The Beginning of Segregation in Schools

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines segregation as  “ the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory means”.  The segregation of American schools was meant to separate African Americans from “whites”.    The first laws pertaining to segregation were passed by the northern states in the early 1800’s while slavery was still be practiced in the south.  These laws denied anyone of African descent access to  “white” schools. 

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  There were only a handful a schools for the purpose of educating African Americans, for example, in 1750 “Anthony Benezet led the Philadelphia Quakers in opening the first free school for blacks” ( Smith).   Segregation laws fell under the Jim Crowe laws.   After the Civil War ended in 1865,  the northern states began to forgo some of their segregation laws that didn’t pertain to schools.   However,  in 1896, the Supreme Court declared Plessy vs. Ferguson  “more states began segregating everything from water fountains, waiting rooms, elevators, and building entrances, to hospitals and prisons--even cemeteries...” (Santa Barbara).Punishments for trying to bypass these segregation laws, like “trying to register a black child at a “white” school”  could result in arrest, being fined, or even sent to jail (Santa Barbara).

Starting as early as the 1850’s, people started fighting against the Jim Crowe laws in court.  In the first desegregation case was Roberts v. City of Boston, “ a black parent unsuccessfully sued public school officials in Boston, Massachusetts, who refused to change their policy of educating black children in schools separate from those for whites” (Foner and Garraty).  

Integration in Bernard Elementary

In 1938, the case of Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada tried a different tactic.  A student who wasn’t allowed to attend the University of Missouri Law School because he was African American was able to convince the state that if it provided its white citizens with a law school, it must provide its black citizens with one as well” .   It also came to pass that “black teachers... working in “black” schools successfully argued that they were entitled to the same pay offered to white teachers working in “white” schools”.   Victories like these, some hoped, would help make desegregation more desirable economically as having two separate schools for every type of education would not only be redundant by also expensive.