Potorti SSC.343

1. The Brown Decision
and the Murder of
Emmett Till
Image: The Militant (March 1959)

2. Course Learning Objectives
• Describe structures and manifestations of racial inequality in the U.S.
since emancipation.
• Understand how changing historical contexts create opportunities and
constraints that influence when and how social movements emerge.
• Assess the philosophies, strategies, tactics, and demands of activists and
organizations advocating racial justice.
• Identify key historical figures, campaigns, victories, and setbacks of the
“long civil rights movement” of the 1950s and 1960s.
• Explain how opponents of racial justice have responded to movement
demands and successes.

3. Content Warning
Today’s class will include discussion and written descriptions of brutal
racist violence.
These slides include one graphic image,
directly preceded by another warning.

4. Prior to the Brown decision, seventeen states required racial segregation in public education by
law and four more permitted it.
Segregation in Public Education

5. Segregated facilities for Black students, like this school in Virginia (pictured in March 1953), were
typically of inferior quality compared to those for white students. They were often overcrowded and
under-resourced, for example, using outdated textbooks discarded by nearby white schools. In the Deep
South, schools for Black children often operated during fewer months and for fewer hours per day, and in
many cases were closed during cotton harvesting season so that Black children could work in the fields.

6. Moton High School (on the left, for Black students) and Farmville High School (for white
students). Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951. A lawsuit brought by Moton students to remedy
the inferior nature of schools designated for Black students became part of the landmark Brown v.
Board of Education case, first argued in front of the Supreme Court in Dec 1952.

7. Science classrooms and
auditoriums in Moton (on
the left) and Farmville high
schools.

8. The “Doll Test”
More than a decade before the Brown case,
psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted a
series of experiments in the 1940s referred to as “the
doll tests” in an effort to understand the psychological
effects of segregation on Black children. The test used
four dolls, identical except for color, to test the racial
perceptions of children ages three to seven. Each child
was asked to identify the race of the dolls and state
which doll they preferred. Most of the subjects
reported that they preferred the white doll and
attributed positive qualities to it. The Clarks concluded
that “prejudice, discrimination, and segregation”
damaged the self-esteem of Black children by
instilling in them a sense of racial inferiority. This
study was offered by the plaintiffs in the Brown case
as evidence of the damaging effects suffered by Black
children as a result of segregated schools.
“Kenneth Clark observing a child playing with black
and white dolls, part of a study that he and his wife,
who was also a psychologist, conducted on the self-
image of black children.” Credit: Untitled, Harlem,
New York, 1947. Gordon Parks/The Gordon Parks
Foundation.

9. “Nine-year-old student Linda Brown (first desk in second row from right) sits with her classmates at the racially
segregated Monroe Elementary School, Topeka, Kansas, 1953. When her enrollment at a ‘whites-only’ school
was blocked, her family initiated the landmark Civil Rights lawsuit ‘Brown V. Board of Education,’ that led to
the beginning of integration in the U.S. education system.” Carl Iwasaki/Life Images Collection/Getty

10. “Portrait of the African-American students for whom the famous Brown vs Board of Education case was brought and
their parents: (front row L-R) Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown, James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and
Katherine Carper; (back row L-R) Zelma Henderson, Oliver Brown, Sadie Emanuel, Lucinda Todd, & Lena Carper,
Topeka, Kansas, 1953.” Carl Iwasaki/Life Images Collection/Getty.

11. The doctrine of “separate but equal,” established in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which became
the bedrock of Jim Crow, was overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of
Education. Brown pooled cases brought by plaintiffs in fours states—Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and
Delaware—demonstrating the national scope of school segregation.
Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)

12. “George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James
M. Nabrit congratulating each other on the Brown
decision,” Associated Press (17 May 1954).
The Brown victory was the culmination of
decades of litigation and strategizing by the
NAACP. Its team, led by
future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall, the head of its Legal Defense and
Education Fund, represented the plaintiffs.
The ruling represented a landmark
achievement, and arguably the greatest
accomplishment of the organization, which
had shifted focus in the 1930s from passage
of anti-lynching legislation to targeted
efforts to dismantle legalized segregation
completely.

