civil rights - school desegregation

8/8/2019 Civil Rights - School Desegregation

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Jana P. Leonard

Lesson Plan

Brown v. The Board of Education

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Civil RightsDesegregation of Public SchoolsBrown v. The Board of Education

INTRODUCTION:

Lesson Subject: The civil rights movement in education in the United States

Length of Lesson: 90 minutes

Standards of Learning:

USII.9a The student will demonstrate knowledge of the key domestic andinternational issues during the second half of the twentieth and earlytwenty-first centuries by

a) examining the Civil Rights Movement and the changing role ofwomen.

USII.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical and geographicalanalysis and responsible citizenship, including the ability toa) analyze and interpret primary and secondary source documents to

increase understanding of events and life in United States historyfrom 1865 to the present;

b) make connections between the past and the present;c) sequence events in United States history from 1865 to the

present;d) interpret ideas and events from different historical perspectives;e) evaluate and debate issues orally and in writing;

h) interpret patriotic slogans and excerpts from notable speechesand documents;

i) identify the costs and benefits of specific choices made, includingthe consequences, both intended and unintended, of the decisionsand how people and nations responded to positive and negativeincentives.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

Students will be able to describe the status quo under „Separate But Equal‟ asauthorized under Plessy v. Ferguson .

Students will be able to visualize some of the impact of segregation on AmericanSociety.

Students will be able to distinguish between de facto and de jure segregation.

Students will recognize the consolidated cases that were addressed in the Court‟sdecision in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.



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Students will understand that, while Brown legally ended segregation in publicschools, the process of desegregation was both lengthy and contentious.

MATERIALS/TECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED PREPARATION

Computer with projector and screen and audio capabilities.

Powerpoint Presentation

Audio of Plessy Majority opinion excerpt

Audio of Plessy dissent excerpt

Video excerpt from PBS‟ The Supreme Court – Brown decision

Handout regarding the Green v. New Kent County Schools case (from National ParkService)

TEACHING AND LEARNING SEQUENCE:

Introduction/Anticipatory Set: (20 minutes)

Exercise designed to demonstrate the fallacies inherent in „separate but equal‟ as

well as provide insight into the mental and emotional effects of segregation.

As each student enters the classroom, they are given either a green index card

or a pink index card. There will be more green index cards than pink.

Once students have settled into their seats, teacher will instruct the students to

move and ask all those with green cards to move to the front of the classroom

and all those with pink to the rear of the classroom.

Once this has been accomplished, teacher will pass out a short (1 page) essay

on Brown v. The Board of Education . Each of the students with a green index

card will receive a copy of the essay. Depending on the number of pink cards,

only enough summaries will be distributed to accommodate fewer than half of the

pink. The students with pink will be instructed to share.

The teacher will allow 5 minutes for the students to read the essay. The teacher

will then ask that the papers be passed forward (anticipate a number of

complaints regarding lack of access to the material). Teacher will then announce

a quiz (here even greater protest is anticipated). After a minute or so of



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complaints, teacher will indicate that there will not be a quiz, but will then engage

the students in a discussion about discrimination.

Questions for students:

1. What seems „wrong‟ about this situation? 2. How did it feel when they were being discriminated against? When they

were not discriminated against, but observed the discrimination againsttheir classmates?

3. How did the fact that they had no opportunity to decide whether to be pinkor green make them feel?

Lesson Development (Use Accompanying PowerPoint Presentation): (60 minutes)

1. Using the powerpoint presentation, the teacher will set out the following terms

and ask the students to describe what each means: (SLIDE 2)

A. Segregation – the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by

enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social

intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory

means;

B. De facto Segregation – segregation that happens “by fact” rather than by

legal requirement. Teacher will ask the question as to how such segregation

might occur.

C. De jure Segregation - 1. By right; of right; by a lawful title: 2. by law.

Teacher will ask students how defacto segregation differs from dejure

segregation.

2. Status quo under Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A. Teacher will ask students about the date when the emancipation

proclamation was entered by executive order (1/1/1863) as well as the

date that the civil war ended (April 1865);

B. Teacher will briefly discuss the movement of African Americans to the

industrial cities of the north as well as their treatment in the south.

C. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (SLIDE 3) – Teacher will play the following

excerpt from the majority opinion in the case:



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Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties

of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

What then was the impact on the public?

