EDUCATION (IN)EQUALITY FROM THE 1870’S TO 1954

A BRIEF HISTORY

by David Comp
2008 ©
 As early as 1849, African Americans began waging a legal battle for the

desegregation of schools and educational equality.1 It wasn’t until May 17, 1954,

however, when the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous judgment in favor

of the Plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case2 that educational

equality became a legal right for African Americans across the United States. The Brown

v. Board case reversed the historical 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson Supreme Court case which

allowed for public segregation under the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine.3 In the court’s

ruling on Brown v. Board, Supreme Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the opinion of the

court and stated:

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of

"separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others
similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason
of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the
laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.4

The Brown v. Board decision marked an important milestone in the rights of African

Americans being recognized in the United States. The decision, however, did not put an

end to the struggles that African Americans have endured for so many years. The fight

for civil rights and the actual desegregation of schools across the United States proved to

1
On December 4, 1849 the Roberts v. The City of Boston case was heard by the Massachusetts Supreme
Court. Benjamin Roberts sued the city of Boston because his five-year old daughter Sarah was banned
from the local primary school because she was Black. The court ruled in April of 1850 in favor of the
school committee and Boston’s schools remained segregated. Cited from The African American Registry.
2005. Roberts vs. City of Boston begins; Ladson-Billings, G. “Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price we
Paid for Brown.” Educational Researcher 33, no. 7 (2004): 4.
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1462/Roberts_vs_City_of_Boston_begins.
2
Full name of case and citation: Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483.
3
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Chief Justice Brown Opinion of the Court, Supreme Court of
the United States. Supreme Court Collection, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZS.html.
4
Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

2
be significant and challenging for African Americans well beyond the Brown v. Board

decision in 1954. A brief history of the schooling of African Americans from the mid- to

late-1800’s to 1954 will be presented to provide an important background and context to

the Brown v. Board case.

In Pennsylvania, the 1870’s was a time of important legislative movement. In

1870, the Republicans in the state legislature of Pennsylvania introduced legislation to

end discrimination of African Americans in schools and in 1874 an antidiscrimination bill

passed the state senate.5 By 1881, a county court ruled on a case brought by an African

American father, Elias H. Allen, who wanted his children to attend a White public school

in Meadville, Pennsylvania and determined that “the Pennsylvania segregation law

violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” and required that

African American children be admitted to public schools that were closest to their

homes.6 Vincent Franklin reports that the Philadelphia school system in 1908 consisted

of nine Black public schools yet a majority of Black children attended mixed schools. A

complicating factor during this time period was that African American teachers were not

allowed to teach White children in the Philadelphia public school system. Several

research studies by individuals such as Byron Phillips and Howard Odum focused on

intelligence and compared White and African American school aged children. The

“results” showed that African American children were “retarded” more than White

children were which further fueled the argument that African American and White

children were to be schooled under different curriculums and that African American

5
Franklin, V.P. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority
Community, 1900-1950. (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1979), 34.
6
Ibid.

3
school children were to be segregated from White children.7 Public education in the

South was especially challenging for African Americans during this time period. The

Southern education movement from 1901 to 1915 saw a resistance in educational reform

for African Americans.8 African Americans experienced both racist attitudes and laws in

all aspects of their lives including their education. During this time period, Whites in

South Carolina opposed public education for African Americans and Whites in North

Carolina were strongly against taxation for African American schools while Georgia

allowed school boards to exempt African American children from the compulsory school

attendance law that was passed in 1916.9

A major challenge for public school systems in Northern cities, including in

Philadelphia, were the large numbers of African American families that migrated from

the South primarily from 1915 to 1930. Vincent Franklin reports that by 1920, the

number of African Americans in Philadelphia grew 58.9% to 134,000 people in ten years

and by 1930 the number of African Americans had grown by 63.5% to over 200,000

people.10 Major cities in the Midwest also saw significant increases in the growth of the

African American population during the first few decades of the twentieth century or

what many called the “Migrant Crisis.” Between 1910 and 1920, the city of Chicago saw

a sharp increase in its African American population by 148% or 124,000 people,

Detroit’s African American population grew by 35,000 or 611% and the African

American population in Cleveland grew 308% or 26,000 people.11 The migration of

7
Ibid, p. 41-48.
8
Anderson, J.D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1988), 101.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid, p. 60-61.
11
Dougherty, J. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. (Chapel
Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 52.

4
large numbers of African Americans to northern cities also had an impact in Southern

states and the public funding of schools for African Americans in the South. Many White

landowners in the South were concerned with the loss of cash tenants, share-croppers,

and laborers who were migrating north and returned public tax funds in order to build

rural schools in the hope that many African Americans would consider staying in the

South.12 James Anderson reports that nearly half of the African American’s in Georgia

left the state during the 1920’s.13 To be sure, the considerable demographic shifts

witnessed in the urban cities of the North and in the Southern states from the early 1900’s

to the 1930’s had a significant impact on the schooling of African Americans during this

time period.

The decade preceding the Brown v. Board decision continued to be a time of

difficulty for African Americans in the United States. Civil rights abuses were part of the

every day life of African Americans. This post-World War II time period for African

Americans, despite all of the discriminatory practices they encountered, was also one of

hope. In 1947, President Harry Truman was keen on passing civil rights legislation and

he commissioned the Congressional Committee on Civil Rights to provide the United

States with a public agenda for change.14 The Committee report outlined the

discrimination that African Americans experienced all across the United States. The

Committee reported that the legal school segregation found in seventeen states and the

District of Columbia was inappropriate and unfair and stated “whatever test is used-

expenditure per pupil, teachers’ salaries, the number of pupils per teacher, transportation

12
Anderson, 159.
13
Ibid.
14
Ravitch, D. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
1983), 21.

5
of students, adequacy of school buildings and educational equipment, length of school

term, extent of curriculum-Negro students are invariably at a disadvantage.”15 Of the 48

states that made up the United States at the time of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954,

seventeen states and the District of Columbia required school segregation, four states

permitted school segregation to a certain degree, sixteen states prohibited school

segregation and eleven states had no specific laws on school segregation.16 The history

of African American struggles for educational equality dating back to the Roberts v. The

City of Boston case in 1849 to the various school segregation laws of the 48 states of the

Union in 1954 laid the groundwork for Oliver Brown et al.17 to have their case heard by

the Supreme Court of the United States.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J.D. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill,
NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Dougherty, J. 2004. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in
Milwaukee. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Franklin, V.P. 1979. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational
History of a Minority Community, 1900-1950. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. 2004. Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price we Paid for Brown.
Educational Researcher 33, no. 7: 3-13.

Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Chief
Justice Warren, Opinion of the Court, Supreme Court of the United States.
15
Cited in Ravitch, p. 22 from To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil
Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947).
16
Data obtained from analysis of a map showing the status of school segregation law prior to the Brown v.
Board case that is presented in Dougherty, 37.
17
Other legal case included with the Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case included: Briggs
v. Elliott (South Carolina), Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.), Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware), and Davis
v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia).

6
 Supreme Court Collection, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law
School.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO.html.

Orfield, G. 1995. Public Opinion and School Desegregation. Teachers College Record
96, no. 4: 654-670.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Justice Brown Opinion of the Court,
Supreme Court of the United States. Supreme Court Collection, Legal
Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZS.html.

Ravitch, D. 1983. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. New York:
Basic Books, Inc.

The African American Registry. 2005. Roberts vs. City of Boston begins.
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1462/Roberts_vs_City_of_
Boston_begins.