From Plessy 1896 to Brown 1954- Timeline

1857: Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John F. A. Sanford

Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John F. A. Sanford
The Supreme Court held that Black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States. 
Significance: The Supreme Court denied citizenship to Black people, setting the stage for their treatment as second class citizens.

1865: Black Codes

1865: Black Codes
Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments that imposed severe restrictions on freedpeople, such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, and limiting their right to testify against white men. They were also forbidden from carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.
Significance: Segregation Begins - Public schools were segregated, and Black people were barred from serving on juries, and testifying against White people.

Sources
"An Act to Establish and Regulate the Domestic Relations of Persons of Color and to Amend the Law in Relation to Paupers and Vagrency"  Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina Passed at the Sessions of 1864-65 (Columbia: 1865), pp. 291-304. 

1865: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau,was established by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. Its main mission was to provide relief and help freedmen become self-sufficient in all areas of life.
Significance: The first Black schools were set up under the direction of the Freedmen’s Bureau. One of those schools – Howard University – would eventually train and graduate the majority of the legal team that overturned Plessy, including Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

1866. Civil Rights Act of 1866

1866: Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (April 9, 1866) guaranteed Black people basic economic rights to contract, sue, and own property.
Significance: The intention of this law was to protect all persons in the United States, including Black people, in their civil rights.

Sources
S. RES. 429. Recognizing the imporance of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the laws derived from the CIvil Rights Acr of 1866.  Congress.Gov

1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.

1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.
Significance: The 14th Amendment overruled Dred Scott v. Sanford. It guaranteed that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and had rights under the law. 

1877 Jim Crow Laws

1877 Jim Crow Laws begin to be enforced in the Southern States
Laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern States.

Significance:    These Laws were a reinforcement of   the " 1865 Black Codes "  and legalized and enforced the practices of comprehensive racial segregation  in the Southern States.  Although the 1875 Civil Rights Act stated that all races had a right to equal treatment in public places, the 1883 Supreme Court decsion  specfied that this did not apply to private organizations. These Jim Crow Laws were challenged and upheld by the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896.

1870 15th Ammendment

15th Ammendment is Ratified. 

Set free by the 13th amendment, with citizenship guaranteed by the 14th amendment  the 15th amendment gave black males the right to vote. 
Significance: Theortically black males now had the right to vote. 

1873: Slaughter-House Cases 83 U.S. 36

Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 . 1873
These cases narrowly defined Federal power and weakened the power of the Fourteenth Amendment by asserting that most of the rights of citizens are under state control.
Significance: Pro-segregation states would come to justify their policies and claim that segregation in their public school systems was a states' rights issue.

1875: Civil Rights Act of 1875

Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875,  (March 1, 1875) prohibiting discrimination in inns, theaters, and other places of public accommodation. It was the last Federal civil rights act passed until 1957.
Significance: Made it illegal to discrimination in places of public places and facilities and stated that all races were to have equal access and treatment in public accomodations.  It opposed the segregation that was being enforced  in the Southern states through 'Jim Crow laws'.

1883. Civil Rights Cases

Civil Rights Cases
Combined five cases that revolved around  the Civil Rights ACt of 1875. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintifs and overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. 
Significance: The Court declared that the 13th  or 14th Amendment did not prohibit discrimination by private individuals or businesses, paving the way for segregation in private education.

 Sources
Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883). Library of Congress. 

1890. Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890

Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890

In 1890, Louisiana authorized Section 3 of Act 111 known as the “Separate Car Act.” The Separate Car Act required that all Louisiana railroad cars have “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races". 

Significance
Railway trains were now permitted to provide equal but separate accomodations or whites and coloreds. Inlcuding separate services for the races. This act did not carry over for other states adn interstate travel, thus creating issues for porters and passengers who traveled outof state. This was contested by Homer Plessy who refuesd to sit in the collord section and subsequently became the plaintif in  the Plessy v. Ferguson 1986 Supreme Court Case. 

