120-483: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson , which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate
240-724: A chairperson. The board elects one person as the president and one as the chief executive officer for the organization. Julian Bond , civil rights movement activist and former Georgia State Senator, was chairman until replaced in February 2010 by healthcare administrator Roslyn Brock . For decades in the first half of the 20th century, the organization was effectively led by its executive secretary, who acted as chief operating officer. James Weldon Johnson and Walter F. White , who served in that role successively from 1920 to 1958, were much more widely known as NAACP leaders than were presidents during those years. The organization has never had
360-452: A feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone. The Court supported this conclusion with citations—in a footnote, not the main text of the opinion—to several psychological studies concluding that segregating black children made them feel inferior and interfered with their learning. These studies included those of Kenneth and Mamie Clark , whose experiments in
480-686: A forerunner to the NAACP. On May 30, 1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House; they created an organization of more than 40, identifying as the National Negro Committee . Among other founding members were Lillian Wald , a nurse who had founded the Henry Street Settlement where the conference took place. Du Bois played a key role in organizing
600-553: A key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems following Mendez v. Westminster . However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a White House dinner, where the president told him: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about
720-455: A lawyer and clergyman, was elected his successor. In the 1990s, the NAACP ran into debt. The dismissal of two leading officials further added to the picture of an organization in deep crisis. After such, Rupert Richardson began her term as president of the NAACP in 1992. In 1993, the NAACP's Board of Directors narrowly selected Reverend Benjamin Chavis over Reverend Jesse Jackson to fill
840-466: A major get-out-the-vote offensive in the 2000 U.S. presidential elections . 10.5 million African Americans cast their ballots in the election; this was one million more than four years before. The NAACP's effort was credited by observers as playing a significant role in Democrat Al Gore 's winning several states where the election was close, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. During
960-483: A new constitution in 1890. Through 1908, Southern legislatures, dominated by white Southern Democrats , ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. In practice, this and the Lily-white movement caused the exclusion of most blacks and many poor whites from the political system in southern states. Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in
1080-547: A progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation. In Moberly, Missouri , the schools were desegregated, as ordered. However, after 1955, the African-American teachers from the local "negro school" were not retained; this was ascribed to poor performance. They appealed their dismissal in Naomi Brooks et al., Appellants, v. School District of City of Moberly, Missouri, Etc., et al. ; but it
1200-444: A result, several cities refused to allow the film to open. The NAACP began to lead lawsuits targeting disfranchisement and racial segregation early in its history. It played a significant part in the challenge of Guinn v. United States (1915) to Oklahoma 's discriminatory grandfather clause , which effectively disenfranchised most black citizens while exempting many whites from certain voter registration requirements. It persuaded
1320-593: A signatory of the UNESCO declaration. The United States and the Soviet Union were both at the height of the Cold War during this time, and U.S. officials, including Supreme Court justices, were highly aware of the harm that segregation and racism were doing to America's international image. When Justice William O. Douglas traveled to India in 1950, the first question he was asked was, "Why does America tolerate
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#17327908160401440-480: A system of integrated schools with White leadership. According to historian Michael Fultz, "In many ways the South moved faster, with more 'deliberate speed' in displacing Black educators than it did in desegregating schools." Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd organized a campaign to generate legal obstacles to the implementation of desegregation. In September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out
1560-469: A time with limited resources and internal conflict and disbanded in 1910. Seven of the members of the Niagara Movement joined the Board of Directors of the NAACP, founded in 1909. Although both organizations shared membership and overlapped for a time, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization. Historically, it is considered to have had a more radical platform than the NAACP. The Niagara Movement
1680-410: A unanimous opinion. Although most justices were immediately convinced, Warren spent some time after this famous speech convincing everyone to sign onto the opinion. Justice Jackson dropped his concurrence and Reed finally decided to drop his dissent. The final decision was unanimous. Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of
1800-542: A violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in "measurable inequalities" between all white and black schools and forced the Court to look to the effects of segregation itself. The Court therefore framed the case around the more general question of whether the principle of "separate but equal" was constitutional when applied to public education. We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on
