IB History Segregation and Education Notes

The legal foundations of segregation

1. After the Civil War, the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments promised equality and citizenship for formerly enslaved people.
2. The end of Reconstruction (1877) allowed Southern states to pass Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in schools, transport, and public facilities.
3. Jim Crow laws were reinforced by literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses that effectively disenfranchised Black voters across the South.
4. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that racial segregation was constitutional under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
   1. Homer Plessy challenged a Louisiana law requiring separate railway carriages; the Court said segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
   2. Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, declaring "our Constitution is color-blind" - a phrase later used by civil rights lawyers.
5. Plessy gave constitutional backing to segregation for nearly 60 years, affecting every area of Southern life - especially education.

Inequality in school funding

1. Southern states systematically underfunded Black schools; in Mississippi (1940s), per-pupil spending for white students was four times that of Black students.
2. Black schools received outdated textbooks, lacked science equipment, and operated in overcrowded, dilapidated buildings.
3. Black teachers were paid significantly less; in South Carolina (1945), white teachers earned nearly twice the salary of their Black counterparts.
4. School bus transport was routinely denied to Black children, who often walked miles to attend distant, segregated schools.
5. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, the school board spent $179 per white pupil vs $43 per Black pupil - one of the cases later bundled into Brown.
6. The Jim Crow system ensured that educational inequality reinforced economic and social subordination across generations.

The NAACP legal strategy

1. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) adopted a legal strategy to dismantle segregation through the courts rather than direct protest.
2. Charles Hamilton Houston, dean of Howard Law School, devised the incremental approach - targeting graduate and professional schools first.
   1. Houston believed exposing the lie of "equal" facilities would eventually force the Court to overturn Plessy.
   2. Houston filmed conditions in Southern Black schools to document the gap between "separate" and "equal" - footage used in NAACP fundraising.
3. Thurgood Marshall, Houston's protege, became the NAACP's chief counsel and argued the key cases that chipped away at Plessy.
4. Early victories included Murray v. Pearson (1936) and Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), which forced states to admit Black students to graduate schools.
5. The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (LDF), founded in 1940, became the organisational vehicle for the campaign - funded by donations and membership dues.

Sweatt and McLaurin - cracking the doctrine