After the Civil War, the first legislation providing rights to African Americans was passed. The 13th, 14th, and 15th 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.
Now millions of formerly enslaved African Americans hoped to join the larger society as full and equal citizens. Although some white Americans welcomed them, others used people’s ignorance, racism, and self-interest to sustain and spread racial divisions.
New laws and old customs in the North and the South had created a segregated society that condemned African Americans to second-class citizenship.
The practice of Jim Crow was firmly established in the Southern US. Under Jim Crow, virtually all public spaces were rigidly and legally segregated across racial lines. These laws were to marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they’d made during Reconstruction.
During World War 2, Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with—to defend freedom and democracy in the world.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an Executive Order 8802, forbidding racial discrimination by any defense contractor and establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee as a regulatory agency to investigate charges of racial discrimination.
In 1944, a NAACP lawsuit challenging the Democratic Party’s all-white primaries led to a decision striking down the practice in Texas that ultimately ended segregated primaries in all Southern states.
In 1946, the Supreme Court declared state segregation laws unconstitutional as applied to interstate bus travel in Morgan v Virginia.
In 1947, Major League Baseball saw its first black player, Jackie Robinson.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces, which had already seen black and white Americans fighting side by side in World War II. As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military.
Now in 1951, high schools and junior high schools in Topeka were integrated, but elementary schools were not. Topeka operated eighteen elementary schools for whites and four for blacks.
To keep the importance of education as a foundation of a democratic society, to vote for segregated schools as a standing norm of this country goes against the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson that publicly funded education was to be the primary mechanism to develop a natural elite and to ensure that the new republic remained literate regardless of social class. Education is the foundation of good citizenship and good citizenship is essential to good government.
Segregation was rooted in the need to keep “the people who were formerly in slavery as close to that stage as possible.” in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.”
As this country is moving towards integration of African Americans in equality in work, voting, transportation, sports, and even war, a state such as Kansas should be able to integrate all their school systems in a public educational setting.
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