The Importance of Being Educated

The Importance of Being Educated. March Route for Education. Thirteen years after the American Civil War, the U.S. Supreme Court began to uphold Jim Crow segregation laws that kept African Ameri- cans from enjoying their 14th Amendment rights. Its famous Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 supported a Louisiana law requiring sepa- rate train cars for each race. The Supreme Court justices said the law would not violate the constitutional rights of Blacks as long as the separate areas were equal. American states and cities, especially those in the South, used the ruling to justify, more than 400 separate but equal laws that keep Blacks apart from Whites in every aspect of life, especially public schools. , Paired marker , August 1942 , The Alabama Constitution of 1901 required separate schools for Black and White children; no child of either race was allowed to attend a school for the other. Birmingham public schools followed this rule. Whatever the conditions may have been for White public schools in the state, those for Blacks were always worse. For decades after slavery ended, most Blacks were stuck in low-paying service jobs like house-keeping or driving delivery trucks. Black men in Birmingham worked the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in steel mills and coal mines. Those who did not find work could be arrested for vagrancy and forced to work as cheap laborers for local industries. Without a good education, African Americans could not advance far in society., "Our Constitution is color-blind and does not tolerate classes among citizens." , U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan , The only justice to disagree with the Plessy decision., Lesson DI: In what year did Congress pass the 14th Amendment, which gave former Black slaves the rights of U.S. citizenship, including due process and equal protection under the law?