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The case of Roberts vs The City of Boston
The case of Roberts vs The City of Boston was about a Black student who was forced to walk past 5 public schools to attend a low funded all Black school called Abiel Smith School. This event shows that unfair treatment of Black students has been a crisis in the education system that started early. Even when Blacks were considered “free” in Massachusetts, their children still had to go to low funded, over crowed, segregated school. Putting them at a huge disadvantage (Morgan, 2017). -
The 13th Amendment
The 13th amendment was passed by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil war. This abolished slavery, meaning freedom for African-Americans in the United States. This event set off wave of the African American community to starting their own educational organizations. For example, in 1865, African Americans leaders formed an education association.
In addition, the Freeman Bureau, in March of 1865, was established, which assisted with educational needs of the Black community (Parkay, 2020) -
Plessy vs Ferguson
This case was in regards to a law that required railroad companies to have segregated trains of transportation. Homer Plessy had refused to give up a seat and was arrested. Plessy took his case to court and augured that the law was unconstitutional. The courts ruled against him, stating that the state was not in any violation. By the state ruling that segregation was indeed okay, it provided the ground work for “institutionalized inequality” in schools (Han et al., 2022). -
Brown vs The Board of Education.
This case involved desegregation of school, saying that having them “separate but equal” was not in fact equal, therefore in violation of the "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment. When the supreme court ruled on this in favor of Brown, this sent a message to the education world that Black students deserved a equal education and that was not being done. This, however, did not happen right away, it was only the a foot in the door for equal education. (Han et al., 2022) -
The Equality of Education Opportunity Study
This study concluded that Black students benefited from being in desegregated schools. This it led to a hug busing act in order to desegregate schools. With Black students being bused to force desegregation, it cause "white flight" where whites family would move out of those busing districts to the suburbs. With them went tax payer dollars. This further disadvantaged black students. Later the study said that segregation was not the key factor in Black achievement (Han et al., 2022).