Separate but Equal?

• Author: PRICE, SEAN

FOCUS: The Supreme Court Endorses, Then Outlaws Racial Segregation

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand how evolving ideas about justice can influence the law, specifically how the Supreme Court moved the U.S. from a nation that embraced racial segregation to one that prohibited it by law.

Discussion Questions:

* You are writing a script for Time Machine, a docudrama about people who travel through history. How might Earl Warren explain the 1954 Court ruling to Justice Henry Billings Brown? (Write 10 or more sentences.)

* What would the U.S. be like today if the Warren Court and those that followed had upheld Plessy v. Ferguson?

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Photo Analysis: Before students begin reading, have them study the photos on pages 23-25. Note The New York Times headline reporting that in 1954 racial segregation in public schools was legal in Washington, D.C., and 17 states. Tell students to assume they are curators at a photo gallery. What title would they give to an exhibition of photos and headlines like those in this article?

Critical Thinking/Writing: Have students write brief answers to the following questions, then discuss responses:

* Examine the first two and last two lines of Justice Brown's statement on page 24. Can there be legal equality of the races, as Brown says, if there is a legal distinction between them?

* In Brown v. Board of Education, what did the Court mean when it said separate educational facilities were "inherently" unequal?

* Defense attorneys in Brown v. Board of Education argued that segregated states had spent huge amounts of money to ensure that black and white schools were equal. Why didn't that argument work?

* What does the Warren Court's reversal of the 58-year-old separate-but-equal doctrine suggest about how change in society can change law? Did the growing distance from the era of slavery--and blacks' service in two World Wars--begin to change attitudes about race and justice?

Web Watch: For more on the Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education rulings, log onto www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/

The Supreme Court upheld racial segregation in 1896--and took 58 years to change its mind

A black child is shown two dolls, one black and one white, and asked which one looks nicer. She picks the white doll. Then she is asked which doll looks more like her. That's when the tears come.

When this experiment was first conducted by the black psychologist Kenneth Clark in 1940, it showed that...