Sources
The Louisiana Railway Accomodations Act.
https://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?id=rail.gen.0060

The Separate or "Jim Crow" Car Laws or Legislative Enactment of the Fourteen Southern States.  Louisiana Laws. pp 22-27
https://archive.org/details/separateorjimcr00boydgoog/page/n35/mode/1up

1896. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537

Homer A. Plessy challenged an 1890 Louisiana law that required separate train cars for Black Americans and White Americans. The Supreme Court held that separate but equal facilities for White and Black railroad passengers did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Significance: Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would become the constitutional basis for segregation.Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy, argued that forced segregation of the races stamped Blacks with a badge of inferiority. That same line of argument would become a decisive factor in the Brown v. Board decision.

The Details
Plessy v. Ferguson: A day in History 
Reed, Racheal. "Plessy v. Ferguson 125" . Harvard Law Today. May 2021
Plessy v. Ferguson 16 S.Ct. 1138. Transcription. Cornel Law School. Legal Information Institute
Ex Parte Plessy. This collection contains primary sources for the case including transcripts of the original court case, the legal arguments used by civil rights activist Albion W. Tourgé,he defense of the arguments by Judge John Howard Ferguson and the decisions by former Governor and Chief Justice Francis T. Nicholls. 

1898 State of Louisiana Constitution 1898

State of Louisiana Constitution, 1898
The  State of Louisiana Constitution is adopted introducing restrictice provisions, creating a poll tax, listeracy and property-ownership requirements  and complex voter registration form. Designed to bar Black men from voting.

Significance:Between 1889 and 1913, nine states outside the South added restrictions requiring voters to read English, and  reforms like the secret ballot were directed at pushing out foreign-born and illiterate voters. Aimed specifically at African Americans  the Lousiana's Grandfather clause allowed men to register to vote only if they could have voted in 1867 (before African Americans were allowed to vote in the South) or descended from an 1867 voter.

Sources
The Text of the Original "Grandfather Clause" State of Louisiana, 1898.

1988. Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County, State of Georgia

The Supreme Court upheld a local school board's decision to close a free public Black school due to fiscal constraints, despite the fact that the district continued to operate two free public white schools.

Significance: The Court’s opinion argued that there was no evidence in the record that the decision was based on racial discrimination and that the distribution of public funds for public education was within the discretion of school authorities.

1908. Berea College v. Commonwealth of Kentucky

The Supreme Court upheld a Kentucky state law forbidding interracial instruction at all schools and colleges in the state.

Significance: The NAACP became the primary tool for the legal attack on segregation, eventually trying the Brown v. Board of Education case.

1909. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded

W.E.B. DuBois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Their mission was to eliminate lynching, and to fight racial and social injustice, primarily through legal action.

Significance: The NAACP became the primary tool for the legal attack on segregation, eventually trying the Brown v. Board of Education case.

1927. Gong Lum v. Rice

In Gong Lum v. Rice the Supreme Court held that a Mississippi school district may require a Chinese-American girl to attend a segregated Black school rather than a White school.

Significance: The Court applied the "separate but equal" formulation of Plessy v. Ferguson to the public schools.

1935. NAACP begins challenging segregation in graduate and secondary schools.

Assisted by his protege Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, of the NAACP, began his strategy of challenging segregation in graduate and professional schools.

Significance: Houston developed a legal strategy that would eventually lead to victory over segregation in the nation’s schools through the Brown v. Board case. Houston’s rationale for attacking segregated law schools was largely two-pronged. First, the establishment of separate but equal law school facilities for Black and White students would become too costly for the states. Second, White judges who matriculated in some of the nation’s finest law schools could not, in good conscience, suggest that Black lawyers in segregated schools received "equal" legal training.

1938. State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada

The Supreme Court decided in favor of Lloyd Gaines, a Black student who had been refused admission to the University of Missouri Law School.

Significance: This case set a precedent for other states to attempt to "equalize" Black school facilities, rather than integrate them. The Court held that the state must furnish Gaines "within its borders facilities for legal education substantially equal to those which the State there offered for the persons of the white race, whether or not other Negroes sought the same opportunity."

