#school integration

Pioneers: Eugene Caruthers, Elizabeth Watkins Crawford, George L. Nichols, Mary Luellen Owens Wagner, and Clarence McKinney. Their courage and legacy now stand tall for future generations. The statues, titled “The Path” by sculptor Austen Brantley, were unveiled on October 25, 2025. History remembered and honored. 👏🏾

However, A MAGA racist gotta do what they do...Be a racist.

"It's great that they're honoring those who stood up against racist Democrats who demanded segregation. If only they would fight the same against the party who is doing it again today..."

Selective history, many segregationist officials were Dems in the South. That’s historically true. Context omission: the parties changed after the Civil Rights era & the Southern Strategy realignment. You are less interested in the actual history of the people being honored than in repackaging it for MAGA BS.

Women at P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights protesting the busing of African-American students from schools in Brooklyn, September 28, 1959. The Board of Education said that this was necessary because of overcrowding in Brooklyn, but it also was doubtless in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. This prefigured the vehement anti-busing protests of the 1960s.

School integration protestors in Louisville - What’s up with the signs? Did they spell “oppose” wrong and then had to correct it?

Thurgood Marshall served on the Supreme Court for 24 years. He died at the age of 84 in 1933. In 1952, he argued his most important and historic case, “Brown v. Board of Education”.  Marshall argued this case for a group of African-American families who were against having their children attend an all Black school far from where they lived.

The case challenged a ruling from 1896 which stated that, “separate but equal” was constitutional. In May of 1854, the Supreme Court ruled in Marshall’s favor saying “...separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Marshall’s fight in “Brown v. Board of Education” led to school integration and was a enormous victory for the rights of African-Americans, as well as the Civil Rights Movement over the next 10 years. 

On January 19th, 1976, Federal District Judge John Reynolds ruled that the Milwaukee Public Schools were illegally segregated in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students.  This 1976 ruling was the near conclusion of the Federal lawsuit Amos et al. v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee, filed by Milwaukee attorney and Wisconsin state Assemblyman Lloyd Barbee on June 17th, 1965.  This lawsuit was filed after many public demonstrations by MUSIC, the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee, and charged the school board with intentionally maintaining segregation in Milwaukee Public Schools.  In his ruling, Judge Reynolds ordered the school board to develop a plan for desegregation, resulting in another three years of legal challenges and resistance from the school board before an agreement was ultimately reached in 1979.

1. In this image Elizabeth Eckford is turned away from Central High School by members of the Arkansas National Guard, called out by Governor Orval Faubus, supposedly to stop riots between Blacks and whites. In fact, the National Guard simply prevented eight Black students from entering Central High School in defiance of a Federal Judge's order. Twenty days later, President Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army in to force the school to integrate, September 4, 1957. Photo credit: Bettmann

2. In this image teenager Elizabeth Eckford is turned away from entering Central High School by Arkansas National Guardsmen under orders from Governor Orval Faubus, 1957. Photo credit: Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection

3.  A policeman forces an unidentified woman into a squad car after violence broke out in Little Rock, Arkansas, when nine Negro students eluded a crowd of angry whites and entered Central High School. Their entrance into the school touched off a walkout of white students, September 25, 1957. Source: The Cavalier Daily / NEA Telephoto