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Historical Perspectives II
Segregation and Inequality
Overview of Secondary Sources: Jim Crow Moves North
Davison Douglas
• Following the Civil War, African Americans enjoyed increasing political
influence that led to anti-segregation legislation and greater civil
rights. This faded by the end of the 19th Century.
• White school officials in the North increasingly insisted on racial
separation in the early 20th Century, in spite of anti-segregation
legislation, and segregation became more extensive by WWII.
• In spite of historical narratives that consider segregation to be a
problem of the Jim Crow South, the North was similarly committed to
racial separation. “It is a gentle conceit of northern people that race
prejudice is a vice peculiar to the South.” Reinhold Neibuhr, 1927.
• Black migration and a judicial system that undermined Reconstruction
gains, led to education policy increasingly focused on racial
segregation.
Secondary Sources: The American Dream and the Public Schools,
Hochschild and Scovronick
• School desegregation was, on balance, an educational success – it improved
the chances of children of color and did not diminish the chances for white
children.
• Courts have required desegregation when it has been de jure, but not when
it has been de facto
• The problem of desegregation has been political – it has failed politically.
• Advocates: segregation promotes collective goals by enhancing equal
opportunity and full participatory citizenship’; it challenges prejudice and
racial hierarchies and requires us to rethink how education is organized.
• Critics: it undermines the collective goals because it is unconstitutional and it
promotes racial disharmony. We should focus on better schools for all and
quit worrying about placement.
Small Group Discussions
• Study each of the charts. What do we learn about segregation from
each?
• What is a question you might ask of a historian in order to understand
better both the data and the arguments made in the secondary
sources?
Guiding Questions
• Why did an interest in racial integration shift during and after
Reconstruction and lead to increased segregation in both the North
and the South?
• How has the historical context shaped education policy with regard to
segregation? (e.g. 14th Amendment, failures of Reconstruction, de
jure and de facto segregation).
• Why has segregation in public schooling (by race/ethnicity and SES
level) persisted into the 21st Century in spite of evidence that it is
detrimental to educational attainment?
• Should policy be directed at racial or class segregation? Or neither?
Should the legacy of states’ rights and “local control” affect
desegregation policy?
Common Schooling: North v. South
• The Common School Movement did not affect southern education;
southern education progress limited by geographical differences,
economic differences, and the racial state
• Average year for compulsory schooling: 1870 in the North and 1912 in
the South.
• The total budget for public schooling was significantly smaller in the
South, and then distributed unequally to white schools following
Reconstruction.
North Carolina Anti-Literacy laws: 1832, Chapter VI and VII
Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write has a
tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to
produce insurrection and rebellion…;
Therefore, Be it enacted…that any free person, who shall
hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within this
State to read or write..or shall give or sell to such slave or
slaves any books or pamphlets…if a white man or women,
be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than
two hundred dollars or imprisoned; and if a free person of
color shall be fined, imprisoned, or whipped, at the
discretion of the court not to exceed 39 lashes, nor less
than 20.
Be it further enacted that if any slave shall hereafter teach,
or attempt to teach, any other slave to read or write…on
conviction shall be sentenced to receive 39 lashes on his or
her bare back.
1849: Roberts v. City of Boston
• Benjamin Roberts, an African-American residing in Boston, was prohibited from
sending his 5 year old daughter to the closest neighborhood school.
• Future U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and black abolitionist lawyer Robert Morris
argued for plaintiff Roberts, whose five year old daughter sought entry into the
elementary school closest to their home.
• Arguments:
•
•
•
•
All persons, regardless of race or color, are equal before the law
There cannot be equal education in racially segregated schools
Segregation is unconstitutional because it infringes on civil rights
Segregation damages the social and emotional development of all students
• Ruling: School districts had a right, given local control, to set education policy as
they saw fit.
• This case, along with 14th Amendment case law, provided a basis for the legal
decision in Plessy v. Ferguson; Roberts’ lawyers provided the basis for the legal
decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Racial Demographics in the South: 1860
• Number of slaveholding states in 1860: 15
Total population of these slaveholding states in 1860: 12,240,000
Number of enslaved individuals in the US in 1860: 3,953,696
Number of free Blacks in slaveholding states in 1860: 251,000
Enslaved individuals as a percentage of the total population in the South: 32%
• Number of slaveholders in the South in 1860: 383,637
More than 75% of Southerners did not own slaves.