1920-475: A woman president, except on a temporary basis, and there have been calls to name one. Lorraine C. Miller served as interim president after Benjamin Jealous stepped down. Maya Wiley was rumored to be in line for the position in 2013, but Cornell William Brooks was selected. Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action. Local chapters are supported by the "Branch and Field Services" department and
2040-514: Is headquartered in Baltimore , with additional regional offices in New York , Michigan , Georgia , Maryland, Texas , Colorado , and California . Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. In the U.S., the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board led by
2160-546: Is on trial both at home and abroad, ... the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of adulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile." In 1951, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas , in the United States District Court for
2280-472: Is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education. As of 2007 , the NAACP had approximately 425,000 paying and non-paying members. The NAACP's non-current records are housed at the Library of Congress , which has served as the organization's official repository since 1964. The records held there comprise approximately five million items spanning the NAACP's history from
2400-560: Is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes." Nevertheless, the Justice Department sided with the African-American plaintiffs. While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give
2520-651: The Arkansas Army National Guard to block the entry of nine black students, later known as the " Little Rock Nine " after the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School . President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by asserting federal control over the Arkansas National Guard and deploying troops from the U.S. Army 's 101st Airborne Division stationed at Fort Campbell to ensure the black students could safely register for and attend classes. Also in 1957, Florida's response
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#17327908160402640-777: The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill . In alliance with the American Federation of Labor , the NAACP led the successful fight to prevent the nomination of John Johnston Parker to the Supreme Court, based on his support for denying the vote to blacks and his anti-labor rulings. It organized legal support for the Scottsboro Boys . The NAACP lost most of the internecine battles with the Communist Party and International Labor Defense over
2760-674: The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (1955) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed". In the Southern United States , the reaction to Brown among most white people
2880-533: The Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the Brown ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D. E. Hudgins Jr., a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to
3000-473: The Supreme Court . United States courts of appeals may also make such decisions, particularly if the Supreme Court chooses not to review the case. Although many cases from state supreme courts are significant in developing the law of that state, only a few are so revolutionary that they announce standards that many other state courts then choose to follow. NAACP The National Association for
3120-606: The Supreme Court of the United States to rule in Buchanan v. Warley in 1917 that state and local governments cannot officially segregate African Americans into separate residential districts. The Court's opinion reflected the jurisprudence of property rights and freedom of contract as embodied in the earlier precedent it established in Lochner v. New York . It also played a role in desegregating recreational activities via
3240-505: The U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as " separate but equal ". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown , and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement , and a model for many future impact litigation cases. The case began in 1951 when the public school system in Topeka, Kansas , refused to enroll
3360-615: The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard the case and ruled against the Browns, relying on the precedent of Plessy and its "separate but equal" doctrine. The Browns, represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall , appealed the ruling directly to the Supreme Court. In May 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Browns. The Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore laws that impose them violate
3480-745: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 , which provided for protection of the franchise, with a role for federal oversight and administrators in places where voter turnout was historically low. Under its anti-desegregation director J. Edgar Hoover , the FBI 's COINTELPRO program targeted civil rights groups, including the NAACP, for infiltration, disruption and discreditation. Kivie Kaplan became NAACP President in 1966. After his death in 1975, scientist W. Montague Cobb took over until 1982. Roy Wilkins retired as executive director in 1977, and Benjamin Hooks ,
3600-418: The gold standard , and anti-imperialism . Storey consistently and aggressively championed civil rights , not only for blacks but also for Native Americans and immigrants (he opposed immigration restrictions). Du Bois continued to play a pivotal leadership role in the organization, serving as editor of the association's magazine, The Crisis , which had a circulation of more than 30,000. The Crisis
3720-568: The " separate but equal " doctrine announced by the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson . The NAACP's Baltimore chapter, under president Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson , challenged segregation in Maryland state professional schools by supporting the 1935 Murray v. Pearson case argued by Marshall. Houston's victory in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938) led to the formation of
