Background: The Fourteenth Amendment
was ratified in 1868, during the congressional Reconstruction
era. The amendment’s most significant provision
-- “No state shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive
any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.” -- created
the potential for two interpretations. It seemed to
some that the civil rights that Congress intended to
protect were extremely broad and guaranteed equal rights
for all. However, the provision also could be interpreted
to guarantee equal protection of political and legal
rights but not social rights. In the last decades of
the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court handed down
decisions in a number of cases that would determine
the legal meaning of that provision. In each case the
court gave a narrow reading to the amendment. Finally,
in 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme
Court handed down an interpretation of the Fourteenth
Amendment that would last for nearly a century. The
decision declared that the “equal-protection”
clause permitted the separation of races in public facilities
as long as the facilities were equal because if “
. . . one race be inferior to the other socially, the
Constitution of the United States cannot put them on
the same plane.”
Objectives:
1. Students will examine primary documents and factual
references to analyze the history of the struggle to
end segregation in public education.
2. Students will be able to identify the strategy used
by the NAACP to overturn the Supreme Court decision
in Plessy v. Ferguson.
3. Students will be engaged in historical research and
critical analysis.
4. Students will be able to identify how events in the
twentieth century affected the campaign to end segregation
and be able to analyze the historical context within
which the struggle to end segregation took place.
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