Desegregation in the United States

Desegregation in the United States is the dismantling of legally enforced racial separation in public institutions, especially schools, transportation, and the armed forces.

Brown v. Board of Education: The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. It overturned the legal basis for segregated public schools, though implementation remained contested.
Equal Protection Clause: The Fourteenth Amendment provision requiring states to provide equal protection of the laws. It supplied the constitutional basis for challenging state-enforced racial separation.
Reconstruction Amendments: The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, adopted after the U.S. Civil War. They abolished slavery, defined citizenship and equal protection, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
Thurgood Marshall: A civil rights lawyer who argued Brown v. Board of Education and later served as a Supreme Court justice. He led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s litigation against school segregation.
White flight: The large-scale movement of white residents from urban areas, often to suburbs, amid racial change and integration. It weakened integration in some cities as families relocated beyond school-district boundaries.
Little Rock Nine: Nine Black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. Their enrollment showed how federal power confronted resistance to school desegregation.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title IV: The part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizing federal assistance and litigation concerning school desegregation. It gave the federal government tools to support desegregation in public schools.
Jim Crow laws: State and local laws enforcing racial segregation and subordination, chiefly in the American South. These laws created the institutional system desegregation sought to dismantle.
Rosa Parks: A Black civil rights activist whose 1955 arrest for refusing to surrender her bus seat helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott. Her action catalyzed a campaign against segregated public transportation.
School busing in the United States: The use of buses to transport students to achieve or maintain racial integration in schools. It became a prominent court-ordered remedy and a focus of public conflict.

Linked from 1 page

Historically Black Colleges and UniversitiesRelated: Desegregation changed the wider higher-education landscape without ending HBCUs' distinct institutional role.