Brown v. Board of Education - Misplaced Pages Continue
3840-553: The "Youth and College" department. The "Legal" department focuses on court cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government, or education. The Washington, D.C. , bureau is responsible for lobbying the U.S. government, and the Education Department works to improve public education at the local, state, and federal levels. The goal of the Health Division
3960-582: The 1940s had suggested that black American children from segregated environments preferred white dolls over black dolls . The Court then concluded its relatively short opinion by declaring that segregated public education was inherently unequal, violated the Equal Protection Clause, and therefore was unconstitutional: 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
4080-462: The 2000 presidential election, Lee Alcorn , president of the Dallas NAACP branch, criticized Al Gore's selection of Senator Joe Lieberman for his vice-presidential candidate because Lieberman was Jewish. On a gospel talk radio show on station KHVN , Alcorn stated, "If we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? Does it have anything to do with
4200-517: The 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination". NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts, and litigation strategies developed by its legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct , the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses
4320-531: The 60 years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation . Such state policies had been endorsed by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which held that as long as the separate facilities for separate races were equal, state segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment 's Equal Protection Clause ("no State shall ... deny to any person ...
4440-504: The Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois , Mary White Ovington , Moorfield Storey , Ida B. Wells , Lillian Wald , and Henry Moskowitz . Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins . Its mission in
4560-519: The Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The Court said the question was complicated by
4680-639: The Civil Rights Movement by pressing for civil rights legislation. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963. That fall, President John F. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress before he was assassinated. President Lyndon B. Johnson worked hard to persuade Congress to pass a civil rights bill aimed at ending racial discrimination in employment, education and public accommodations, and succeeded in gaining passage in July 1964. He followed that with passage of
4800-865: The Civil Rights Movement while it was barred from Alabama. New organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, in 1957) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, in 1960) rose up with different approaches to activism. Rather than relying on litigation and legislation, these newer groups employed direct action and mass mobilization to advance the rights of African Americans. Roy Wilkins , NAACP's executive director, clashed repeatedly with Martin Luther King ;Jr. and other civil rights leaders over questions of strategy and leadership within
4920-462: The Court's opinion in Brown made no reference to these considerations of foreign policy, there is no doubt that they significantly influenced the decision." In spring 1953, the court heard the case, but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks. The court reargued
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5040-727: The Deep South made no moves to obey the judicial command, and in some districts there can be no doubt that the Desegregation decision hardened resistance to integration proposals. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd organized the Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. For several decades after the Brown decision, African-American teachers, principals, and other school staff who worked in segregated Black schools were fired or laid off as Southerners sought to create
5160-492: The District of Kansas . The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools due to a 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The plaintiffs had been recruited by
5280-712: The Lee-Jackson state holiday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the closures violated the state constitution, and a panel of federal judges ruled they violated the U.S. Constitution. In early February 1959, both the Arlington County (also subject to an NAACP lawsuit, and which had lost its elected school board pursuant to other parts of the Stanley Plan) and Norfolk schools desegregated peacefully. Soon, all counties reopened and integrated with
5400-640: The Legal Defense Fund in 1939. The campaign for desegregation culminated in a unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that held state-sponsored segregation of public elementary schools was unconstitutional . Bolstered by that victory, the NAACP pushed for full desegregation throughout the South. NAACP activists were excited about the judicial strategy. Starting on December 5, 1955, NAACP activists, including Edgar Nixon , its local president, and Rosa Parks , who had served as
5520-566: The NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff , Jacob Billikopf , and Rabbi Stephen Wise ." In its early years, the NAACP was based in New York City . It concentrated on litigation in efforts to overturn disenfranchisement of blacks, which had been established in every southern state by 1908, excluding most from the political system, and the Jim Crow statutes that legalized racial segregation . In 1913,
