Ida B. Wells
July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931
http://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-barnett-9527635
She was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, and civil rights leader. She was active in the women's rights movement, and the women's suffrage movement. She taught school for Memphis City Schools!
Life of Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells: Separate But Equal
Brown v. Board of Education
Linda Brown Thompson (1943- )As a third-grader in Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s, Linda Brown Thompson is often credited with single-handedly bringing down segregation in America. The truth is far more nuanced and interesting.
In fact, Brown’s family was just one of thirteen African-American families recruited in Topeka by the NAACP. In 1950, the national civil rights organization was busy enlisting plaintiffs nationwide in preparation for a legal assault on the “separate but equal” Supreme Court ruling that had permitted segregation in American schools for half a century.
In the fall of 1950, the Browns and 12 Topeka families were asked by the NAACP to try and enroll their children in their neighborhood white schools, with the expectation that they would be rejected. The NAACP then filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education in Topeka. That lawsuit and others brought on behalf of plaintiffs in Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, DC were presented together on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. By alphabetical accident, because Brown’s name started with a ‘b’, the landmark 1954 decision that ended legalized segregation in America went down in history as “Brown v. Board of Education.”
The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous — the doctrine of “separate-but-equal” was inherently unconstitutional. Delivering the court’s opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren asserted that “segregated schools are not equal and cannot be made equal, and hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws.” This landmark ruling began our nation’s long journey toward school desegregation.
Jim Crow Laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.
Jim Crow laws touched every aspect of everyday life. For example, in 1935, Oklahoma prohibited blacks and whites from boating together. Boating implied social equality. In 1905, Georgia established separate parks for blacks and whites. In 1930, Birmingham, Alabama, made it illegal for blacks and whites to play checkers or dominoes together. Here are some of the typical Jim Crow laws, as compiled by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site Interpretive Staff:
Jim Crow laws touched every aspect of everyday life. For example, in 1935, Oklahoma prohibited blacks and whites from boating together. Boating implied social equality. In 1905, Georgia established separate parks for blacks and whites. In 1930, Birmingham, Alabama, made it illegal for blacks and whites to play checkers or dominoes together. Here are some of the typical Jim Crow laws, as compiled by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site Interpretive Staff:
- Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).
- Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).
- Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).
- Buses.All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races (Alabama).
- Child Custody. It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right of guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro (South Carolina).
- Education.The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately (Florida).
- Libraries. The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals (North Carolina).
- Mental Hospitals. The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together (Georgia).
- Militia. The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be compelled to serve in the same organization. No organization of colored troops shall be permitted where white troops are available and where whites are permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under the command of white officers (North Carolina).
- Nurses. No person or corporation shall require any White female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed (Alabama).
- Prisons. The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts (Mississippi).
- Reform Schools. The children of white and colored races committed to the houses of reform shall be kept entirely separate from each other (Kentucky).
- Teaching. Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined... (Oklahoma).
- Wine and Beer. All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time (Georgia).1