"Thurgood Marhsall: Before the Court"

The following questions are based on the American RadioWorks feature "Thurgood Marshall: Before the Court"

Reading Comprehension

Read the abridged article by Leon Friedman: Brown v. Board of Education

Answer the following questions:


1. What has happened to integration of schools since the famous Brown decision removing legal segregation of schools?
   
   By the 1990s segregation has returned to almost all elementary and secondary schools in the US. Most urban public schools are 84-90% minority students, and many white students have fled to private schools.
   
   
2. Why is the Brown decision so important?
   
   Education affected the largest number of Black population; poor education denies Blacks any political power; poor education denies possibility of rising above poverty.
   
   
3. Why did some feel that segregated education at the elementary level was all right?
   
   Some felt that parents should decide these issues for their children.
   
   
4. What was Mr. Marshall's central argument against segregation?
   
   If one believes that Blacks need separate schools, then one must believe that Blacks are inferior.
   
   
5. What was the final ruling in Brown v Board of Education, and who wrote the opinion?
   
   Chief Justice Earl Warren: "...in the field of public education the doctrines of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

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Listening Comprehension Questions

Listen to the special (51:26)

1. Who was the first African American named to the US Supreme Court?
   
   Thurgood Marshall
   
   
2. What were the Jim Crow Laws?
   
   Rules allowing rigid segregation of blacks and whites in all situations.
   
   
3. Who was Charles Hamilton Houston?
   
   Law professor at Howard who trained Thurgood Marshall rigorously
   
   
4. What is the NAACP?
   
   National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded in 1909 to oppose segregation
   
   
5. Who is W.D. Lyons?
   
   Black man defended by Thurgood Marshall for murder and saved from the death penalty.
   
   
6. Why is May 17, 1954 so important?
   
   Supreme Court decides that separate but equal education is not legal
   
   
7. Why is Little Rock Central High so important?
   
   Site of resistance to integration-and emblem that southern politicians and people did not want integration.
   
   
8. What did President Eisenhower do to help integration?
   
   He reluctantly ordered Federal troops to Little Rock to enforce integration.
   
   

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Key Terms and Topics

Terms

• Jim Crow Laws: A term derived from a minstrel act that featured a crippled slave, Jim Crow was a racial slur synonymous with black, colored, or Negro. Acts of racial discrimination toward blacks were often referred to as Jim Crow laws and practices. These included separate restroom facilities, drinking fountains, and train cars.
  
  
• Howard University: Originally all Black University in Washington, DC. Today still one of our finest Universities and law school attended by Thurgood Marshall.
  
  
• NAACP: Our nation's leading Civil Rights Organization. Founded in 1909 by WEB DuBois, its cause is to fight segregation.
  
  
• W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963): Sociologist, Author, and Civil Rights Leader &Founder of NAACP. was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of the most influential black leaders of the first half of the 20th Century. Dubois shared in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, in 1909. Dubois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1896.
  
  
• Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896): 1896 Supreme Court decision that allowed such things as separate train cars. This decision affirmed the doctrine of "separate but equal."
  
  
• Oliver Brown: Plaintiff in the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Oliver Leon Brown was a minister and railroad welder in Topeka. When he was only 32 years old, Oliver attempted to enroll his 8-year-old daughter, Linda, at Sumner Elementary, a white school close to his home. At the time, Linda was attending Monroe Elementary, which required a five-mile bus ride, plus a walk through the unsafe railroad yard just to get there.
  
  
• Brown vs. the Board of Education: 1954 Supreme Court decision. "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
  
  
• Kenneth Clark: Psychologist who tried to measure the effect of segregation on African American children using black and white dolls. He proved that black children suffered from segregation.
  
  
• John W. Davis: Chief lawyer for the Southern States in the Brown decision. He was a former democratic congressman and at one time presidential nominee.
  
  
• Chief Justice Earl Warren: Supreme Court Justice who wrote the Brown opinion. Warren was born in Los Angeles, but grew up in Bakersfield, California where his father worked as a railroad car repairman. Warren attended the University of California at Berkeley and its law school. After serving a brief stint in the army during World War I, he worked for the Alameda County district attorney's office for eighteen years. From 1938 to 1942, Earl Warren was attorney general of California and was then elected governor. In 1953, Warren joined the Supreme Court; he proved skillful at securing consensus as is evidenced by the unanimous decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case, one of the first cases that he had to deal with as Chief Justice.
  
  
• Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus: Governor who called in National Guardsman to prevent integration in Little Rock, and who then closed high schools in Arkansas rather than integrate.
  
  
• Little Rock Central High School: Site of resistance to integration, including violence and eventually the calling in of federal troops to aid in the enforcement of the Brown Law.
  
  
• Governors George Wallace (Alabama) and Ross Barnett (Mississippi): Governors who also opposed the integration ruling in their states.
  
  

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