5640-540: The NAACP had been infiltrated by Communists. To distance themselves from these accusations, the NAACP purged suspected Communists from its membership, according to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 's website. The board of directors of the NAACP created the Legal Defense Fund in 1939 specifically for tax purposes. It functioned as the NAACP legal department. Intimidated by the Department of
5760-477: The NAACP organized opposition to President Woodrow Wilson 's introduction of racial segregation into federal government policy, workplaces, and hiring. African-American women's clubs were among the organizations that protested Wilson's changes, but the administration did not alter its assuagement of Southern cabinet members and the Southern bloc in Congress. By 1914, the group had 6,000 members and 50 branches. It
5880-412: The NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000. In 1920, Johnson was elected head of the organization. Over the next ten years, the NAACP escalated its lobbying and litigation efforts, becoming internationally known for its advocacy of equal rights and equal protection for the "American Negro". The NAACP devoted much of its energy during the interwar years to fight the lynching of blacks throughout
6000-742: The South as a result of such legislation. Men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not "qualify" to register. White-dominated legislatures also passed segregation and Jim Crow laws. Because hotels in the US were segregated, the men convened in Canada at the Erie Beach Hotel on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario . As a result,
6120-646: The South were unable to elect representatives of their choice to office. The NAACP regularly displayed a black flag stating "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" from the window of its offices in New York to mark each lynching. It organized the first of the two 1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions in support of the Costigan-Wagner Bill , having previously widely published an account of the Lynching of Henry Lowry , as An American Lynching , in support of
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#17327908160406240-618: The Supreme Court ruled against the white primary. Although states had to retract legislation related to the white primaries, the legislatures soon came up with new methods to severely limit the franchise for blacks. During the Second Red Scare the NAACP was often linked to Communism by right-wing politicians. The House Un-American Activities Committee , the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security , and security agencies sought to prove to
6360-661: The Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, the Legal and Educational Defense Fund, Inc., became a separate legal entity in 1957, although it was clear that it was to operate in accordance with NAACP policy. After 1961 serious disputes emerged between the two organizations, creating considerable confusion in the eyes and minds of the public. By the 1940s, the federal courts were amenable to lawsuits regarding constitutional rights, against which Congressional action
6480-484: The U.S. In the decades around the turn of the century, the rate of lynchings of blacks, particularly men, was at an all-time high. Mary White Ovington , journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz met in New York City in January 1909 to work on organizing for black civil rights. They sent out solicitations for support to more than 60 prominent Americans, and set a meeting date for February 12, 1909. This
6600-477: The U.S. Supreme Court justices. The 13 plaintiffs were: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson , Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, Vivian Scales, and Lucinda Todd. The last surviving plaintiff, Zelma Henderson, died in Topeka, on May 20, 2008, at age 88. The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing
6720-642: The U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson . Judge Walter Huxman wrote the opinion for the three-judge District Court panel, including nine "findings of fact," based on the evidence presented at trial. Although finding number eight stated that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on negro children, the court denied relief on the ground that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers. This finding would be specifically cited in
6840-560: The United States by working for legislation, lobbying, and educating the public. The organization sent its field secretary Walter F. White to Phillips County , Arkansas, in October 1919, to investigate the Elaine Race Riot . Roving white vigilantes killed more than 200 black tenant farmers and federal troops after a deputy sheriff's attack on a union meeting of sharecroppers left one white man dead. White published his report on
6960-655: The United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills." The brief also quoted a letter by Secretary of State Dean Acheson lamenting that "the United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country." British barrister and parliamentarian Anthony Lester has written that "Although
7080-409: The actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such
7200-411: The appropriate remedy should be. This became the case known as Brown II , described below. Americans mostly cheered the Court's decision in Brown , but most white Southerners decried it. Many white Southerners viewed Brown as "a day of catastrophe—a Black Monday —a day something like Pearl Harbor ." In the face of entrenched Southern opposition, progress on integrating American schools
7320-528: The basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? In answer, the Court held that it did. The Court ruled that state-mandated segregation, even if implemented in schools of otherwise equal quality, is inherently unequal because of its psychological impact upon the segregated children. To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates
