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.