Each member of this group should do the following:
1. Provide a brief summary (in your own words) of your topic.
2. State what you want your audience to understand after they watch your performance.
3. Identify your best source for primary source material thusfar.
So far we have done a ton of research and have found a lot of great primary source material but I think so far our best primary source is a letter from President Eisenhower (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=347&invol=483). Although we haven't begun putting the script together yet, I think that we will be able to use a lot of quotes from this primary source document. After our performance, I want the audience to understand that people had many different opinions on whether or not they agreed with segregation. I also want them to understand all the different views as well as know what this case actually is. The Brown v. Board of Education was a set of five court cases that tried to end the segregation of African Americans from schools. African Americans felt as though that under the United States Constitution they are guaranteed liberty and equal protection which is why they fought their case.They wanted to end the doctrine of "separate but equal" that was declared in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 and to create public schools.
ReplyDeleteThe Brown vs. Board of Education case is very complex and has many different sections. The case all started out with the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 who started the "separate but equal" proclamation when Plessy challenged railroad coaches for having segregated populations. When the courts went against Plessy and said that the Fourteenth Amendment was not violated many more cases arose. Throughout the 1950's five cases were all ruled against at a lower court level and were all court cases involving segregation. This led to an abrupt case that was called "Brown vs. Board of education" although this case involved all five cases. On May 17, 1954 Chief Justice Warren read the verdict that segregated schools were unconstitutional. All this information has come from complex research that my group has contributed in. The best resource that I found was the actual script of what Justice Warren read to the court about the verdict in the Supreme Court. (http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/PrimarySourcesDetailsPage/PrimarySourcesDetailsWindow?
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normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX3437704800&mode=view). When we perform this play I want people to learn not only about segregation from the 1950's but also what Barack Obama, our President has to say about it too. This play needs to be interesting to the audience by not only learning about our history but also about President Obama's opinion today.
Brown V Board of Education is actually a case of several different cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Several black children sought admission to public schools that required or permitted segregation based on race. The plaintiffs argued that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It overturned the Plessy v Ferguson decision of 1896, which had allowed states legalize segregation within schools. The chief justice in the case was Justice Earl Warren. His court’s decision was a unanimous 9-0 decision that said, “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Brown v Board set the foundation for the civil rights movement and gave African American’s hope that “separate, but equal” on all fronts would be changed. After watching our performance I hope that the audience takes away the importance of Brown v. Board of Education and how it did more than just desegregate schools. Since we all split the work up of finding primary source documents I haven't had a chance to look at the all, but I know we have the Opinion of the Court and the Dissenting Opinion from the Supreme court case, which is extremely relevant and useful.
ReplyDeleteFrom the research I have conducted, I understand that Brown Vs Board of Education was a breakthrough in the civil rights movement. At the time of the Act, schools were known as being separate but equal. However, Oliver Brown challenged this opinion in court and it was found in a 9-0 vote that the black schools were not equal with white schools. (White schools had better books, subjects, and buildings than the black schools). Thus, this law violated the fourteenth amendment which had an Equal Protection Klaus within it, stating that all citizens were equal. Prior to this case, the popular idea from Plessy vs Ferguson was that since the schools were segregated but equal, it did not violate the constitution. However, Brown Vs Board brought attention to the unequal treatment of schools; thus it became more apparent that the separate but equal idea was unconstitutional. I had also found information on the thirteenth amendment which declared the abolishment of slavery and the fifteenth amendment which gave equal protection of rights to all citizens. In watching our performance, though we haven’t started our script yet, I hope that people are able to recognize that the five court cases entitled in our presentation will show that Brown vs Board of Education integrated the schools since the idea of “separate but equal” proved unconstitutional. My favorite primary source document this far was a letter from the Supreme Court stating, “that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional…[and] All provisions of state, federal, or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.”
ReplyDeleteFrom the past week's research I know that Brown vs Board of Education is the court case which ended segregation of races in American schools. In this case the plaintiff proved to the court that segregation in schools violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. The verdict of this case was used to determine the verdicts of multiple other cases regarding segregation in schools and ended separation of races in schools across America. Through our performance I want the audience to understand the major role that Brown vs Board of Education played in the coming of social equality in American society among Africans and Caucasians. I would say that the best primary source we have as of now would be a letter from Eisenhower to his best friend. I identified this document because it is not only Eisenhower's opinions, but it is his opinions without political editions to please who he is talking to such as what is done to a speech addressed to the entire country.
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