The Columbian Exchange Of The New World - 1523 Words

During the establishment of the New World, blacks imported through the Columbian Exchange to North America arrived to fulfill the labor needs in the Southern colonies. As these servants became socially subordinate to their white plantation owners, racial divisions took shape in colonial society (New World Labor Systems). Legislative action taken to deprive black individuals of their rights and privileges arose in the 1660s in the Chesapeake colonies. The practice of slavery grew and prospered under the support of white, Southern plantation owners in the newly established United States. The questionable morality of slavery was questioned during the Civil War, which divided the United States into the Union and the Confederacy. Following its†¦show more content†¦This historic motion also evoked a greater motivation in African Americans for their pursuit to achieve racial integration on a national platform. The â€Å"separate but equal† ruling in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson extended into many facets of everyday life in America. This doctrine led to the passage of laws that separated blacks from whites and reinforced blacks’ social inferiority during this period. Educational buildings, restrooms, hotels and even hospitals all had separate facilities to accommodate the white and black races. This judicial outcome forced African Americans to face further racial oppression, while igniting new legal discrimination in their communities (Berman). African American families grappled with these circumstances, fully aware of the unjust and unequal treatment they now faced. However, change would come as Oliver Brown, an African American from Topeka, Kansas, sued the Topeka Board of Education in 1951. The public school building in Brown’s neighborhood barred his daughter because of her black skin color. Different from other school cases during this time, t he Brown case focused on the inequality of segregated education rather than just highlighting the poorer conditions of black schools. In preliminary hearings, NAACP had the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF, lawyers of Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg take on the case in Topeka. Despite