Brown V. Board of Education

• De Jure- segregation by law

  laws passed to make black people have their designated areas for things like eating, education or drinking.


  De Facto- segregation by default

  things like churches which are predominately one race.
• NAACP- legal and political organization that sought to end segregation and racial discrimination in the US.
• Brown v. Board of Education- 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional.

  • Linda Brown, 8, forced to attend an all black school. Her father made sure her case was heard among the first of many lined up for the Sup. Court.


  The goal was to have a case that included all schools (elem., college, high) and to eliminate segregation in ALL schools.
• Thurgood Marshall - first black man on the Supreme Court, knows that black schools don’t offer the same education as white schools so he argues they are NOT separate and equal as the laws state.


  Supreme Court sides with Brown and NAACP, order the integration of all schools immediately.
• After Brown v. Board of Education, segregationists wouldn’t budge and refused to accept the changes in segregation laws and resulted in the creation of many private schools. These schools were again white only in a way, now they are De Facto segregated.
• Greensboro is the first city in NC to announce the integration of ONE school in the whole state. NC was the most progressive southern state in terms of integration.
• Strom Thurmond - democrat, published the Southern Manifesto.


  Southern Manifesto (1954)

  • states that “we southerners” are going to do anything they can to prevent integration from happening.
  • will do it legally or illegally
• Emmet Till - 14 year old African American boy who was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi, 1955.

  • Lived with his uncle Mose Wright, was out with his cousins at a convenience store that Carolyn Bryant worked at.
  • He was telling his cousins that he knew white people and had white friends and a white GF, cousins didn’t believe him.
  • Cousin dared him to walk into the store and talk to a white lady, all he said to her was “Bye, baby” but Carolyn told her husband that Emmett had attacked her.
• Emmett Till's murder


  1. Carolyn’s husband gathers his friends and finds Emmett’s uncle and looks for the boy who is visiting from Chicago

  2. Emmett is handed over to the men

  3. Emmett is taken away and murdered

  4. Emmett’s body is found in a river, beaten, shot, tied to a cotton gin fan, mutilated

  5. Emmett is identified from his ring
• Emmett’s mother, Mammy Till, has an open casket funeral
• Mammy Till wanted the world to see what those white men had done to her child
• Jet Magazine published photos of Emmett with Mammy’s permission
• The men who killed Emmett Till are arrested and charged for the murder of Emmett. This becomes huge and national news. 


  The men’s defense is that nobody knew for sure that it was Emmett and it could’ve been someone else with the same ring. The all-white, all-male jury decide the men are not guilty.
• The Emmett Till case exposes the racist criminal justice system in the South. Lynching was still basically legal in the South as well.


  In 2017, Carolyn Bryant confesses that she lied to her husband about what Emmett Till had done to her. The men confessed to the murder 2 years after they were found not guilty, but were not tried because that would be double jeopardy.