"Waiting Room for African American"
Amendments
Until after the Civil War, the statement that was written on the Declaration of Independence saying, “All men are created equal” was not followed. Three amendments were passed in order to end all unequal treatments during 1860-1870. The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865 to end all slavery. Both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments enhanced legal rights for freed slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment specifically included the “equal protection clause,” which stated that everyone is granted with the same rights. The Fifteenth Amendment allowed all citizens in each state to vote.
Jim Crow Laws
However, the ratified amendments that were passed did not stop people from mistreating African Americans differently from the whites. There were laws that separated public facilities, transportation, and education. During 1870-1960, people, specifically the white citizens followed the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws was a racial caste system and a series of anti-black laws which enforced segregation. It was mostly used in the southern and border states. It reinforced beliefs that blacks are inferior to whites in all aspects, including intelligence, morality, and civil behaviors. Even Christian ministers and theologians taught the whites that God supported racial segregation. Almost everyone, including the media looked bad at the African Americans. These laws included no shaking hands, eating, showing affection with a black person, and if a black person was in a car with a white driver, then the black person must always sit in the back, or even in the trunk.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a case that the Supreme Court held in 1896 because of the continuous racial segregation and discrimination. It started when Homer Plessy was arrested for denying to sit on the “black” side of the train. He argued back saying that the Louisiana laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment and did not followed the “equal protection clause.” The Supreme Court ruled against Plessy and decided to create the “separate but equal” doctrine that stated that black and whites does not need to be separated as long as they are equal.
Segregation in Schools
In 1876, all public schools were open to students in Kansas. The legislature did not follow their plans of preventing racial issues. They allowed school boards to build separate schools for black and white students in elementary and junior high. There were limited amount of black residents that were not discriminated against the freedom of buses, waiting rooms of train stations, and attending schools. Luxurious places like the city’s movie theater, restaurants, and hotels did not allow black residents to be or interact with the white residents. All black and white students were also separated. For example, they would have separate sports team; the black team were the Ramblers and the white team were the Trojans. Black and white students also had different student governing bodies and sat in different tables. Students were also forced to attend schools according to their race. Black students would usually attend school that were miles away from their home when there was a white school nearby. In 1951, Topeka had twenty one elementary schools; eighteen white schools and four black schools.