An evocative chronicle of the battle that led to America's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling shares insights into the abuses of the "separate but equal" system and how such courageous activists as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois helped end legal segregation.

Shares the story of Sarah Roberts and her 1847 case petitioning that she be allowed to attend a white school, explaining how her heroic efforts established key precedents and paved the way for civil rights advancements.

The Brown v. Board of Education ruling was a major milestone in the Civil Rights Movement. This book traces the effects of slavery, emancipation, and Jim Crow Laws to what became one of the most profoundly important Supreme Court cases in American history. The comprehensive yet concise recounting will help students comprehend the context, causes, and effects of the decision that ended segregation in public schools.

"On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered a unanimous ruling that declared racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, because separate could never be equal. Now readers can step back in time to learn about what led up to this major milestone in the Civil Rights movement, how the landmark case unfolded, and the ways in which one critical day changed America forever"--

Discusses the 1896 Supreme Court case that legitimized the segregation laws of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century and the results and repercussions of the case.

Following the Civil War, feelings were mixed about the freedoms that Lincoln had granted to African American citizens through his Emancipation Proclamation. A group in Louisiana decided to challenge a state law that required companies to have railway cars separated by race. They orchestrated a situation in which a white-looking black man would sit in the white only part of the train and announce he was colored. In a landmark decision that supported...