After World War one the blacks realised they were fighting in demeaning positions for a country that disrespected them. By World War two they were still not permitted to fight alongside whites. They believed they deserved a greater share of the freedom they had fought for and were encouraged to fight harder for their rights, with over 400 000 joining the NAACP between 1941 and 1945. The issue of desegregation in schools was focused upon when blacks decided the time was right to fight for the equality they deserved. The first major step was the case of ‘Brown vs. Brown’
The Desegregation of schools became a major problem in the USA in the 1950’s when the Supreme Court was approached by four states and the District of Columbia. They challenged the constitutionality of the segregation of races in public schools, because they weren’t equal. Linda Brown was denied entry to a near-by, whites-only, school, because she was black. The National Association for the advancement of coloured people (NAACP) took up her case. The Supreme Court decided that the segregation in schools deprived children of “the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment.” States were pressurized to integrate segregated education. The southern States found many loopholes to avoid this. This led to the challenge of trying to accomplish desegregation, which was led by the situation at Little Rock.
After the Supreme Courts ruling, a high school in Little Rock accepted its first Negro students. The method used to enforce the desegregation of the school would lead to major problems throughout the Southern States of the USA. Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas used the State troopers to prevent the children entering. He claimed in an interview after his retirement that is stopped “some black people from being killed.” The Federal government, led by current president Dwight Eisenhower, ordered 1000 Federal guards and 1000 paratroopers of the 101st airborne division to escort the black children, including Elizabeth Eckford. She described in an interview how the white crowd shouted, “no nigger bitch is going to get in our school.” Although this sped up desegregation in schools, by the 1960’s only 0.13% of black children in the Deep South attended integrated schools and the States schools of Alabama, Mississippi, and Carolina insisted on ignoring the laws. This was followed by the major problem of the desegregation of universities. James Meredith attempted to become the first African American to gain admission into the university of Mississippi. Access was denied until state troops were sent forcing the state to co-operate.
Therefore, the desegregation of schools became a major problem in the USA in the 1950’s because of the built up racial hate. The whites believed that if schools were desegregated, they would lose their white supremacy and black people would want more. Court cases led to new laws, which led to violent riots and the division of the Federal government and state troops. The Supreme Courts rulings were purposely ignored by Southern states. Protests and demonstrations would finally lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in which racial discrimination was made illegal in public places. This meant the government had the power to withhold capital from the schools which disregarded these laws. Therefore schools were finally persuaded to desegregate. After all the uproar, it had taken decades for the Jim Crow Laws to be proclaimed unconstitutional, and equal rights to be allowed in schools.
