Education

There has been a long history of the discrimination in public schooling in the United States . Before 1955 , many southern and some western states , twenty-one in all , had laws requiring or permitting segregated schools . This is known as de jure segregation . In addition to traditions of discrimination , the doctrine of separate but equal prevailed in American Education . The basis for this doctrine was Plessy v . Ferguson . In this 1896 case , the Supreme Court ruled that a state law requiring federal railroad trains to provide separate-but-equal railroad cars for African Americans and Anglo-European

American passengers who were traveling within one state did not infringe on federal authority to regulate interstate commerce

This separate-but-equal doctrine remained in effect for the schools until the decision of Brown v . Board of Education of Topeka . In Brown the Supreme Court ruled nine to zero that state sanctioned segregation in public schools violates the equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment . In 1954 , the Supreme Court ed school districts to desegregate with all deliberate speed . While Brown brought an end , at least legally , to de jure segregation , it did not affect de facto segregation , which is natural segregation resulting from individual choices of neighborhoods . This is Linda Browns Thompson 's reflection on the case her father brought to the courts : It 's disheartening that we are still fighting ' said Mrs . Thompson , But we are dealing with human beings . As long as we are , there will always be those who feel the races should be separated (Celis , 1994...