Q: Can you be a federal judge and NOT have info or know what the rule of law is on this racist educational decision … 1954

Tell Congress to Say NO to Wendy Vitter

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

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To commemorate the historic occasion, Color Of Change is proud to present a special episode of our Black History Now Live Series in partnership with the National Education Association. Join us on Friday, May 17, 2024, for the premiere of “Educating for Equity: Brown v Board of Education 70 Years Later,” a virtual commemoration, as we delve into the legacy of this groundbreaking case and its relevance to present-day challenges facing our public education system.

The episode will feature interviews with esteemed intergenerational thought leaders, including:

• Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change
• Rebecca S. “Becky” Pringle, president of the National Education Association
• Marley Dias, student activist, author, NEA ambassador and founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks
• George “Conscious” Lee, educator, content creator and host of the “Black History, For Real” podcast
• Alice O’Brien, general counsel of the National Education Association
• Erin Freeman, a public school educator based in Florida

The episode explores the critical intersections of race, and education, how the end of affirmative action is impacting education and how we can continue to advocate for the protection of public education and the inclusion of Black history in our classrooms.

Tune into Color Of Change’s YouTube and Facebook channels on Friday, May, 17, at noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT to watch the premiere of “Educating for Equity: Brown v Board of Education 70 Years Later” as we honor the legacy of the landmark decision and look at what’s ahead.

Together, through our ongoing partnerships with organizations like the
National Education Association, Color Of Change has demonstrated our commitment
to defending Black history and education and trained 1,100 local leaders across
the country in the last seven months.

Working together, we can build power to make positive changes in our education
system that our communities want and our children deserve.

Until Justice Is Real,
The Color Of Change Team

1770 – Marie Antoinette, at age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

1866 – The U.S. Congress authorized the first 5-cent piece to be minted.

1868 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during the Senate impeachment, by one vote.

1879 – The Treaty of Gandamak between Russia and England set up the Afghan state.

1881 – In Germany, the first electric tram for the public started service.

1888 – The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc was demonstrated by Emile Berliner.

1888 – The capitol of Texas was dedicated in Austin.

1910 – The U.S. Bureau of Mines was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1914 – The American Horseshoe Pitchers Association (AHPA) was formed in Kansas City, Kansas.

1920 – Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.

1929 – The first Academy Awards were held in Hollywood.

1939 – The Philadelphia Athletics and the Cleveland Indians met at Shibe Park in Philadelphia for the first baseball game to be played under the lights in the American League.

1946 – “Annie Get Your Gun” opened on Broadway.

1946 – Jack Mullin showed the world the first magnetic tape recorder.

1948 – The body of CBS News correspondent George Polk was found in Solonika Bay in Greece. It had been a week after he’d disappeared.

1960 – A Big Four summit in Paris collapsed due to the American U-2 spy plane incident.

1960 – Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratory in California, demonstrated the first working laser.

1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth, ending Project Mercury.

1965 – Spaghetti-O’s were sold for the first time.

1969 – Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.

1971 – U.S. postage for a one-ounce first class stamp was increased from 6 to 8 cents.

1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1977 – Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling on top of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.

1985 – Michael Jordan was named Rookie of the Year in the NBA.

1987 – The Bobro 400 set sail from New York Harbor with 3,200 tons of garbage. The barge travelled 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump its load. It returned to New York Harbor after 8 weeks with the same load.

1988 – A report released by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that nicotine was addictive in similar was as heroin and cocaine.

1988 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police do not have to have a search warrant to search discarded garbage.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

1992 – The Endeavour space shuttle landed safely after its maiden voyage.

1996 – Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

1997 – In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko gave control of the country to rebel forces ending 32 years of autocratic rule.

2000 – U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was nominated to run for U.S. Senator in New York. She was the first U.S.first lady to run for public office.

2005 – Sony Corp. unveiled three styles of its new PlayStation 3 video game machine.

