“in the 1950s the Most Important Victories One by Black Americans Were in the Area of Education.” Do You Agree? Explain Your Answer.

“In the 1950s the most important victories one by Black Americans were in the area of education.” Do you agree? Explain your answer.

The 1950s was a seminal decade for the Civil Rights Movement. This decade saw the first major victories for civil rights in the Supreme Court, the development of nonviolent protests and the transformation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., into the movement's preeminent leader. Thus to narrow down the scope of the victories won by black americans in the 1950s to education only would be most unwise. However, there is no doubt that the improvements in education for black students were considerably significant.

On the one hand, there were a great number of prominent cases in which afro-american educational arguments were won. In 1950 black students in southern states legally had the same level of educational attainment as white students. The first major court case concerning black and white equality, however, was Thurgood Marshall’s successfully argued Sweatt v. Painter lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case that challenged not only the lack of equality between black and white students in higher education, but also the foundation of the whole of the USA’s lawful lack of racial equality summarised by a quote from the Plessy v. Ferguson case from 1896, which stated that the black population was to become “separate but equal”.This case was extremely influential in the landmark later case of Brown v. Topeka.

In 1951 the wheels were set in motion for the Brown v. Topeka case. Linda Brown, an 8-year-old girl in Topeka, Kansas, lived within walking distance of a whites-only elementary school. Because of segregation, she had to travel by bus to a more distant school for African-American children. Her father sued the school board of Topeka, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Consequently, one of the most influential litigations throughout the movements towards desegregation began. Finally, in 1954 the Supreme Court...