1948. Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma

A unanimous Supreme Court held that Lois Ada Sipuel could not be denied entrance to a state law school solely because of her race.

Significance: The Court ruled denial of entrance to a state law school solely on the basis of race unconstitutional.

1949. Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al.

Thurgood Marshall and NAACP officials met with Black residents of Clarendon County, SC. They decided that the NAACP would launch a test case against segregation in public schools if at least 20 plaintiffs could be found. By November, Harry Briggs and 19 other plaintiffs were assembled, and the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against the Clarendon County School Board.

Significance: Briggs v. Elliott became one of the cases consolidated by the Supreme Court into Brown v. Board of Education.

1950. Sweatt v. Painter –– McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents –– Bolling v. Sharpe

Sweatt v. Painter
The Supreme Court held that the University of Texas Law School must admit a Black student, Heman Sweatt. The University of Texas Law School was far superior in its offerings and resources to the separate Black law school, which had been hastily established in a downtown basement.

Significance: The Supreme Court held that Texas failed to provide separate but equal education, prefiguring the future opinion in Brown that "separate but equal is inherently unequal."

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
The Supreme Court invalidated the University of Oklahoma's requirement that a Black student, admitted to a graduate program unavailable to him at the state's Black school, sit in separate sections of or in spaces adjacent to the classroom, library, and cafeteria.

Significance: The Supreme Court held that these restrictions were unconstitutional because it interfered with his "ability to study, to engage in discussions, and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession."

Bolling v. Sharpe
Charles Houston provided legal representation for the Consolidated Parents Group, who, under the direction of Gardner Bishop, attempted to enroll a group of Black students in all White John Philip Sousa Junior High School, in Washington, D.C.

Significance: The Bolling case became one of the consolidated Brown cases. The U. S. Supreme Court would eventually file a separate opinion on Bolling because the 14th Amendment was not applicable in Washington, D.C.

1951. Brown vs Board of Education Case Filed –– Davis v Prince Edward County School Board –– Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. –– Belton et al /Bulah et al. v. Gebhart et al.

Brown vs Board of Education I

On February 28, Brown v. Board of Education was filed in Federal district court, in Kansas.

Significance: This marked the beginning of the quest to challenge the "Separate but Equal" decision of the Plessy vs Fergueson cass. 

Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al.

NAACP lawyer Spottswood Robinson filed Davis v. Prince Edward County, a challenge to Virginia's segregated schools.

Significance: Davis et al.County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al., was another of the cases eventually consolidated as Brown v. Board of Education.

Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al.
This South Carolina case went to trial. Marshall and the NAACP presented a vast array of social science evidence showing how segregation harmed Black school children, including evidence from sociologist Kenneth Clark's controversial "Doll Study."

Significance: The U. S. District Court denied the Briggs plaintiff’s request to order desegregation of Clarendon County, SC, schools and instead ordered the equalization of Black schools. Judge Julius Waring was the lone dissenter.

Brown vs Board of Education I

June. Robert Carter led the NAACP legal team into trial on the Brown v. Board of Education case. 

Significance: In August, a three-judge panel at the U. S. District Court unanimously held in the Brown v. Board of Education case that "no willful, intentional or substantial discrimination" existed in Topeka’s schools. The U. S. District Court found that the physical facilities in White and Black schools were comparable and that the lower court’s decisions in Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin only applied to graduate education.

Belton et al. v. Gebhart et al. + Bulah et al. v. Gebhart et al.

Louis Redding led these cases to trial. These two cases challenged the segregated schoools in Wilmington Delaware- rural Howard Hihh School ( Bulah case) and suburban Claymont High School

Significance: The Belton and Bulah cases would ultimately join four other NAACP cases in the Supreme Court ruling in Brown.

1952. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, VA

The U. S. District court found in favor of the school board under the theory of "separate but equal."

