The Court ordered his immediate admission to the law school at the University of Texas. During this era, the NAACP also successfully lobbied for the passage of landmark legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, barring racial discrimination in voting. There were those who were pleased with the new progress and reluctant to give up what had been a successful campaign. At one point, he oversaw as many as 450 simultaneous cases. The boycott was not supported by the local NAACP branch. No matter how much money the state might spend at the black law school, how many faculty members the state might add, how large the student body might grow, or how large the library holdings might become, the qualitative differences in the intangibles associated with the two schools meant that to deny Heman Sweatt admission to the University of Texas was unconstitutional. In 1933, Charles Hamilton Houston succeeded Margold as the NAACP's chief attorney. In 1951, Kenneth Clark, a social psychologist at the City College of New York, and his wife and fellow psychologist, Mamie Clark, developed a series of studies that examined the psychological effects of segregated and racially mixed schools on black children. Belton arose in Claymont, a suburb a few miles north of Wilmington. By August 1950, the University of Delaware was ordered to admit blacks to its undergraduate campus because of the "woefully inferior" opportunities otherwise available to them. Reflecting what had become the new thinking on race in the social sciences after the Second World War, Redfield further testified that scholars had recently become "compelled" to the conclusion that there were no "inherent differences in intellectual ability or capacity to learn between Negroes and whites," and that should any such differences be "later shown to exist, they will not prove to be significant for any educational policy or practice." Washington Post. The NAACP's long battle against de jure segregation culminated in the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v.Board of Education decision, which overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine. As a result, Marshall attended Howard's law school, just as Houston's reforms were beginning to take hold. The challenge would not be undertaken in just one district. A third of the city's Afro-American population was employed by the federal government. At the dawn of the 21st century, nearly half of the black population still lives in communities that are 90 percent or more black. Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg were the NAACP's point men for Brown. As a result of class divisions within the African-American community, Gardner's group formed separately from the school's PTA, which was dominated by middle-class blacks. Marshall won a series of court decisions that gradually struck down that doctrine, ultimately leading to Brown v. Board of Education, which he argued before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953, finally overturning separate but equal and acknowledging that segregation greatly diminished students self-esteem. The District of Columbia's desegregation case began when a local barber, Bishop Gardner, organized the Consolidated Parents Group. Yet, Sweatt refused to attend the law school at the Texas State University for Negroes. The strategy adopted by the NAACP to end segregation was B. arguing legal cases in court. In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in which he wrote 112 opinions, none of which were overturned on appeal. There were 2,375 white students attending 12 schools. Kenneth Clark was hired to provide expert testimony based on the doll studies. It was clear that in the South, expenditures on black schools were significantly inferior on a per capita basis to those for white schools. Senior high schools were integrated, but they had separate teams in basketball, swimming, wrestling, golf, and tennis, as well as separate pep clubs, separate cheerleaders, and a separate assembly at which black students were urged to keep to their place. The court did not hold that another scholarship program would be unconstitutional. The NAACP was established in February 1909 in New York City by an interracial group of activists, partially in response to the 1908 Springfield race riot in Illinois. The average white schoolteacher earned two-thirds more than the average black one; and in contrast to its treatment of white children, the school board could not be troubled to provide a single bus for the transportation of black children. The Clarks first asked the children, aged three to seven, to identify the race of the dolls. Perhaps, but the physical facilities were substantially equal, and besides the new building for the white school could help explain the differences in per capita expenditures for white and black students. The rejection letter stated that the school "did not accept Negro students." One of his great-grandfathers had been taken as a slave from the Congo to Maryland where he was eventually freed. The changes in racial attitudes among white Americans are perhaps even more profound than has generally been acknowledged. The political opposition would be intense, perhaps fatal. He established the first course in civil rights law taught at an American law school. The group is also celebrated for its Image Awards, given to those who excel in the arts and media, Theater Awards for the dramatic arts and Spingarn Medals for outstanding work by Black leaders in any field. Copyright 2023 NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Thurgood Marshall was an influential leader of the civil rights movement whose tremendous legacy. One of the organization's key victories was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools. . It was clear to the court that to entirely deny blacks the opportunity for a state-sponsored legal education when whites were provided one would violate the formula laid down by Plessy, but that was not the issue here. Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009. While practicing law in Washington, D.C., Houston taught law part-time at Howard University Law School. Using a combination of tactics including legal challenges, demonstrations and economic boycotts, the NAACP played an important role in helping end segregation in the United States. It is not hard to find. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. The new school had only one alumnus. With America's entry into the First World War, Houston joined the NAACP in lobbying for a program to train black officers for the wartime National Army. Like Houston, Murray was a graduate of Amherst College, and, by any standard, qualified for admission to the University of Maryland Law School. As one expert witness testified at trial, "a well-rounded, representative group of students" was necessary to enrich the learning atmosphere and to maximize the value of classroom discussion. The combination grade school-high school in Claymont served about 400 white students. In 1931, the NAACP's first staff attorney, Nathan Margold, outlined a legal strategy to challenge school segregation. Though the facilities for black elementary children were older, they were the rough equivalent of their white counterparts' facilities. Who Appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court? Houston no doubt took pleasure in seeing, in Marshall's commitment and performance, graphic evidence of the success of his policies at Howard. It could also offer the courts the alternative argument that even if the courts did not agree that segregation was inherently unconstitutional, it was nonetheless unconstitutional in actual practice. The 1954 decision provided a foundation for later court decisions and legislative enactments that established a new set of norms concerning law and race. This is clear in the language of the appellate opinion. In 1910, Du Bois started The Crisis, which became the leading publication for Black writers; it remains in publication today. In 1957, LDF, led by Marshall, became an entirely separate entity from the NAACP with its own leadership and board of directors and has remained a separate organization to this day. But there were far fewer graduate and professional programs and, therefore, fewer targets for a concentrated litigation effort. The school was housed in two rented rooms in Houston. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Still, state officials recognized that they were on shaky ground, that appellate courts would be more skeptical. The Court had interpreted that clause to mean that no state action not grounded in a rational basis could stand constitutional muster. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, is America's oldest and largest civil rights organization. They have an expertise in the subject matter far beyond that which they have in other kinds of cases. Four years later, he was appointed by President Johnson to be solicitor general, and in 1967 President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court to which he commented: I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. When Marshall sat with Houston on Murray's case, Marshall must have taken no small amount of pleasure in attacking the Maryland law school's policy of discrimination. Large numbers of white children attended the public schools. The trial court opinion stated that state officials were under no obligation to admit him to the University of Texas. The group also has pushed for the removal of Confederate flags and statues from public property. The first was to apply the Supreme Court's new understanding of inherent inequality to elementary and secondary education. It has lessened to be sure, but African Americans remain the most segregated of the racial and ethnic groups in the United States, with the exception of Indians on reservations. After two years of inaction, the branch contacted the organization's headquarters in New York and requested assistance in filing a lawsuit. When Houston became the NAACP's special counsel in 1933, he reexamined Margold's litigation strategy. Both were trained at Howard Law School during the years that Charles Houston was dean. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks . The percentage of African-American children raised in female-headed, fatherless households has risen dramatically since the Brown decision: More than 50 percent of all African-American children are raised in such families. In this role, he attended the founding convention for the United Nations, channeling his energies toward lobbying the global body to acknowledge the suffering of Black Americans. Ultimatelyafter more than 100 years of effortthe NAACP and other groups were able to get a federal anti-lynching law passed and signed by President Joe Biden in 2022. Few in the modern behavioral or biological sciences support the kind of scientific racism that was heartily championed at the best universities a century ago. The judge was the same one who had held that the vastly inferior Prairie View school was equal. It established precedent within Maryland and might persuade courts in other jurisdictions. So Marshall matriculated to Howard University Law School where he graduated first in his class and met his mentor, Charles Hamilton Huston, with whom he enjoyed a lifelong friendship. Until a new facility could be built in Houston, the new school would be housed in downtown Austin, across the street from the state capitol. The importance of Brown lay in its setting the nation's law on the path of rejecting the kind of racial exclusion that had made African Americans a people apart since before the nation's founding. Log in for more information. In 1962, Medgar Evers, the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, was assassinated outside his home in Jackson by a white supremacist. Raymond T. Diamond is C.J. The new law school's temporary facility in Austin turned out to be an office basement; the University of Texas had a permanent facility that housed a law review and a moot courtroom. The new law school had neither. Was a new building constructed for the white school and not the black one? The organization was led from 1929 to 1955 by Walter White, a mixed-race journalist and activist who spearheaded the groups participation in the Scottsboro Boys trial, race riot investigations and anti-lynching campaigns. The experiments consistently showed that the participating black children preferred the white dolls. In 1910, Oklahoma passed a constitutional amendment allowing people whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote in 1866 to register without passing a literacy test. When Did Thurgood Marshall Establish LDF? In Korematsu, the Court stated that while "all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect [t]hat is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional." These lawsuits were combined into the landmark Brown v. The NAACP works to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes. With respect to these factors, the University of Texas was the superior school, and the question, the Court said, was not even close. Add an answer or comment Log in or sign up Questions asked by the same visitor In Sweatt, the NAACP was no longer alone. Marshall, who founded the LDF in 1940, won a number of other important civil rights cases involving issues such as voting rights and discriminatory housing practices. Sweatt was a letter carrier who lived in Texas. Which was the largest group of Asians to first come to the United States? NAACP. Wiki User. Thurgood Marshall took the case on behalf of 20 plaintiffs. The opinion allowed state officials six months to establish a black law school. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/naacp. The NAACP was established to: End racial segregation Bring about social justice Create equal opportunities for colored peop le. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.". Wells, Archibald Grimke and Mary Church Terrell. He found that plaintiff in Heman Sweatt. It got Donald Murray admitted to the University of Maryland. Early in its fight for equality, the NAACP used the federal courts to challenge disenfranchisement and residential segregation. Moreover, just as black people were excluded from the University of Texas, the Texas State University of Negroes excluded the overwhelming majority, 85 percent of the population of the state, from which would be drawn most of the lawyers, judges and other officials, witnesses, and jurors in the state. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. Multiracialism and a rejection of the kind of racism that prevailed in the first half and indeed beyond the first half of the 20th century has taken strong root in modern America. The NAACP argued that there was no "valid legislative end" that justified racial segregation, that segregation was arbitrary and irrational. The question was simple: Was Maryland's system of providing state-sponsored scholarships to schools outside the state equal to providing an education at the state's law school? The court was forced to confront the constitutional issue. 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