13. The liberal Warren Court (1953-69)
ruled unanimously in the Brown decision. President Dwight
Eisenhower, who had appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren
(above left) to the court, did not approve of the decision, did
not publicly encourage state governments to abide by it, and
did not believe that proponents of desegregation should urge
quick implementation of the ruling. Despite this,
Eisenhower would be forced to implement the decision in
Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

14. The Brown Decision
“Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local
governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for
education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our
democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public
responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good
citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural
values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust
normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may
reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an
education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a
right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public
schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other
‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal
educational opportunities? We believe that it does.”

15. The Brown Decision (cont’d)
“…Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental
effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of
the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the
inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child
to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [slow] the
educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some
of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system…
We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but
equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the
actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived
of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This
disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also
violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
--Chief Justice Earl Warren, Opinion of the Court

16. “All Deliberate Speed”
Despite the enormous triumph signaled
by the Brown ruling, which put federal
law on the side of civil rights activists
for the first time since the 19th century,
the landmark case marked the beginning
of the modern movement, rather than its
conclusion. In determining the “remedy”
or “relief’ to be required as a result of its
findings, the Supreme Court in a follow-
up ruling known as Brown II (1955),
mandated that racial segregation of
public schools be corrected “with all
deliberate speed,” setting the stage for
massive resistance by white Southerners
opposed to integration.

18. Fourteen year-old Emmett Till, visiting from
Chicago, was murdered and mutilated for
supposedly talking inappropriately to a
white woman in Mississippi.
In the days before his death in July 2020,
Congressman John Lewis connected Till’s
murder to 21st century attacks on Black
lives. “Emmett Till was my George Floyd.
He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland
and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he
was killed, and I was only 15 years old at
the time. I will never ever forget the moment
when it became so clear that he could easily
have been me. In those days, fear
constrained us like an imaginary prison…”
The Murder of Emmett Till
(Aug 1955)

19. Content Warning
The following slide includes a graphic image
depicting an act of brutal racist violence.

20. Above, Mamie Till Bradley sobs over her
son’s mutilated body. She insisted on an open
casket, she explained, so “all the world [can]
see what they did to my boy.” Jet magazine,
a Black publication, printed these images,
making Till’s murder a national story.

21. Unlike many white Southerners involved in
similar crimes, Till’s killers actually stood
trial. They were acquitted by an all-white,
all-male jury after only an hour of
deliberation. The defendants later described
the night of Till’s disappearance and
admitted to the crime in exchange for $4,000
from Look magazine. Though they
acknowledged that they took Till by force
from his uncle’s home, they were never
charged with kidnapping.

22. Evaluating Sources
• How can we tell which sources are “good” (i.e. useful or
revealing)?
• What counts as a “good” source will vary depending on
what you are trying to learn or find out.
• Sources often offer conflicting accounts, interpretations,
or memories of an event or experience.
• Some sources are more “reliable” (trustworthy) than
others.

23. Factors to Consider in Evaluating Sources:
• Identity: Who made this source?
• Authority: How close was the creator to the event(s) they describe?
• Audience: Who was the source created for? Who was the target audience,
and why?
• Motivations: Why was this source created? Did the creator have something
to gain or lose in influencing how the event would be understood?
• Context: When was the source created? How long after the event? What else
was occurring at that time?
• Accuracy/reliability: Does this source confirm or contradict the story told
by similar sources? If there are conflicting sources, what might that tell us
about how a given event has been studied and how it should be understood?

24. What can we learn from these
primary sources?
• What narrative does the Look magazine article offer? What
happened? Why was Till killed?
• What story can be pieced together using the oral history
interviews about this event?
• How do these accounts compare?