EOTO 3 Trial Blog

For our third EOTO activity, the other group spoke about the trial and presented the plaintiff's and the defense's sides. The trial they covered was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which 5 cases were consolidated into one, with hundreds of plaintiffs. Oliver Brown's name was chosen to represent the case.

Of course, one of the arguments was that segregated black schools were not equal to white schools. A student argued that they were unequal by saying that four out of ten white students graduated from high school, while only one in ten black students graduated from high school. They also had the image below passed around the class that showed the difference in quality.

The difference seen between these two schools was common throughout the entire country. Black schools were often overcrowded, in disrepair, understaffed, and lacked even a fraction of the resources afforded to whites-only schools. The prosecution argued that getting rid of these disadvantages would greatly improve education for African Americans. I did a little research of my own to see if the claims made in our trial were true, and as predicted, they were.

According to research by economist Rucker C. Johnson, the desegregation of schools had numerous positive effects for African Americans. To name a few, five years in desegregated schooling lead to a 30% increase in wages for the student on average, an 11% decrease in poverty incidents, and a 25% increase in family income on average. There is also a correlation between increased school spending and an increase in time spent in school on average for students, which compounds these effects.

These statistics serve as a buttress for another presented argument: desegregation in schools would be good for the economy. A student said that "unsegregated schools would be an investment for the future". As the world was reaching a new age in technology, the need for skilled, specialized workers increased, which could only be supplied by well-educated people. Cutting off a quality education from a large portion of the population would hamper the ability of America to compete in this new age.

Today, the problem of desegregation has a simple, concise, and correct slam-dunk answer: "It's an awful idea". However, times were different in the 1950s, and arguments (like these) that wouldn't be needed today had to be presented to break down segregation in America. Facts like these serve as a scientific way to try and get through to someone who lacks the moral character to understand that segregation is wrong from the start.