Challenging the law:
· African Americans continued their struggle for equality, which became known as the civil rights movement.
· In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional.
· With help from the NAACP, the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of Plessy v. Ferguson.
· In the case, Oliver Brown challenged that his daughter, Linda, should be allowed to attend an all-white school near her home instead of the distant all-black school she had been assigned to.
· Brown’s lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, argued that “separate” could never be “equal” and that segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee to provide “equal protection” to all citizens.
* In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Brown family, and schools nationwide were ordered to be desegregated.
Integrated schools:
· In Little Rock, Arkansas, Gov. Orval Faubus opposed integration.
· In 1957, he called out the National Guard in order to prevent African Americans from attending an all-white high school.
· Gov. Faubus was violating federal law.
· Therefore, Pres. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock where, under their protection, the African American students were able to enter Central High School.