1) Validated de jure segregation

2) Continued to be the law until 1965

3) Mandated separate but equal accomodations

4) Impacted lodging, water fountains, restaurants, schools

5) It is interesting to note, however, that the Plessy decision was not

unanimous. Justice Harlan dissented from the opinion, noting

(teacher will play recording of the below portion of the dissent):

I am of opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the

several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens now constituting a part of the political community called the People of the United States, for whom and by whom, through representatives, our government is administered.

Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by Congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.



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b. Named plaintiff, Briggs, was fired and moved to Florida for

next ten years to support his family.

3. Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware)

a. Delaware law mandated segregation in the schools;

b. 2 Plaintiffs (Belton and Beulah – cases were combined);

c. At issue:

1) Belton: Children forced to take public bus to decrepit inner

city school even though excellent white school in the

neighborhood;

2) Beulah: forced to walk to the decrepit school even though

students at the nearby „white‟ school were bused.

d. DE Supreme Court ordered integration of the schools, not

because they disagreed with „separate but equal‟ as

authorized under Plessy, but because they found that the

African-America schools were in no way equal to the schools

provided for white students.

e. NOTE that this is unique among the Brown cases, the appeal

was filed by the losing school system.

4. Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.)

a. A group of 11 young African-American students were denied

admittance into a newly built all white high school even though

there was plenty of room;

b. Basis of the argument was simply that segregation was illegal

as Congress had never authorized segregation in the DC

public schools.

5. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia)

a. After repeated requests for funding at R.R. Moton High School

(the all black high school in Farmville) were denied, the

students, angered at the conditions of the school held a

protest demanding segregation of the County schools.



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b Filing a lawsuit challenging Virginia‟s school segregation law,

their claim was denied by the Virginia Supreme Court but on

appeal to the federal court was combined with the other cases

into Brown .

D. The Decision – Teacher will play the embedded video from PBS‟s The

Supreme Court regarding the decision in Brown . (SLIDE 6)

E. The Aftermath – „With All Deliberate Speed‟

1. Using the powerpoint presentation to provide examples of the

headlines regarding the Brown decision, the teacher will advise

the students that, although the decision purported to end de jure

segregation in public schools, it was not met with overwhelming

support, particularly in the south.

2. Teacher will also (using the powerpoint presentation) discuss the

response of the Virginia government, including the Interposition

Resolution of 1956, the „Little Rock Bill‟ granting the governor the

authority to shut down any school under the protection of Federal

troops and denying state funding to any integrated schools. The

teacher will also discuss the school closures in Prince Edward

County and Norfolk.

Closure/Homework: (10 Minutes)

Teacher will stress that while Virginia resisted desegregation, it was not the only state todo so, nor are Prince Edward and Norfolk the only systems that were affected.

Students are assigned to read the attached excerpts from the National Park Service‟s “New Kent School and the George W. Watkins School: From Freedom of Choice toIntegration” lesson plan and be prepared to discuss the questions following the readings.

Assessment

Formative – During the class, teacher will engage the students in discussionlooking for an understanding and appreciation of the significance of the Browndecision. Where needed, teacher will „re-teach‟. Follow-up formativeassessment will occur in the subsequent dialogue concerning New Kent.



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Appendix 1:

History of Charles C. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, VA

In the mid-1950s, life in New Kent County was divided by a "color

line." Blacks and whites were born in separate hospitals, raised and

educated in separate schools, and buried in separate cemeteries. Suchseparation had been legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court's Plessy v.

Ferguson decision in 1896, but only if facilities for the two races were

equal.

During the 1940s, the Virginia State Conference of the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the

state headquarters of the nation's premier civil rights organization, filed

numerous lawsuits to force Virginia to "equalize" the public facilitiesused by blacks and whites. These suits were generally successful,

however, the rulings applied specifically to the districts involvedinstead of addressing the overall problem. In the 1950s, NAACP

lawyers switched tactics and began attacking segregation outright,

arguing that separation of the races was itself unconstitutional. In 1954,

this new legal strategy led to the consolidation of five cases under onename, Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka. One of

the five cases came from Virginia: Davis v. Prince Edward County,

Virginia (1952). The Brown decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ruledthat segregation in public schools, because separate schools could

never be truly equal, was unconstitutional.

Following this historic ruling, most southern states sought to delay

school integration. Virginia, in particular, resisted in several ways.

