The Court agreed with Mr. Sweatt. While the University of Texas School of Law "may properly be considered one of the nation's ranking law schools," Justice Vinson wrote for the Court, such could not be said for either version of the law school for African-American students (Id. At 633). "In terms of number of the faculty, variety of courses and opportunity for specialization, size of the student body, scope of the library, availability of law review and similar activities, the University of Texas Law School is superior, " noted the Court (Id. At 633-634). Moreover, Justice Vinson continued, in no way could the new institution compare with the University of Texas School of law in terms of more intangible measures, either (Id. At 634).
Although the decision in Sweatt was a vitally important step in the creation of justice in the United States, it is imperative to take note of what it did not do: By finding that the competing law schools at issue in the case were not equal on their face, the Court was able to avoid until another day the bigger question whether separate, in and of itself, also meant unequal. Thus, Plessy v. Ferguson, and its noxious separate but equal doctrine, was able to survive a while longer. However, with his landmark victory in Sweatt in hand, Thurgood Marshall was able to set his sights squarely on his ultimate goal, the destruction of Plessy. He would soon attain this goal with his transcendent victory in the collected cases that, together formed Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) in Brown, of course, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 1896 decision and found that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," (Id. At 495), and, in so doing sent a death knell to segregation in the schools of the United States.
Rather unsurprisingly, the Brown decision was met with a maelstrom of criticism, and generated widespread controversy, particularly in the South. In Virginia, for example, Senator Harry Byrd, issued the so called "Southern Manifesto, " in which he called for "massive resistance" to integration of the schools (102 Cong. Rec. 4515-16, 1956) This document,...
We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet on terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities" (Pilgrim 2000). Justice Henry Brown ruled that the Separate Car Act did "not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment...A statue which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races…the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the
The Constitution does not specifically say either one, so the Court is interpreting the law, but not doing it in the same way each time. The majority does not seem to understand the significance of its decision as far as other aspects of life. It dismisses the idea that this law would create additional discriminatory laws. The minority believes that "if a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil
Plessy challenged his arrest, maintaining that the railroads use of racially segregated cars violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court disagreed with Plessy's assertion. The Court determined that racial segregation did not imply that Blacks were inferior. Furthermore, the Court found that the facilities provided to Blacks and whites were of equal quality. Because of this, the Court determined that separate but equal facilities did not violate the letter
But if Houston insisted that Plessy be enforced that is, if the NAACP sued a state to make its schools for black children equal to those for whites which Plessy did require then he could undermine segregation. (Jomills Henry Braddock. A Long-Term View of School Desegregation: Some Recent Studies of Graduates as Adults. Phi Delta Kappan. 259-61. 1984) He reasoned that states would either have to build new schools for
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the United States Supreme Court upheld racial segregation of passengers in railroad coaches as required by Louisiana law. Three years later the Supreme Court was asked to review its first school case dealing with equal treatment of school children. In Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899) the court found that the temporary cessation of services for minority
Civil Rights Movement: Brown v. Board of Education There were many great moments in the civil rights movement, but none stands out more than the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. That case truly addressed the horrors of segregation and gave a measure of equality to black school children who wanted to be able to attend school with their white counterparts. Occurring in 1954, the Brown case
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