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Segregated schools in 1950

In 1950 the Reverend Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas, wanted to enroll his daughter, Linda Brown, in the school nearest his home (Lusane 26). The choices before him were the all-white school, only four blocks away, or the black school that was two miles away and required travel (26). His effort to enroll his daughter was spurned (26). In 1951, backed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he filed suit against the Topeka school board and his case was joined by three other similar cases that were presented before the Supreme Court as one consolidated case (26). On May 17, 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court issued one of its most historic rulings. The single most important Supreme Court case of the twentieth century Brown v. Board of Education forever changed American society and greatly impacted the lives of all African Americans psychologically, socially, and historically. One of the arguments for the...... Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas : the late 1950s saw the famous Brown vs. Brown case that ruled against segregation in schools. But it would take a lot more than paper legislation to have any effective change.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, came the first major confrontation to desegregate schools. Nine black teenagers were set to attend a school in Little Rock and the state Governor Orval Faubus, a Democrat, had initially been elected with the backing of groups like the NAACP and the trade union movement. But, once in office he soon shed his liberal image. Playing on the discontent that existed amongst whites to integration, he became a hardened segregationist. Refusing to enforce any law to integrate schools. Racist mobs rallied to physically stop the black teenagers getting to the school. Pressure forced President Eisenhower to act. He sent Federal troops to ensure passage for the blacks students. The fact that the state had been forced to intervene represented another victory for the black movement and greatly demoralized the racists.

The 1950s was a great success for the civil rights movement; there were a number of developments which greatly improved the lives of black people in America and really started the civil rights movement, as black people became more confident and willing to fight for their cause. The first big development of the ‘50s came almost immediately at the turn of the decade, when the Supreme Court essentially overturned the verdict reached in the Plessy vs. Ferguson trial of 1896. Thanks to the NAACP lawyers the Supreme Court made three decisions regarding civil rights which not only showed that at times the government was on the blacks side, but also almost completely overturned the ‘separate but equal’ idea that had been followed for 54 years.