10,000 Southern families were considered large slaveholders.
Thirteenth Amendment: The Abolition of Slavery
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce these article by
appropriate legislation.
December 6, 1865.
African American Education
• The racial state limited black educational opportunity; illegal during
slavery and discouraged throughout the first half of the 20th Century.
• Four million slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and then
the 13th Amendment.
• Education was seen by freed blacks as the antithesis to slavery
• Education was denied to blacks in the South, but also segregated and
unequal in both the North and the South.
Reconstruction Challenges
• How would the South rejoin the Union – governance, citizenship,
economy?
• How would the southern economy recover sufficiently to rebuild the
South, pay off war debts, and continue agricultural production without
a slave population?
• What did the country owe to the former enslaved people?
• Many in both the North and the South were uncomfortable with
equality of the races. What would be the rights of these new citizens?
Radical Republicans
• Mostly from New England: Strong commitment to free labor and a moral
commitment to abolitionism
• Reconstruction is an opportunity to create a utopian nation whose citizens
enjoyed equality of civil and political rights, secured by a powerful and
beneficent national state, based on competitive capitalism of the North
“The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be
done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this Government can never be,
as it has never been, a true republic…How can republican institutions, free
schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community
of nabobs and serfs? If the South is ever to be made a safe republic let her
lands be cultivated by the toil of the owners or of the free labor of
intelligent citizens.” Republican Senator Thaddeus Stevens
Johnson’s Plans: Outcomes
• Southern states acted quickly in order to take seats in the U.S. Congress before it
reconvened in December
• Thousands of pardons handed out in routine fashion, enabling most members of
the old planter class and many Confederate leaders to reemerge in power at the
state level
• Historiographical interpretations:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
he was a profound racist;
he enjoyed having the Confederate planter class beg for pardon;
he was committed to the 10th Amendment;
he hoped for an electoral constituency, composed of conservative democrats and
republicans for a presidential bid in 1868;
he was concerned that the black vote would be controlled by white planters and the
middling whites would continue to be marginalized
• Some states defiantly refused to reject secession; many enacted “Black Codes”
• Joint Committee in Congress is formed to develop plans that reflect Radical
Republicanism
Virginia Black Codes, May 31, 1865
• 1st Resolved that we unanimously agree and bind ourselves under no circumstances to employ or
cause in any way directly or indirectly employment to be given any Negro freed by Federal
authority, without a written pass or recommendation from his former master or employer.
• 2. Resolved, that we will not rent or cause to be rented to any such Negro any land or House,
unless such Negro has a written recommendation from his former master or employer for that
purpose
• 3, Resolved, that no freedman be permitted to visit or pass through any plantation except upon a
written pass from his employer, and that we will in no case give such permission at night except
upon business.
• 4, Resolved that the Maximum rate of hire for no one freedman without encumbrance, shall be
five dollars per month in currency and food during the time hired.
• 5, Resolved. that any person or persons in this community violating these obligations by
harboring, employing or delivering any negro from the protection or assistance of his former
Master against his wish or consent, shall for such conduct receive the contempt of all good
Citizens.
• 6, Resolved, that these resolutions be signed by those present, at this meeting and that they be
presented to the farmers of the Neighbourhood not present for their approval and signature.
Civil Rights Act of 1866
• Defined as citizens all persons born in the U.S. (except Native Americans)
• Defined citizen rights (e.g. to testify in court, own property, make
contracts, and enjoy the “full and equal benefit of all laws” and due
process).
• Authorized federal officials to bring suit in federal courts rather than state
courts for civil rights violations.
President Johnson vetoed the Act to appeal to anti-black sentiment in the
North; first congressional override of a presidential veto
Joint Committee proposed the 14th Amendment so that the Supreme Court
could not rule the Civil Rights Act to be unconstitutional
14th Amendment
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote… is
denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced…
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or
hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath,
as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an
executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in
insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a
vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for
payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But
neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or
rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts,
obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
July 9, 1868
Group Discussions:
th
14
Amendment
• What issue is addressed in each section of the 14th Amendment?