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#17327908160407440-432: The case at the behest of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter , who used reargument as a stalling tactic, to allow the court to gather a consensus around a Brown opinion that would outlaw segregation. The justices in support of desegregation spent much effort convincing those who initially intended to dissent to join a unanimous opinion. Although the legal effect would be same for a majority rather than unanimous decision, it
7560-445: The case of Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County . List of landmark court decisions in the United States The following landmark court decisions in the United States contains landmark court decisions which changed the interpretation of existing law in the United States . Such a decision may settle the law in more than one way: In the United States, landmark court decisions come most frequently from
7680-545: The case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that "the existence of discrimination against minority groups in
7800-528: The cases of Sweatt v. Painter , 339 U.S. 629 (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 U.S. 637 (1950), suggesting that racial segregation was inherently unequal (at least in some settings), which paved the way for Brown . The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that the system of racial separation in all schools, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans. Brown
7920-571: The chapter's Secretary, helped organize a bus boycott in Montgomery , Alabama. This was designed to protest segregation on the city's buses, two-thirds of whose riders were black. The boycott lasted 381 days. In 1956 the South Carolina legislature created an anti-NAACP oath, and teachers who refused to take the oath lost their positions. After twenty-one Black teachers at the Elloree Training School refused to comply, White school officials dismissed them. Their dismissal led to Bryan v. Austin in 1957, which became an important civil rights case. In Alabama,
8040-433: The closest neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and redirected to the segregated schools. The case "Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. The lawyers, and the National Chapter of the NAACP, also felt that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by
8160-436: The control of those cases and the legal strategy to be pursued in that case. The organization also brought litigation to challenge the " white primary " system in the South. Southern state Democratic parties had created white-only primaries as another way of barring blacks from the political process. Since the Democrats dominated southern states, the primaries were the only competitive contests. In 1944 in Smith v. Allwright ,
8280-404: The county either had to leave the county to receive any education between 1959 and 1963, or received no education. All private schools in the region remained racially segregated. This lasted until 1964, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Prince Edward County's decision to provide tuition grants for private schools that only admitted whites violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, in
8400-424: The court. Reed was the last holdout and reportedly cried during the reading of the opinion. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Brown family and the other plaintiffs. The decision consists of a single opinion written by chief justice Earl Warren , which all the justices joined. The Court's opinion began by discussing whether the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868,
8520-418: The daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black school farther away. The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of
8640-528: The district court judge in Gebhart ordered that the black students be admitted to the white high school due to the substantial harm of segregation and the differences that made the separate schools unequal. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther , the United Auto Workers donated $ 75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court. The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall —who
8760-529: The education of black people was forbidden by law. The Court contrasted this with the situation in 1954: "Today, education is perhaps the most important function of our local and state governments." The Court concluded that, in making its ruling, it would have to "consider public education in light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation." During the segregation era, it
8880-871: The enrollment of two black students in what became known as the " Stand in the Schoolhouse Door " incident. Wallace sought to uphold his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" promise he had given in his 1963 inaugural address. Wallace moved aside only when confronted by General Henry V. Graham of the Alabama National Guard , whom President John F. Kennedy had ordered to intervene. Native American communities were also heavily impacted by segregation laws with native children also being prohibited from attending white institutions. Native American children considered light-complexioned were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from
9000-484: The equal protection of the laws"). Racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Beginning in the 1930s, a legal strategy was pursued, led by scholars at Howard University and activists at the NAACP , that sought to undermine states' public education segregation by first focusing on the graduate school setting. This led to success in
9120-536: The event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was Ida B. Wells-Barnett , an African-American journalist and anti- lynching crusader. Wells-Barnett addressed the conference on the history of lynching in the United States and called for action to publicize and prosecute such crimes. The members chose the new organization's name to be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and elected its first officers: The NAACP