Virginia legislators chose to pass a "resolution of interposition" in early1956. This resolution declared that the Supreme Court's decision to

integrate schools was incompatible with the state constitution and

therefore inapplicable in Virginia. Virginia also led a "MassiveResistance" movement among southern political leaders, during which

several Virginia localities closed their public schools rather thanintegrate them. During one such instance in Prince Edward County,

white students attended private schools while many African Americanstudents moved elsewhere to attend school or did not attend school atall. For years, black parents fought through the courts to reopen the

schools on an integrated basis. In Griffin v. County School Board of

Prince Edward County (1964), the Supreme Court ordered the countyto reopen its schools on an integrated basis and to desist from operating

a whites-only private school system.



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The lawsuit was organized and argued almost entirely by the lawyers of the state NAACP. Several of Virginia's pre-eminent civil rights

attorneys, including Samuel W. Tucker, Henry L. Marsh III, and Oliver

White Hill participated in the process. The U.S. District Court ruledagainst them in 1966, as did the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both

courts ruled that a hastily developed plan, issued in August 1965 by the

New Kent School Board, satisfied the requirement that it beginintegrating the county's schools. Facing the lawsuit filed by Green and

the possible loss of federal funds from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the

school board had fashioned a new strategy to address segregation. This

plan, known as a "freedom-of-choice" plan, required that black studentsand their parents petition for admittance to the white schools in order to

attend. Such a process invited the possibility of economic and physical

reprisals from whites that opposed desegregation. As a result, the

"freedom-of-choice" plan did not significantly alter the racialcomposition of the county's two public schools.

After their loss in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the NAACP chose

to take the Green case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October 1967,

NAACP attorneys argued that the county school board's "freedom-of-

choice" plan illegally placed the burden of integrating the county'sschools on blacks themselves. They also argued that the county sought

to maintain a biracial school system by busing some black students up

to 20 miles to the all-black George W. Watkins School, though the

predominantly white New Kent School was much closer.

In May 1968, more than 14 years after the original Brown decision, theSupreme Court issued its ruling in Charles C. Green v. County School

Board of New Kent County, Virginia. The Court found that the county

had been operating a dual system of schools as ruled unconstitutional in

Brown, down to "every facet of school operations--faculty, staff,

transportation, extracurricular activities and facilities."¹ Its 1954-55

desegregation decisions put an "affirmative duty" on school boards to

abolish dual schools and to establish "unitary" systems. It disapprovedthe county's "freedom-of-choice" school plan for this case. Justice

William J. Brennan, writing for the Court, explained: "The burden on a

school board today is to come forward with a plan that promisesrealistically to work, and promises realistically to work now." TheCourt ordered the local school board to develop a new plan to "convert

promptly to a system without a 'white' school and a 'Negro' school, but

ust schools." It also ordered that the U.S. District Court maintainoversight of the case and the school board's plan to ensure that

integration would occur in the near future. Shortly thereafter, the New

Kent School Board converted the George W. Watkins School into New



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Kent Elementary School and shifted all the county's high schoolstudents to the formerly all-white New Kent School making it New

Kent High School. Green and the NAACP had won a very important

victory.

Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist later referred to the

Green case (in 1972) as a "drastic extension of Brown."² The case,

though based in New Kent County, affected school systems throughout

the nation. It was in Green v. County School Board that the U.S.

Supreme Court announced the duty of school boards to affirmativelyeliminate all vestiges of state-imposed segregation, thus extending

Brown's prohibition of segregation into a requirement of integration.

Within only a few years, the nation witnessed the culmination of a key

phase of the early civil rights movement--the integration of the nation'spublic schools.

Questions for Reading 1

1. Why do you think so many southern whites fought against schooldesegregation in the 1950s and 1960s? Why were many of the local

blacks equally determined to integrate the county's schools?

2. List three cases important to the school desegregation decisionsdecided by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s and describe

their significance. What were the results of each case?

3. What is the NAACP? What role did the organization play in the

Green case?

4. What was the "freedom-of-choice" plan and why did the New Kent

School Board implement this plan? Do you think the name of the planaccurately described how it worked in practice? Why or why not?

5. Why was the Brown decision not strong enough to fully integrate

schools? What did the Green decision do that the earlier cases did not?

