Don't Know Much About History #2

 Brown vs. Board of Education: was decided on May 17, 1954.  Legally it set the idea of  "separate but equal" on its ear in public school education.  After the Civil War, after the Emancipation Proclamation, after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution which was supposed to guarantee rights to former slaves came the Compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of Federal Troops that tried to enforce the constitutional amendments.

One of the fig leaves that ushered in Jim Crow Laws and the disenfranchisement of former slaves was the legal concept of "separate but equal".  The State of Florida first mandated separate rail cars for trains to enforce racial segregation and segregation rapidly spread to buses, hotels, theaters, restaurants, swimming pools and schools.  The idea that one rail car was as good as another for transportation and ex-slaves were as good as white folks but they should stay in their own rail car, hotels, or schools lasted way too long as voting rights were also stripped away and ex-slaves were lynched and terrorized by the KKK and other White Supremacist Groups throughout the South.

It took until September 1957 for the Little Rock Central High School to be integrated by the "Little Rock Nine".  It took 1200 members of the 101st Airborne Division sent to Little Rock, Arkansas by President Eisenhower to allow the "Nine" to enroll and attend classes in the formerly segregated high school.