TWO DECISIONS IN THE FIGHT FOR EQUALITY AND JUSTICEPreview

Lonnie Bunch, museum director, historian, lecturer, and author, is proud to present A Page from Our American Story, a regular on-line series for Museum supporters. It will showcase individuals and events in the African American experience, placing these stories in the context of a larger story — our American story.

A Page From Our American Story

This month, as schoolchildren across the nation look forward to the beginning of summer vacation, the National Museum of African American History and Culture marks the anniversaries of two landmark United States Supreme Court decisions that profoundly impacted access to education – one that legally sanctioned an era of appalling discrimination, and the second that resulted in a major step toward equality and justice for African Americans.

The first case was the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities. It came about after the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act in 1890, which mandated separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In response, a group of prominent black, white, and creole New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to fight for repeal of the law.

The Comité recruited Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, to take part in a case challenging the law. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket on an East Louisiana Railroad train in New Orleans and took a seat in a “whites only” car. He was asked to move to the blacks-only car, arrested when he refused, and remanded for trial. He was convicted and ordered to pay a $25 fine. Upon appeal, the Supreme Court of Louisiana upheld the ruling, setting the stage for a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Oral arguments in Plessy v. Ferguson were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Plessy’s attorneys built his case upon violation of his rights under the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal rights and the protection of those rights to all U.S citizens.

In the seven-to-one decision handed down on May 18, 1896, the Court rejected Plessy’s arguments, holding that as long as the separate facilities for the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a scathing dissent in which he predicted the court’s decision would become as infamous as the notorious 1857Dred Scott ruling that no African American, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship or petition the court for their freedom.

The impacts of the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy ruling were immediate and far-reaching – erasing legislative achievements of the Reconstruction Era, legitimizing state laws establishing racial segregation in the South (the Jim Crow system), and inspiring the spread of segregation laws and practices northward. These developments exacerbated already vast differences in funding for segregated school systems. As with other segregated facilities and institutions, schools for African Americans were consistently inferior to those for whites, contradicting the claims of “separate but equal” underlying the Plessy decision.

“Separate but equal” remained the standard doctrine in U.S. law until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. The case began in 1951 as a class action suit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas that called on the city’s Board of Education to reverse its policy of racial segregation. It was initiated by the Topeka chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the plaintiffs were 13 African American parents on behalf of their children. The named plaintiff was Oliver L. Brown, a welder and an assistant pastor at his local church, whose daughter had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to her segregated black school one mile away, while a white school was located just seven blocks from her house.

Citing the precedent set in Plessy, the District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, leading the plaintiffs to mount a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. The Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education combined the Brown case and four similar cases from various states, and NAACP Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall, later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, lead the team of attorneys that argued the case for the plaintiffs.

The Court heard the case in spring 1953 but was unable to decide the issue, and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953 at the urging of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, who wanted to build a consensus for an opinion outlawing segregation. After the September 1953 death of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who had been a major obstacle to securing such an opinion, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren told the justices that the Court had to overrule Plessy unanimously to head off massive Southern resistance, eventually convincing the remaining holdouts on the Court. Warren himself drafted the basic opinion, circulating and revising it until all the justices endorsed it.

On May 17, 1954, the Court handed down its unanimous 9-0 decision overturning Plessy as it applied to public education, stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, racial segregation laws were declared in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, paving the way for integration and winning a major victory for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

Many people today may not remember the details of these two landmark cases in the struggle for equality and justice. The National Museum of African American History and Culture was founded to ensure that this story and other important chapters in the African American experience are never forgotten. When the Museum opens its doors on September 24, 2016, we will bring major milestones like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education to life through compelling interactive exhibitions and our unsurpassed permanent collection of African American historical artifacts, including an entire Jim Crow-era segregated railway car and the dining room that was used by Brown family and NAACP Legal Defense Fund during preparation for the Brown case.

All the best,

Lonnie G. Bunch III
Founding Director
P.S. We can only reach our $270 million goal with your help. I hope you will consider becoming a Charter Member today.

To read past Our American Stories, visit our archives.