Affirmative Action

The Civil Rights Movement which helped push towards integration and diversity was a defining period of time in American history. Segregation is the separation of people based on race. Integration is just the opposite: to bring people together with no racial bias. One step huge step towards desegregation was an executive order of President Lyndon B. Johnson called “Affirmative Action.” Affirmative Action forced companies and schools to have a diverse population of students or workers. If companies and schools weren’t doing the most they could to achieve that diversity, then their policies would have to change. This helped greatly in stopping companies to only hire white businessmen and in stopping schools from accepting only white applicants. Although it has helped in the past, most Americans today have accepted minorities as equals, and don’t need to be forced to integrate them in business and education; it will merely happen on its own.

In a segregated country, only a few brave people try for change at first. Homer Plessy was only ⅛ African American. He tested the ideals of segregation by sitting in a white-only section of a train. Because of his minute amount of African genealogy, he was forced off the train and arrested. He took his case to the Supreme Court who ruled that “separate but equal” was Constitutional. Although blacks and whites were forced to be separated, their separate facilities were deemed equal. The problem was that they weren’t equal. A group known as NAACP, which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, began in 1909. This group is comprised primarily of African American lawyers who hope to see a change in the way black people are treated in the segregated United States. A member of the NAACP named Thurgood Marshall, who was a successful lawyer, helped to end segregation in public schools. He hired a professional psychologist to prove that segregation damaged the self esteem of children. This case was taken to the Supreme Court and was ruled in favor of desegregating schools. This case was known as Brown versus the Board of Education. At first only a few black school children attended all-white schools, as sort of an experiment. Of those children, one was named Elizabeth Eckford. She and a few other students were supposed to attend a white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Governor of Arkansas, who was opposed to integration, sent the National Guard to stop Elizabeth and the other students from going to school. Another girl who attempted to attend an all-white school was named Ruby Bridges. As a six-year old, she attended an all-white school in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was able to attend this school because she was incredibly bright and passed a difficult test. Every morning and afternoon, some U.S. Marshals had to bring her to and from schools. They also had to escort her from class to class. For most of the year she was the only child in her class because people believed that she shouldn’t be in the same classroom as white children. These two children were very brave and helped start the end to segregation.