• What rights does it grant to citizens that were not granted before?
th
14
Amendment
• Defined national citizenship
• Authorized the federal government to protect the rights of U.S.
citizens
• Revoked the 3/5th Clause in the Constitution
• Provided for a proportionate reduction in representation when a state
denied suffrage to a male citizen, except those who participated in
rebellion or other crimes. (Provides a basis for limiting civil rights to
felons).
• Most southern States rejected the Amendment; the Joint Committee
made its acceptance a condition of a state rejoining the Union
Fifteenth Amendment: 1870
SECTION 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude.
SECTION 2
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
Slaughterhouse Cases, 1873
• Slaughter House Cases (1873): Facts
1.
2.
Local slaughter houses were leaking dead animal matter into the Mississippi River and
drinking water system; 1.5 miles up the river 1,000 butchers gutted 300,000 animals/year.
A grand jury recommended moving the slaughter houses, but they had no jurisdiction on
the house area north of the City. The legislature passed an Act to centralize all
slaughterhouse operations in a central corporation, as other states had done, to prevent
water contamination.
The butchers sued, using the 14th Amendment, because the corporation would be a
monopoly and deprived butchers the right to exercise their trade. Lower courts sided with
the city ordinance and against the butchers.
Outcome: Slaughterhouse
• 5-4 Finding: 14th Amendment only applies to citizens’ rights under the national
government (i.e. those laws guaranteed by the federal government) not those
granted by individual states, so includes only access to ports, ability to run for
federal office, and not what we believe are “civil rights”.
“It is quite clear, then that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a state,
which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or
circumstances in the individual.” Slaughterhouse: 83 U.S. 36, 77-78 (1873)
• The butchers’ 14th Amendment Rights had not been violated.
• Precedent made the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional
• 1887: Florida becomes the first state to require segregation
• Civil Rights Act of 1964: federal government again protected voting rights for African Americans
Historical Perspectives II,
Part 2
Segregation and Inequality
Civil Rights Act of 1875
• Enacted to protect against civil rights violations against African
Americans: "to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights", giving
them equal treatment in public accommodations, including
transportation, and to prevent exclusion from jury service.
• The Supreme Court, in an 8–1 decision, declared sections of the act
unconstitutional – because of the Slaughterhouse Case.
The federal government cannot prohibit discrimination by private individuals
and organizations. The court stated in the opinion that the 13th Amendment
eliminated slavery, but did not prohibit racial discrimination in public
accommodations.
• Last civil rights bill to be signed into law by the federal government
until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1964.
The End of Reconstruction: Compromise of 1877
Political Party
Nominee
VP Nominee
Electoral College
Popular Vote
Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes
William A. Wheeler
185
4,033,497
Democratic
Samuel J. Tilden
Thomas Hendricks
184
4,288,191
• Electoral votes in the three southern states of Florida,
Louisiana, and South Carolina were disputed.
• Southern Democrats agreed to give electoral votes to Hayes if
Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops occupying the
last two states (Louisiana and South Carolina).
• Ended Reconstruction and signaled the end of the Republican
Party’s explicit commitment to equal civil and political rights
Booker T. Washington on Black Education
”First, it must be borne in mind that we have in the South a peculiar and
unprecedented state of things…What are the cardinal needs among the
seven millions of colored people in the South, most of whom are to be found
on the plantations? Roughly, these needs may be stated as food, clothing,
shelter, education, proper habits, and a settlement of race relations. The
seven millions of colored people of the South cannot be reached directly by
any missionary agency, but they can be reached by sending out among them
strong selected young men and women, with the proper training of head,
hand, and heart, who will live among these masses and show them how to
lift themselves.”
Booker T. Washington, “The Awakening of the Negro,” in The Atlantic Monthly, 1896.
W.E.B. DuBois
• Full suffrage -- leads to “freedom, manhood, the honor of our wives, the
chastity of our daughters, the right to work, the chance to rise.”
• End discrimination in public accommodations – it’s un-American,
undemocratic and silly
• Educate our children, and “when we call for education, we mean real
education…work is not necessarily education. Education is the development of
power and ideal...we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate our
children as servants and underlings…They have a right to know, to think, to
aspire.
