Affirmative Action

12 Pages 2908 Words

llow citizens, our equals before the law. This thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, or atone for the wrong this day done."

Not until sixty years later, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (347 U.S. 483 [1954]), was Plessy overturned. Chief Justice earl Warren declared the unanimous opinion of the court by saying: "We cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written." In today's world, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

This decision sparked racial tensions all across America. in 1957, President Eisenhower had to call federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, after the state's governor forcibly barred black children from entering white schools. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested and fined, for not moving to the back of a public bus, setting a pattern of boycotts by black of bus companies. And a number of "sit in" were being held by blacks in still segregated restaurants in...