Integration of Schools and Brown v. Board of Education

The film Remember the Titans centers upon T.C. Williams High School, the newly desegregated school in Alexandria, Virginia.  Prior to 1971, schools in Alexandria had not been forced to integrate.  After a court ruling, three high schools, two white and one African American, were forced to integrate for the first time.  An African American head coach, Herman Boone (played by Denzel Washington), was hired to replace the previous Caucasian head coach, Bill Yoast, for the school's football team.  As the film opens, Sheryl Yoast, coach Yoast's daughter, narrates that "Up until 1971, there was no race mixing."  As the film progresses, we learn that many other schools in Virginia remained segregated as Caucasian schools. 

The major conflict that is brought up throughout the film is the forced integration of T.C. Williams High School.  Many years earlier, in 1954, the NAACP's legal team, led by attorney Thurgood Marshall, made one of the most important legal challenges to segregation, overturning around sixty years of legal segregation that began with Plessy v. Ferguson (lecture 11/8/11).  In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that separate educational facilities for white and black students was "inherently unequal" (Hist page 444).  Being that the film takes place in 1971, one might at first question as to why there is a time difference of around twenty years before schools in Alexandria, Virginia were desegregated.  The point needs to be made that although Brown v. Board of Education was passed in 1954, it was slow to trigger changes at first.  One of the reasons for this was because President Eisenhower thought that states, rather than the federal government, should deal with civil rights (Hist page 444).  Because of this, it is clear to see why some states desegregated later than others.  Another reason why Alexandria, Virginia, schools were desegregated twenty years after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was because the Court decided that desegregation of southern schools should proceed "with all deliberate speed" (Hist page 444).  This allowed southern states a greater amount of leniency in enforcing the law.   

In the 1960s, African Americans rose up and coordinated into a bunch of different Civil Rights struggles.  This happened at the level of the federal government in the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education where the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional (lecture 11/8/11).  The Major Problems document "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954" shows that the Court ruled that separate was not equal.  In the ruling, the argument is made that a child can not be expected to succeed in life if they are denied the opportunity of an education (Major Problems "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954"document).  The document goes on to explain that "Such an opportunity, when the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms" (Major Problems "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954"document).  The argument is made that you do not even have a chance in life if you do not have a proper education.  If you do not have an equal education, then you do not even have the opportunity to succeed in life (lecture 11/10/11).

The above video, by PBS highlights the issue of desegregating schools of K-12 in relation to Brown v. Board of Education.