• If we educate Negroes to work they may get sense enough to want to vote and
even to know how to vote. Therefore, "industrial" training without the training
of intelligence…
Niagara Movement Speech, W.E.B. Du Bois, 1905.
Public Schooling: South
• State governments and northern foundations supported Booker T.
Washington’s education ideals for southern blacks.
• Most southerners were unwilling to give up individual liberty and
local control in order to reform society; the primary concern was
sustaining the racial state.
• The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (1918) justified tracks
and often unequal education across the United States; southern
education was a far more extreme version.
• “I notice that about one-third of your [Mississippi] counties spend
less on Negro education than they receive from the state for Negro
education.” Rosenwald Foundation Administrator, 1930
• “At the end of the first quarter of the century …whites represent 55
per cent of the total enrollment but receive 95 percent of the total
appropriation for current expenses leaving 5 per cent for the Negro
enrollment constituting 45 per cent.” Report on South Carolina, 1930
• “The cause for this very disadvantageous situation has been
attributed to various reasons, but the principal one is that the
available funds for school purposes are too limited to maintain the
dual system of schools up to the standard the whites desire for
themselves and neither the legal injunctions nor the common justice
involved is sufficient to protect the interests of the politically
powerless group of Negroes.” The Durham Fact-Finding Conference, April 17,
18, and 19, 1929,” Folder 983, Box 97, Series 3.8, RAC-GEB, 7-11
Court Phases on Segregation
• Phase I: Court affirms segregation by prioritizing the 10th Amendment
over the 14th Amendment.
• Phase II: Court begins to chip away at Plessy and Phase I cases by
addressing the meaning of “Equal”
• Phase III: Effort to speed the pace of desegregation
• Phase IV: Recognition of de facto segregation as a separate issue and
effort to evaluate remedies against local rights.
Phase I: Plessy v. Ferguson
• Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited barring people from public
accommodations on the basis of race, but was declared
unconstitutional with the Slaughterhouse Cases
• Upheld a Louisiana law requiring passenger trains to have “equal but
separate” accommodations for whites and blacks
• “Separate but Equal” became the law of the land and reversed
Reconstruction gains for blacks
• Prioritizes the 10th Amendment over the 14th Amendment, which
refers to political, not social equality, and cannot be enforced by the
federal government.
• Justice Harlan’s dissent provided the basis for Brown v. Board of
Education
Supreme Court: Pre-Brown -- Phase I
Court affirms segregation by prioritizing the 10th Amendment over the 14th
• Roberts v. City of Boston (1850): affirmed segregated schools in
Boston
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): allowed a racially divided society
• Cummings v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899):
Affirmed ”separate but equal” in education – the racially divided
society extended to high schools because the state is responsible
for education and its decisions in the face of limited financial
resources did not infringe on 14th Amendment rights.
• Gong Lum v. Rice (1927): Denied admission of a Chinese student
to a white schools system --considered the meaning of
segregation, made clear what it meant to be white, and made
these decisions the responsibility of states.
Phase II: Changing Conceptions of Rights and Equality
• Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938): Missouri did not have a law
school for black students, but provided black students with the
opportunity to go to law school in an adjacent state. Policy invalidated
on the basis of equal rights.
• Sipuel v. Oklahoma (1948): Court said that a black student must be
admitted to the only law school in the state.
• McLaurin v. Board of Regents (1950): Student denied admission to
doctoral program in education, but district court ordered admission.
He was required to sit at a separate table in the library and sit apart
from other students in class. Court said that these practices denied
equal protection.
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950): invalidated white-only admissions at UTexas law school.
Significance of Phase II
• Gaines, Sipuel, McLaurin and Sweatt included a reconsideration of “equal” in the
context of “separate but equal”
• Sweatt was an important departure because the Court considered the tangible
and intangible aspects of the legal education offered at the black law school
versus that offered at the white law school in Texas and determined that the
Equal Protection Clause required admission to the white law school. Departure
from Plessy.
Brown v. Board of Education: 1954
• Set of cases named for Linda Brown, an African American student in
Topeka, Kansas.
• Board of Ed argued that segregation was beneficial because it
prepared black students for the segregation that they would face in
society.
