Prior to 1954, Topeka, Kansas, maintained half-empty classrooms in segregated schools in order to keep the races separate. For example, school districts had to maintain two school systems within one geographical area. School segregation came at a high cost even outside of the human costs. That same year, under the guise of states' rights, racial issues split the Democratic Party. Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces, which had already seen black and white Americans fighting side by side in World War II. In 1947, Major League Baseball saw its first black player in Jackie Robinson. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, forbidding racial discrimination by any defense contractor and establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee as a regulatory agency to investigate charges of racial discrimination. Important steps were taken in 1941, when President Franklin D. Elsewhere in American society, segregation was breaking down. The school segregation issue was ripe for being brought to the first tier of social concerns. It gave impetus to a young civil rights movement that would write much of American history during the next few decades. At the same time, the decision opened the floodgates of decades of school desegregation suits in both the North and the South.īut the ruling did much more than that. The ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" brought racial issues into the forefront of the national consciousness as never before and forced all Americans to confront a racially divided society and undemocratic social practices. Board of Education of Topeka case fifty years ago this spring, it thrust the issue of school desegregation into the national spotlight. When the United States Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in the landmark Brown v. (Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, RG 267) First page of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v.
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