Reading 1 was compiled from Susan Cianci Salvatore, "New Kent

School and George W. Watkins School" (New Kent County, Virginia)

National Historic Landmark Nomination, Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001; Brian

Daugherity, "The NAACP and the Campaign for School Desegregation

in Virginia" (Ph.D. dissertation in-progress, The College of William &

Mary, Williamsburg, VA); Interview with Dr. Calvin C. Green, October

9, 2001, New Kent County, VA; Lassister and Lewis, eds. The



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Moderates' Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation inVirginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), 1998; Robert

Pratt, The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond

Virginia 1954-89 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), 1992;

and Susan Cianci Salvatore, Waldo Martin, Vicki Ruiz, Patricia

Sullivan, and Harvard Sitkoff, Racial Desegregation in Public

Education in the United States Theme Study (Washington, D.C.:

National Park Service), 2000.

¹ Green v. County School Board , 391 U.S. 430 (1968), at 435.

² Justice William H. Rehnquist in Keyes v. School District No. 1,

Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (1972).



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Appendix II

Excerpts from the Supreme Court Decision Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968)

--"During the [New Kent County 'freedom-of-choice'] plan's three years of operation [started August 2, 1965] no white student has chosen to attend the all-

Negro school, and although 115 Negro pupils enrolled in the formerly all-whiteschool, 85% of the Negro students in the system still attend the all-Negro

school."

--"Racial identification of the system's schools was complete, extending not just

to the composition of student bodies at the two schools but to every facet of

school operations--faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities and

facilities. In short, the State, acting through the local school board and schoolofficials, organized and operated a dual system, part 'white' and part 'Negro.'"

--"... what is involved here is the question whether the Board has achieved the

'racially nondiscriminatory school system' Brown II held must be effectuated in

order to remedy the established unconstitutional deficiencies of its segregatedsystem."

--"In determining whether respondent School Board met that command by

adopting its 'freedom-of-choice' plan, it is relevant that this first step did notcome until some 11 years after Brown I was decided and 10 years after Brown II

directed the making of a 'prompt and reasonable start.' Such delays are no longer

tolerable..."

--"Moreover, a plan that at this late date fails to provide meaningful assurance of

prompt and effective disestablishment of a dual system is also intolerable."

--"... the District Court approved the 'freedom-of-choice' plan.... The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ... affirmed the District Court's approval of the

'freedom-of-choice' provisions of the plan but remanded the case to the District

Court for entry of an order regarding faculty 'which is much more specific and

more comprehensive' ..."

--"The New Kent School Board's 'freedom-of-choice' plan cannot be accepted as

a sufficient step to 'effectuate a transition' to a unitary system...no whites havegone to George W. Watkins school and 85% of blacks remain at George W.

Watkins school.... In other words, the school system remains a dual system.

Rather than further the dismantling of the dual system, the plan has operatedsimply to burden children and their parents with a responsibility which Brown II

placed squarely on the School Board."



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--"We do not hold that a 'freedom-of-choice' plan might of itself beunconstitutional, although that argument has been urged upon us."

--"Where a 'freedom-of-choice' plan offers real promise of achieving a unitary,

nonracial system there might be no objection to allowing it to prove itself in

operation, but where there are reasonably available other ways, such as zoning,promising speedier and more effective conversion to a unitary school system,

'freedom of choice' is not acceptable."

--"... it is evident that here the Board, by separately busing Negro children across

the entire county to the 'Negro' school, and the white children to the 'white'

school, is deliberately maintaining a segregated system which would vanish with

non-racial geographical zoning."

--"The Board must be required to formulate a new plan and, in light of other

courses which appear open to the Board, such as zoning, fashion steps whichpromise realistically to convert promptly to a system without a 'white' school and

a 'Negro' school, but just schools."

--"Moreover, whatever plan is adopted will require evaluation in practice, and

the court should retain jurisdiction until it is clear that state-imposed segregation

has been completely removed."

Questions for Reading 2

1. Under the "freedom-of-choice" plan, what percentage of white students chose

to attend the George W. Watkins School?

2. What does the term "dual system" mean?

3. Why did the Supreme Court rule against New Kent County and force it to

desegregate its schools immediately?

4. How many years after Brown II did the Green decision take place? Why is

that significant? What do you think is the overall historical significance of the

Green decision?

5. Why would the federal courts want, or need, to retain jurisdiction over New

Kent County's next plan for integration?

Reading 2 was excerpted from Green v. County School Board , 391 U.S. 430 (1968)

civil rights - school desegregation

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