School integration in the United States
In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public, and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the civil rights movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.
School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Segregation appears to have increased since 1990. The disparity in the average poverty rate in the schools whites attend and blacks attend is the single most important factor in the educational achievement gap between white and black students.
Background
Early history of integrated schools
Some schools in the United States were integrated before the mid-20th century, the first ever being Lowell High School in Massachusetts, which has accepted students of all races since its founding in 1831. The earliest known African American student, Caroline Van Vronker, attended the school in 1843.The integration of all American schools was a major catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement and racial violence that occurred in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century.
After the Civil War, the first legislation providing rights to African Americans was passed. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments, which were passed between 1865 and 1870, abolished slavery, guaranteed citizenship and protection under the law, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting, respectively. In 1868 Iowa became the first state in the nation to desegregate schools by court order in Clark v. Board of School Directors. The Iowa Supreme Court was the nation's "only nineteenth century court to hold school segregation unconstitutional."
The Jim Crow South
Despite these Reconstruction amendments, blatant discrimination took place through what would come to be known as Jim Crow laws. As a result of these laws, African Americans were required to sit on different park benches, use different drinking fountains, and ride in different railroad cars than their white counterparts, among other segregated aspects of life. Though the Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, in 1896 the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities such as schools, parks, and public transportation were legally permissible as long as they were equal in quality. This separate but equal doctrine legalized segregation in schools.Black schools
This institutionalized discrimination led to the creation of black schools—or segregated schools for African-American children. With the help of philanthropists such as Julius Rosenwald and black leaders such as Booker T. Washington, black schools began to establish themselves as esteemed institutions. These schools soon assumed prominent places in black communities, with teachers being seen as highly respected community leaders. However, despite their important role in black communities, black schools remained underfunded and ill-equipped, particularly in comparison to white schools. For example, between 1902 and 1918, the General Education Board, a philanthropic organization created to strengthen public schools in the South, gave only $2.4 million to black schools compared to $25 million given to white schools.Legal action
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, there were several efforts to combat school segregation, but few were successful. A rare success story was the Berwyn School Fight in Pennsylvania, in which the NAACP and Raymond Pace Alexander helped the Black community reintegrate local schools.In the early 1950s, the NAACP filed lawsuits in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware to challenge segregation in schools. At first the decision was split with United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson believing that Plessy v. Ferguson should stand. He was replaced by Earl Warren who differed in opinion on the case, and in a unanimous 1954 decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The NAACP legal team representing Brown, led by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, argued that racially separate schools were inherently unequal, as society as a whole looked down upon African Americans and racially segregated schools only reinforced this prejudice. They supported their argument with research from psychologists and social scientists that proved empirically that segregated schools inflicted psychological harm on black students. These expert testimonies, coupled with the concrete knowledge that black schools had worse facilities than white schools and that black teachers were paid less than white teachers, contributed to the landmark unanimous decision.
Initial responses to school integration
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. They attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After the Little Rock Nine, Arkansas experienced the first successful school integrations south of the Mason–Dixon line. In 1948, nine years before the Little Rock Nine, the University of Arkansas Law and Medical Schools successfully admitted black students. Public schools integrated in the Arkansas cities of Charleston and Fayetteville in 1954 as well.The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown vs. Board of Education ''of Topeka, Kansas'', 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. Tied to the 14th Amendment, the decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation. After the decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the school board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, which would begin in September 1957.
By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected due to their grades and attendance. Called the "Little Rock Nine", they were Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo Beals. One black student, Minnijean Brown, was expelled for retaliating against the bullying and harassment she received. Ernest Green became the first black student to graduate from Central High in May 1958.
When integration began on September 4, 1957, the Arkansas National Guard was called in to "preserve the peace". Originally at orders of the governor, they were meant to prevent the black students from entering due to claims that there was "imminent danger of tumult, riot and breach of peace" at the integration. However, President Eisenhower issued Executive order 10730, which federalized the Arkansas National Guard and 1,000 soldiers from the US Army and ordered them to support the integration on September 23 of that year, after which they protected the African American students. The Arkansas National Guard would escort these nine black children inside the school as it became the students' daily routine that year.
Criticism
Despite the federal ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, integration was met with immediate opposition from some people, especially in the south. In 1955, Time magazine reviewed the status of desegregation efforts in the 17 Southern and border states, grading them from "A" to "F" as follows:| Grade | State | |
| A | A | |
| A | A- | |
| B | B+ | |
| B | B- | |
| C | C+ | |
| C | C | |
| C | C- | |
| D | D+ | |
| D | D | |
| F | F |
Supporting this policy, a majority of Southern congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives signed a document in 1956 called the Southern Manifesto, which condemned the racial integration of public institutions such as schools.
In 1957, in accordance with massive resistance, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called upon the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from attending the newly desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to safely escort the group of students - soon to be known as the Little Rock Nine - to their classes in the midst of violent protests from an angry mob of white students and townspeople.
Escalating the conflict, Faubus closed all of Little Rock's public high schools in fall 1958, but the U.S. Supreme Court ordered them reopened in December of that year.