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Back to Segregation, By Order Of the Courts

One or two definitions have to be kept in mind. What the Court prohibited in 1954, as a denial of equal protection of the laws, was state-imposed segregation, that is, the deliberate assignment of black children, because they were black, to black schools, and the corollary assignment of white children, because they were white, to white schools. Section 140 of the Constitution of Virginia then stated the matter succinctly: “White and colored children shall not be taught in the same school.” This was segregation de jure. In Brown and the cases that followed, the Court ordered such segregation stamped out, root and branch.

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Back to Segregation, By Order Of the Courts

One or two definitions have to be kept in mind. What the Court prohibited in 1954, as a denial of equal protection of the laws, was state-imposed segregation, that is, the deliberate assignment of black children, because they were black, to black schools, and the corollary assignment of white children, because they were white, to white schools. Section 140 of the Constitution of Virginia then stated the matter succinctly: “White and colored children shall not be taught in the same school.” This was segregation de jure. In Brown and the cases that followed, the Court ordered such segregation stamped out, root and branch.