9240-399: The exception of Prince Edward County that took the extreme step of choosing not to appropriate any funding for its school system, thus forcing all its public schools to close, although Prince Edward County provided tuition grants for all students, regardless of their race, to use for private, nonsectarian education. Since no private schools existed for blacks within the county, black children in
9360-609: The group came to be known as the Niagara Movement . A year later, three non-African-Americans joined the group: journalist William English Walling , a wealthy socialist; and social workers Mary White Ovington and Henry Moskowitz . Moskowitz, who was Jewish, was then also Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture . They met in 1906 at Storer College , Harpers Ferry, West Virginia , and in 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts . The fledgling group struggled for
9480-408: The historic Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan after plaintiff Sarah Elizabeth Ray was wrongfully discriminated against when attempting to board a ferry. In 1916, chairman Joel Spingarn invited James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U.S. consul to Venezuela and a noted African-American scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing
9600-747: The issue and make recommendations. The commission recommended giving localities "broad discretion" in meeting the new judicial requirements. However, in 1956, a special session of the Virginia legislature adopted a legislative package which allowed the governor to simply close all schools under desegregation orders from federal courts. In early 1958, newly elected Governor J. Lindsay Almond closed public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County rather than comply with desegregation orders, leaving 10,000 children without schools despite efforts of various parent groups. However, he reconsidered when on
9720-466: The law. The larger conference resulted in a more diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly white. Moorfield Storey , a white attorney from a Boston abolitionist family, served as the president of the NAACP from its founding to 1915. At its founding, the NAACP had one African American on its executive board, Du Bois. Storey was a long-time classical liberal and Grover Cleveland Democrat who advocated laissez-faire free markets,
9840-408: The lawsuit by a childhood friend, Charles Scott. Brown's daughter Linda Carol Brown , a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary , her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary , a white school, was seven blocks from her house. As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in
9960-590: The leadership of the Topeka NAACP . Notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett ; Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd . The named African-American plaintiff, Oliver Brown , was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad , as well as an assistant pastor at his local church. He was convinced to join
10080-508: The lynching of Negroes?" Douglas later wrote that he had learned from his travels that "the attitude of the United States toward its colored minorities is a powerful factor in our relations with India." Chief Justice Earl Warren , nominated to the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower , echoed Douglas's concerns in a 1954 speech to the American Bar Association , proclaiming that "Our American system like all others
10200-485: The major social and governmental changes that had taken place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It observed that public schools had been uncommon in the American South in the late 1860s. At that time, Southern white children whose families could afford schooling usually attended private schools, while the education of Southern black children was "almost nonexistent", to the point that in some Southern states
10320-521: The military, the criminal justice system, employment, housing). The Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York , featured many American innovations and achievements, but also included a disparaging caricature of slave life in the South as well as a depiction of life in Africa, called "Old Plantation" and "Darkest Africa", respectively. A local African-American woman, Mary Talbert of Ohio ,
10440-530: The movement. The NAACP continued to use the Supreme Court's decision in Brown to press for desegregation of schools and public facilities throughout the country. Daisy Bates , president of its Arkansas state chapter, spearheaded the campaign by the Little Rock Nine to integrate the public schools in Little Rock , Arkansas. By the mid-1960s, the NAACP had regained some of its prominence in
10560-603: The necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment , held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment. Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that the court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build
10680-528: The next nine years. When Medgar Evers sued in 1963 to desegregate schools in Jackson, Mississippi , White Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith murdered him. Two subsequent trials resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not convicted of the murder until 1994. In June 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace personally blocked the door to the University of Alabama 's Foster Auditorium to prevent
10800-413: The once common term colored people , referring to those with some African ancestry. The NAACP bestows annual awards on African Americans in three categories: Image Awards are for achievements in the arts and media, Theatre Awards are for achievements in theatre and stage, and Spingarn Medals are for outstanding achievements of any kind. Its headquarters are in Baltimore , Maryland . The NAACP
