The ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery was one of the topical questions in American politics during the first half of the nineteenth century. The issue of the position of black Americans in American society can be dated back to 1619 when the first black American had arrived in America. In 1661, slavery was institutionalized in Virginia. Blacks had been enslaved before this year, only their status was converted from de facto slavery into slavery de jure. In that early period, “religion served to identify different racial groups.”1 Since 1667, when Virginia declared that converting to Christianity did not alter the person’s condition of servitude, we can see the beginnings of the division based on the concept of race. Hence, race is clearly a cultural construct.
In this written work I would like to discuss the situation of African Americans before and after the Supreme Court’s decision in the case Brown v. Topeka Board of Education in 1954. In that moment, for the first time in American history, a decision was made, which could be regarded as the beginning of the future strong anti-segregationist movement. I do not want to claim that the movement against racial discrimination did not exist before 1954, but it was the year of 1954, when African Americans started to fight the discrimination more intensively.
I find it vitally important to inform the reader about the situation that preceded the Court’s decision; therefore I have included a short historical preview where I am discussing the period between 1865-1954. After the brief introduction, I will continue analyzing the principal point of this essay in its main body.
The strives of African American people to end their bondage culminated after the Civil War, when in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was passed. It resulted in gradual abolition of slavery in most Southern states, after they had ratified the amendment in their constitutions. Another two constitutional amendments dealt with the specific issue of rights. The Fourteenth Amendment specified the issue of citizenship, and provided all citizens ‘equal protection under the law’. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote for all citizens ‘regardless of race, colour and previous condition of servitude’. It is self-evident that all these constitutional changes must have been widely opposed in the South.

In spite of the fact that the South was forced to ratify the amendments, southern states quickly reestablished virtually the same state system that had existed before the war. They introduced new legislation – the black codes. In the countryside, a new share-crop system soon developed into ‘debt slavery’, and black people were in the same position as they had been in the antebellum period. By the 1880s, African Americans had been driven into an economic system from which they could not get out.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 ruled that the states might not exclude blacks from public accommodation. Unofficial, de facto segregation had existed before the year of 1875 and the passing of the law was not a great improvement. In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment could only be applied to the state laws, it could not be enforced individually. At this point, real, de jure segregation started. Southern states quickly adopted a system of ‘Jim Crow’ legislation and began to pass laws permitting segregation in public facilities, creating separate schools, hospitals, restaurants, bus terminals, and even cemeteries. In fact, there did not exist any facilities for blacks in rural South.
According to Ronald Takaki:

“During the 1890s, new laws buttressed segregation by defining more precisely the ‘Negro’s place’ on trains and streetcars and in school, parks, theatres, hotels, and hospitals. Proclaiming the doctrine of separate but equal in the 1896 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of segregation. Poll taxes and literacy requirements for suffrage were effectively disfranchising blacks, and hundreds of blacks were annually being lynched.”2

This was the ‘status quo’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although, black Americans had fought in the Civil War in spite to gain political and social equality, even until the end of World War II, the army still was not desegregated. In 1948, President Truman ordered desegregation of the armed forces3, feeling that racial discrimination might be regarded as un-American.
And this an indisputable fact that while African Americans fought abroad for democracy and liberty of other nations, they returned back to the USA to face unpleasant racial inequality. Since this moment we can understand the early post-war years as the beginning of the stronger and massive civil rights movement.
As I have already mentioned, the main aim of this essay is to discuss eventual changes in American society after the Brown decision in 1954. Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka was a representative case, in which the Court unanimously declared public school segregation unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment; completely reversing the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine from 1896. And we have to admit that since the end of World War II the main concern of the Supreme Court, under its chief justice Earl Warren, had been civil rights and civil liberties.
The Warren Court started a judicial revolution. The Brown decision was a historic and significant landmark in American constitutional law. The Court continued ruling in favour of blacks. It dealt with civil liberties on a case-by-case basis. Therefore it is understandable when southern congressmen did not want to discontinue Jim Crow segregation laws and repeatedly tried to nullify the decision of 1954.
In the post-war era, African Americans had reached a point where they were both able and determined to start a massive attack on segregation. Together with a significantly growing group of white Americans they began to fight Jim Crow laws. Most northern states, in fact, passed and strengthened antidiscrimination laws. They aimed at reducing, and in the future stopping, inequalities in the society.
Various interracial organizations were created, and among the most prominent were the Southern Regional Council, the National Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). All these organizations strove for equal employment opportunities, for friendly contact between the races, for further antidiscrimination laws, for political rights, and for further desegregation laws.
The most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, was Martin Luther King, Jr. favouring non-violent demonstrations and passive resistance (such as Montgomery bus boycott in 1955).4 Another important black figure, but with completely contrasting views, was Malcolm X, the leader of so-called Black Muslims, spreading the doctrine of Black Nationalism; ironically a doctrine full of racism and violence.
The significant change in the civil rights issue began in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President. During the former Eisenhower presidency the civil rights situation did not improve substantially, except for the already discussed decision of 1954. Although in 1957, the first Civil Rights Act since the Reconstruction was passed; its significance was only symbolical, though it was not backed by the federal enforcement.
With the election of Kennedy a new period of expectations, and perhaps later frustrations, among the civil rights leaders began.

It might seem that the Brown decision stopped segregation at schools, but other public facilities still remained segregated.
As early as in spring 1961, the so-called ‘freedom rides’ began, where both black and white citizens attacked segregation in interstate travel routes. The situation deteriorated so quickly that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had to intervene. He employed police to restore order. In 1961, all bus companies were ordered to desegregate interstate routes and to cease stopping at terminals and facilities that remained segregated. The freedom rides marked significant erosion in the strength of southern Jim Crow laws.
However, when discussing the immediate effect of the Brown decision, it is not far from being self-evident that segregation could not be ended by one decision of the Supreme Court. African Americans still encountered racial discrimination in the South, a century after Emancipation. De facto segregation continued to be a problem in most southern facilities. Despite the Brown decision, only few black children attended schools for whites. President Kennedy requested new civil rights legislation, which was being prepared by his administration. However, his assassination in 1963, disrupted any possible enacting of the law. It was President Johnson who in 1964 passed the most far-reaching civil rights law since the Reconstruction. The law guaranteed equal access to public accommodation and declared illegal various Jim Crow laws. And what is vitally important, there existed means of federal enforcement, despite the fact that the law could not have been enforced on local and state levels, which was seen as a failure. However, this law could always be seen as the first significant victory of the civil rights movement. At this point I am going to end my short discussion, concluding that the Brown decision of 1954 did not bring a radical change in suppressing school segregation and racial discrimination, but it set the basis for further victories of the civil rights movement. It is an indisputable fact that in the 1950s and 1960s segregation still existed in the USA, mainly in southern states. Despite the legislation that followed the Brown decision (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968) it may take many years to ‘discontinue’ racism and de facto segregation from the very heart of white American society.

WORKS CITED:

Brinkley, Alan, et. el. American History: A Survey, Vol. II. New York: 1991.
American Epoch: 1936-1985.
Kronika ludstva. Bratislava: Fortuna Print, 1992.
Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1993.

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The Issue of Segregation and Discrimination of African Americans Before and After The 1954 Brown Decision