Separate But Unequal Education

Separate But Unequal Education. March Route for Education. Many social scientists of the early 20th century promoted the false belief that Blacks were intellectually and socially inferior to Whites and fit only for service jobs. Blacks, therefore, did not deserve to be educated on the same level as Whites. To ensure that African Americans "stayed in their place," Southern states and cities used Jim Crow laws to keep their social and economic superiority in every way, including education. Alabama and Birmingham used this reasoning to justify spending far fewer tax dollars for Black public schools than they spent for White public schools. , Paired marker , April 4, 1961 , Substandard conditions were the norm for "Negro schools” in Birmingham during segregation. In the early 1900s many of Birmingham's Black children did not attend school. By the 1920s, school officials replaced old wooden schoolhouses with new brick-and-cement schools for White students. By 1931, Black schools were still small, old and fire-prone buildings with crowded classrooms, outdated textbooks and underpaid teachers. Such, unequal school conditions continued into the 1960s. In 1961 Birmingham classroom pictured here, male and female students, with a divider between them, sit in a single room. One light bulb dangles from the ceiling, and a coal-burning stove keeps the students warm. , "Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world." , Malcolm X , American Black nationalist leader, Lesson D2: Why is an equal education important in American life and in global society?