10920-509: The only case of the five originating from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a 450-student walkout of Moton High School . The Gebhart case was the only one where a trial court, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court , found that discrimination was unlawful; in all the other cases the plaintiffs had lost as the original courts had found discrimination to be lawful. The Kansas case
11040-596: The organization's funds. In 1996, Congressman Kweisi Mfume , a Democratic Congressman from Maryland and former head of the Congressional Black Caucus , was named the organization's president. Three years later strained finances forced the organization to drastically cut its staff, from 250 in 1992 to 50. In the second half of the 1990s, the organization restored its finances, permitting the NAACP National Voter Fund to launch
11160-436: 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. The Court did not close with an order to implement the integration of the schools of the various jurisdictions. Instead, it requested the parties re-appear before the Court the following Term to hold arguments on what
11280-417: The position of executive director. A controversial figure, Chavis was ousted eighteen months later by the same board. They accused him of using NAACP funds for an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit. Following the dismissal of Chavis, Myrlie Evers-Williams narrowly defeated NAACP chairperson William Gibson for president in 1995, after Gibson was accused of overspending and mismanagement of
11400-435: The previously named whites Henry Moskowitz , Mary White Ovington , William English Walling (the wealthy Socialist son of a former slave-holding family), Florence Kelley , a social reformer and friend of Du Bois; Oswald Garrison Villard , and Charles Edward Russell , a renowned muckraker and close friend of Walling. Russell helped plan the NAACP and had served as acting chairman of the National Negro Committee (1909),
11520-610: The riot in the Chicago Daily News . The NAACP organized the appeals for twelve black men sentenced to death a month later based on the fact that testimony used in their convictions was obtained by beatings and electric shocks. It gained a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision in Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86 (1923) that significantly expanded the Federal courts' oversight of the states' criminal justice systems in
11640-555: The same band were still barred from riding the same buses. Tribal leaders, having learned about Martin Luther King Jr. 's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted him for assistance. King promptly responded to the tribal leaders and through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved. In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting Brown , but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954,
11760-449: The state responded by effectively barring the NAACP from operating within its borders because of its refusal to divulge a list of its members. The NAACP feared members could be fired or face violent retaliation for their activities. Although the Supreme Court eventually overturned the state's action in NAACP v. Alabama , 357 U.S. 449 (1958), the NAACP lost its leadership role in
11880-681: The subsequent Supreme Court opinion of this case. The case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina ), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia ), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware ), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington, D.C. ). All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case,
12000-463: The time of its founding until 2003. In 2011, the NAACP teamed with the digital repository ProQuest to digitize and host online the earlier portion of its archives, through 1972 – nearly two million pages of documents, from the national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country, which offer first-hand insight into the organization's work related to such crucial issues as lynching, school desegregation, and discrimination in all its aspects (in
12120-469: The two sets of schools [were] comparable." The lower court observed that "colored children in many instances are required to travel much greater distances than they would be required to travel could they attend a white school" but also noted that the school district "transports colored children to and from school free of charge" and that "no such service [was] provided to white children." In the Delaware case
12240-482: The years to come. White investigated eight race riots and 41 lynchings for the NAACP and directed its study Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States . The NAACP also worked for more than a decade seeking federal anti-lynching legislation, but the Solid South of white Democrats voted as a bloc against it or used the filibuster in the Senate to block passage. Because of disenfranchisement, African Americans in
12360-597: Was "noisy and stubborn", especially in the Deep South where racial segregation was deeply entrenched in society. Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as " massive resistance ", created by Senator Harry F. Byrd , in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in the case of Cooper v. Aaron , the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown , and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling. For much of
12480-587: Was appalled by the exhibit, as a similar one in Paris highlighted black achievements. She informed W. E. B. Du Bois of the situation, and a coalition began to form. In 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing African Americans and possible strategies and solutions. They were particularly concerned by the Southern states ' disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippi 's passage of
12600-421: Was common for black schools to have fewer resources and poorer facilities than white schools despite the equality required by the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Brown Court did not address this issue, however, probably because some of the school districts involved in the case had improved their black schools in order to "equalize" them with the quality of the white schools. This prevented the Court from finding