• Relied on Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson
• Prioritized the 14th Amendment over the 10th Amendment
Phase III: Brown v. Board of Education and Enforcement
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Eliminated “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy
• Brown v. Board of Education II (1955): required desegregation “with all deliberate
speed.”
• Cooper v. Aaron (1958): Response to integration efforts at Little Rock. District court
asked for 2+ years to implement Brown but on appeal the Supreme Court ruled that
a delay in integration infringed upon 14th Amendment rights.
• Goss v. Board of Education (1963): Black students sued because desegregation plans
included an option for any student to be transferred solely on the basis of race. The
plans were approved by the District Court and the Court of Appeals.
• McNees v. Board of Education (1963): Waived a requirement that all state remedies
must be exhausted before seeking relief in federal court.
Phase III Continued:
• Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964): Schools closed
doors rather than integrate, but then provided tuition grants and credits to white
students to go to private schools. Court disallowed it and gave district court
authority over the schools.
• Green v. County School Board of New Kent County Virginia (1968): Court
invalidated a freedom of choice plan implemented as a remedy because it had no
effect on segregation. Court claims that future remedies will be judged based
upon results, not plans.
Phase III: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education, 1971
• Court offered broad guidelines to federal district judges to formulate and
review plans.
• Court said that ratios could be used to achieve racial balance; claimed
that one race schools in any system was evidence of insufficient efforts at
desegregation; allowed drastic gerrymandering of districts to enforce
integration; upheld court ordered busing as a tool to achieve
desegregation.
Busing in Boston
Eyes on the Prize: Volume 7, Part 1: 1974 – 1980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcDhI6nF7gE
Phase IV: But what about local rights?
• Milliken v. Bradley (1974): Invalidated district court busing plan that
would bus children among 54 districts in three Detroit Counties.
Ruled the district had gone too far and clarified distinction between
de jure and de facto segregation in terms of remedies.
• Board of Ed. V. Dowell (1991): Districts did not have to bus students if
they could demonstrate that elements of past discrimination had
been effectively removed and the school board had made a good faith
effort.
• Freeman v. Pitts (1992): lower courts could end judicial control of
desegregation, even if full compliance with Brown had not been
achieved.
Schools after Phase IV
• Ending of explicit efforts to desegregate schools based on court
defined plans and the end of desegregation gains
• Segregation by SES level has increased relatively
• Decline in racial segregation, but perhaps for reasons that are separate
from efforts to promote racially integrated schools: changing
demographics, increase in black middle class, etc.
• Racial segregation in schooling associated with concentration of
poverty
• Peer effects on students typically greater than resource effects
(Coleman 1966)
Contemporary Policy Issue: NYC District 3
1. Upper West Side of Manhattan – District 3 – wealthy and white, with
some housing projects at the top and bottom of the neighborhood
2. Elementary school in white neighborhood is oversubscribed; school
serving the projects is undersubscribed. The district rezones the schools
to make enrollments more even and racially/socio-economically mixed
3. Middle school choice means that middle schools have ended up
segregated by race and class. Desegregation at for middle schools to be
achieved by putting aside 25% of all seats for underprivileged students.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT_dg5O1HTs
NYC School Districts
• Colored spaces are
current
neighborhood
school zones
• Black lines reflect
new zoning
NY1: Parent Meeting to Protest Integration
Efforts in the Middle Schools
https://youtu.be/3Jk6TI6nM1M
Seattle/Louisville 2006
• Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Ed in Louisville:
• Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District
• The Constitution should be “color blind” says Chief Justice John Roberts. “The way
to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of
race.”
• Kennedy joined Roberts, Alito, and Scalia, but also argued that the other four
justices in the majority were “too dismissive” of the validity of “avoiding racial
isolation” and addressing the “problem of de facto resegregation in schooling”, both
of which he perceived as “compelling interests.”
Breyer’s dissent
• Decision was a “radical” step away from settled law and would strip
local communities of tools they need to prevent resegregation
• The Chief Justice’s invocation of Brown was a “cruel irony”
“’Redlining’ Home Loan Discrimination Re-emerges as a
Concern for Regulators”
New York Times: October 30, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/nyregion/hudson-city-banksettlement.html?_r=0