Over the past two days in class, we have learned about different legal cases that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement. One case was called the Scottsboro Boys Trial. Nine African American young men were tried for allegedly raping and assaulting two white women on a train. The trials lasted for years, though the men were innocent. They were all originally sentenced to death, but many got other sentences as the trial was reviewed multiple times. The trial demonstrated that African American people did not always get fair trials due to race. After learning about the trial, we wrote journal entries from the point of view of one of the convicted men, Haywood Patterson.
Today, we learned about the case of Brown v. Board of Education. The case was a combination of five cases that went against the segregation of schools, mainly in the South and the West. White and black children went to different schools that were apparently "separate but equal," but black children often received lower quality facilities, supplies, and education. The case went to Supreme Court and ultimately ruled that school districts could no longer be segregated. This case showed that "separate but equal" would no longer be accepted in the United States.
I believe W.E.B. DuBois would have approved of these cases because they attacked racial discrimination through the legal system. These cases were ultimately successful despite their outcome because they spread the idea that racial discrimination should no longer be tolerated.
No comments:
Post a Comment