For Cindy Clevenger and Kathleen Krull with thanks
LANDMARK EVENTS BEFORE THE TWELVE DAYS IN MAY
Plessy v Ferguson 1896 On June 7 1892 Homer Plessy a light complexioned black man deliberately sat in the white only car of the East Louisiana Railroad He identified himself as Negro and was arrested for violating Louisiana's Separate Car Act passed in 1890 The act segregated railroad passengers by race Plessy wanted to test the law and his case eventually reached the U S Supreme Court The court ruled that separate facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were equal This separate butequal doctrine eventually was applied to all areas of life restaurants theaters schools waiting rooms restrooms and even drinking fountains The facilities for blacks were never equal Morgan v Commonwealth of Virginia 1946 Irene Morgan a black woman boarded a bus going from Virginia to Baltimore Maryland She was ordered to sit in the back of the bus She objected saying the laws and the Constitution of the United States not Virginia segregation laws applied since the bus was an interstate bus one that crossed state boundaries She was arrested and fined 10 but Morgan took her case to the Supreme Court The court ruled in Morgan's favor The laws of one state cannot extend beyond its borders To avoid a patchwork of regulations in which some states racially segregated passengers and others did not the court saw a need for a single uniform rule for interstate passengers Segregated seating on interstate buses was declared unconstitutional but the court's ruling did not apply to buses traveling only within a state
HITE Ο Μ ΕΝ DOLORED O M EN WHITE NEX COLORED Separate but equal was the law of the land following the U S Supreme Court's Plessy decision but accommodations for blacks were always inferior never equal Brown v Board of Education 1954 In 1954 a large portion of the United States had segregated schools as a result of the Plessy decision A black third grader in Topeka Kansas named Linda Brown would help bring an end to the separate but equal doctrine established in Plessy Linda could not attend the white only school just six blocks from her house She had to catch a bus to attend a segregated school a mile away Oliver Brown Linda's father filed a lawsuit But it was later combined with other cases making their way to the Supreme Court The Browns and other plaintiffs claimed that racially segregated schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution The Equal Protection Clause
