A.A.C.P. charged that these schools, besides being
inferior, were a violation of the "equal-protection" clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. All of the suits, as had been
expected, were defeated in the local courts. However, they were
appealed.
Though the Supreme Court had allowed the decision made
in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 to stand, the Court was moving
closer to a reexamination of the "separate but equal" clause.
That decision had argued that separate facilities, if they were
equal, did not violate a citizen's right to equal protection
under the law. It had become the cornerstone on which a whole
dual society had been built. The Court had made no attempt,
however, to guarantee that these separate institutions would be
equal, and clearly they were not. At mid-century, the Court began
by challenging this dual system at points of blatant and obvious
inequity. By 1950 in Sweatt v. Painter, the Court was attacking
subtle inequalities such as that of institutional prestige. The
next step was for the Court to ask whether in fact separate
institutions could ever be equal.
Pages:
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367