12720-500: Was felt that dissent could be used by segregation supporters as a legitimizing counter-argument. Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued. Justices William O. Douglas , Hugo Black , Harold Hitz Burton , and Sherman Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy . Fred M. Vinson noted that Congress had not adopted desegregation legislation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and states' rights , and
12840-471: Was formed exclusively by African Americans. Four European Americans were among the founders of the NAACP, they included Mary White Ovington , Henry Moskowitz , William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard . The Race Riot of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois , the state capital and Abraham Lincoln 's hometown, was a catalyst showing the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in
12960-430: Was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out." Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to judicial activism and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability. Chief Justice Vinson had been
13080-448: Was incorporated a year later in 1911. The association's charter expressed its mission: To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before
13200-410: Was influenced by UNESCO 's 1950 Statement, signed by a wide variety of internationally renowned scholars, titled The Race Question . This declaration denounced previous attempts at scientifically justifying racism as well as morally condemning racism. Another work that the Supreme Court cited was Gunnar Myrdal 's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Myrdal had been
13320-544: Was influential in winning the right of African Americans to serve as military officers in World War ;I . Six hundred African-American officers were commissioned and 700,000 men registered for the draft. The following year, the NAACP organized a nationwide protest, with marches in numerous cities, against D. W. Griffith 's silent movie The Birth of a Nation , a film that glamorized the Ku Klux Klan . As
13440-470: Was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln , who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the first large meeting did not occur until three months later, the February date is often cited as the organization's founding date. The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, by a larger group including African Americans W. E. B. Du Bois , Ida B. Wells , Archibald Grimké , Mary Church Terrell , and
13560-476: Was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967—argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Assistant attorney general Paul Wilson—later distinguished emeritus professor of law at the University of Kansas —conducted the state's ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument. In December 1952, the Justice Department filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief in
13680-406: Was meant to abolish segregation in public education. The Court said that it had been unable to reach a conclusion on the question, even after hearing a second round of oral arguments from the parties' lawyers specifically on the historical sources. Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of
13800-423: Was mixed. Its legislature passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. But Florida Governor LeRoy Collins , though joining in the protest against the court decision, refused to sign it, arguing that the attempt to overturn the ruling must be done by legal methods. In Mississippi , fear of violence prevented any plaintiff from bringing a school desegregation suit for
13920-399: Was slow. The American political historian Robert G. McCloskey described: The reaction of the white South to this judicial onslaught on its institutions was noisy and stubborn. Certain "border states," which had formerly maintained segregated school systems, did integrate, and others permitted the token admission of a few Negro students to schools that had once been racially unmixed. However,
14040-411: Was unique among the group in that there was no contention of gross inferiority of the segregated schools' physical plant, curriculum, or staff. The district court found substantial equality as to all such factors. The lower court, in its opinion, noted that, in Topeka, "the physical facilities, the curricula, courses of study, qualification and quality of teachers, as well as other educational facilities in
14160-677: Was upheld, and SCOTUS declined to hear a further appeal. Virginia had one of the companion cases in Brown , involving the Prince Edward County schools. Significant opposition to the Brown verdict included U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd , who led the Byrd Organization and promised a strategy of Massive Resistance . Governor Thomas Stanley , a member of the Byrd Organization, appointed the Gray Commission , 32 Democrats led by state senator Garland Gray , to study
14280-571: Was used both for news reporting and for publishing African-American poetry and literature. During the organization's campaigns against lynching, Du Bois encouraged the writing and performance of plays and other expressive literature about this issue. The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing. Jewish historian Howard Sachar 's book A History of Jews in America notes "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of
14400-472: Was virtually impossible. With the rise of private corporate litigators such as the NAACP to bear the expense, civil suits became the pattern in modern civil rights litigation, and the public face of the Civil Rights Movement . The NAACP's Legal department, headed by Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall , undertook a campaign spanning several decades to bring about the reversal of
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