled under different curriculums and that African American

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Franklin, V.P. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900-1950. (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1979), 34. 6 Ibid.

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school children were to be segregated from White children.7 Public education in the South was especially challenging for African Americans during this time period. The Southern education movement from 1901 to 1915 saw a resistance in educational reform for African Americans.8 African Americans experienced both racist attitudes and laws in all aspects of their lives including their education. During this time period, Whites in South Carolina opposed public education for African Americans and Whites in North Carolina were strongly against taxation for African American schools while Georgia allowed school boards to exempt African American children from the compulsory school attendance law that was passed in 1916.9 A major challenge for public school systems in Northern cities, including in Philadelphia, were the large numbers of African American families that migrated from the South primarily from 1915 to 1930. Vincent Franklin reports that by 1920, the number of African Americans in Philadelphia grew 58.9% to 134,000 people in ten years and by 1930 the number of African Americans had grown by 63.5% to over 200,000 people.10 Major cities in the Midwest also saw significant increases in the growth of the African American population during the first few decades of the twentieth century or what many called the “Migrant Crisis.” Between 1910 and 1920, the city of Chicago saw a sharp increase in its African American population by 148% or 124,000 people, Detroit’s African American population grew by 35,000 or 611% and the African American population in Cleveland grew 308% or 26,000 people.11 The migration of 7

Ibid, p. 41-48. Anderson, J.D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 101. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid, p. 60-61. 11 Dougherty, J. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 52. 8

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large numbers of African Americans to northern cities also had an impact in Southern states and the public funding of schools for African Americans in the South. Many White landowners in the South were concerned with the loss of cash tenants, share-croppers, and laborers who were migrating north and returned public tax funds in order to build rural schools in the hope that many African Americans would consider staying in the South.12 James Anderson reports that nearly half of the African American’s in Georgia left the state during the 1920’s.13 To be sure, the considerable demographic shifts witnessed in the urban cities of the North and in the Southern states from the early 1900’s to the 1930’s had a significant impact on the schooling of African Americans during this time period. The decade preceding the Brown v. Board decision continued to be a time of difficulty for African Americans in the United States. Civil rights abuses were part of the every day life of African Americans. This post-World War II time period for African Americans, despite all of the discriminatory practices they encountered, was also one of hope. In 1947, President Harry Truman was keen on passing civil rights legislation and he commissioned the Congressional Committee on Civil Rights to provide the United States with a public agenda for change.14 The Committee report outlined the discrimination that African Americans experienced all across the United States. The Committee reported that the legal school segregation found in seventeen states and the District of Columbia was inappropriate and unfair and stated “whatever test is usedexpenditure per pupil, teachers’ salaries, the number of pupils per teacher, transportation

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Anderson, 159. Ibid. 14 Ravitch, D. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 21. 13

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of students, adequacy of school buildings and educational equipment, length of school term, extent of curriculum-Negro students are invariably at a disadvantage.”15 Of the 48 states that made up the United States at the time of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, seventeen states and the District of Columbia required school segregation, four states permitted school segregation to a certain degree, sixteen states prohibited school segregation and eleven states had no specific laws on school segregation.16 The history of African American struggles for educational equality dating back to the Roberts v. The City of Boston case in 1849 to the various school segregation laws of the 48 states of the Union in 1954 laid the groundwork for Oliver Brown et al.17 to have their case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States.

REFERENCES Anderson, J.D. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Dougherty, J. 2004. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Franklin, V.P. 1979. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900-1950. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ladson-Billings, G. 2004. Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price we Paid for Brown. Educational Researcher 33, no. 7: 3-13. Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Chief Justice Warren, Opinion of the Court, Supreme Court of the United States. 15

Cited in Ravitch, p. 22 from To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). 16 Data obtained from analysis of a map showing the status of school segregation law prior to the Brown v. Board case that is presented in Dougherty, 37. 17 Other legal case included with the Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case included: Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina), Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.), Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware), and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia).

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Supreme Court Collection, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO.html. Orfield, G. 1995. Public Opinion and School Desegregation. Teachers College Record 96, no. 4: 654-670. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Justice Brown Opinion of the Court, Supreme Court of the United States. Supreme Court Collection, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZS.html. Ravitch, D. 1983. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. New York: Basic Books, Inc. The African American Registry. 2005. Roberts vs. City of Boston begins. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1462/Roberts_vs_City_of_ Boston_begins.

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