Significance: The U. S. District Court unanimously rejected the Davis plaintiffs’ request to order desegregation of Prince Edward County, VA, schools, ordering the "equalization" of Black schools instead.

1952. Belton et al. v. Gebhart et al.; Bulah et al. v. Gebhart et al.

A Delaware court ruled that the plaintiffs were entitled to immediate admission to White public schools.

Significance: In both of the Gebhart cases, the court ruled that the plaintiffs were being denied equal protection of the law and ordered that the 11 children involved be immediately admitted to Delaware’s White schools. The board of education appealed the decision. This did not apply broadly throughout Delaware.

Belton v. Gebhart : https://brown65.the74million.org/beltonvgebhart

1952. Briggs v. Brown

The Supreme Court announced that it would hear oral arguments in Briggs and Brown during the upcoming October 1952 term.

Significance:This would then become one of the cases in the Brown v. Board of Education case. 

1952. The Bundling of the Brown v. Board Cases

Days before arguments were to be heard in Briggs and Brown, the Supreme Court announced a postponement. Three weeks later, the Court announced that it would also hear the Delaware cases, as well as Davis v. Prince Edward County and the District of Columbia case, Bolling et al. v. Sharpe et al.

Significance: The Supreme Court agreed to hear all five of the school desegregation cases collectively. This grouping was significant because it showed school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one.

[Note: The U. S. Supreme Court eventually rendered a separate opinion on Bolling v. Sharpe because the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was not applicable in the District of Columbia.]

1952. Brown v. Board of Education Begins

First round of arguments held in Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases.

1953. Second Round of Arguments in Brown v. Board of Education

The Supreme Court ordered that a second round of arguments in Brown v. Board be heard in October.

1953. Chief Justice Fred Vinson Jr. died

Chief Justice Fred Vinson Jr. died unexpectedly of a heart attack on the 8th. President Eisenhower nominated California Governor Earl Warren to replace Vinson as interim Chief on the 30th. The Court rescheduled arguments in Brown for December.

Significance: Justice Earl Warren would go on to deliver the unanimous ruling in the Brown v. Board case.

1953. Second round of arguments Brown v. Board of Education

Supreme court hears the second round of arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.

1954. New Chief Justice appointed

The Senate confirmed Earl Warren as Chief Justice.

1954 Brown v. Board of Education

The Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, and declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Details

Brown v. Board of Education. This Day in History. May 13. 2021

1954. Bolling v. Sharpe

That same day, the Court held that racial segregation in the District of Columbia public schools violated the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment in Bolling v. Sharpe.The Court scheduled arguments on remedy in Brown for October but eventually put them off until April of 1955.

Significance: The Court ruled that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was, therefore, unconstitutional. In the wake of the decision, the District of Columbia and some school districts in the border states began to desegregate their schools voluntarily.State legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia adopted resolutions of "interposition and nullification" that declared the Court's decision to be "null, void, and no effect."
Various southern legislatures passed laws that imposed sanctions on anyone who implemented desegregation, and enacted school closing plans that authorized the suspension of public education, and the disbursement of public funds to parents to send their children to private schools.

1954. Death of Justice Jackson

After the sudden death of Justice Jackson, President Eisenhower nominated John Marshall Harlan, the grandson of the lone dissenter in Plessy, to fill the vacancy. After long hearings before the Senate, Harlan was finally sworn in as an Associate Justice in March of 1955.

1956. Third Round of Arguments in Brown v. Board of Education

The Supreme Court heard its third round of arguments in Brown, this time concerning remedies.

1955 Brown v. Board of Education II

On the last day of the term, the Supreme Court handed down Brown II, ordering that desegregation occur with "all deliberate speed.

Significance: Brown II was intended to work out the mechanics of desegregation. Due to the vagueness of the term "all deliberate speed," many states were able to stall the Court’s order to desegregate their schools. The legal and social obstacles that southern states put in place and encouraged, in their effort to thwart integration, served as a catalyst for the student protests that launched the civil rights movement.