James meredith and civil rights movement

Brown v. Board of Education

The landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education declared that racial segregation in educational and other facilities violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S.

Constitution, which granted equal protection of the law to any person within its jurisdiction.

James meredith and civil rights movement timeline

This verdict effectively overturned the “separate but equal” mandate set in by an earlier court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which determined that equal protection was not violated as long as reasonably equal conditions were provided to both groups.

Though it applied specifically to public schools, the Brown verdict implied that other segregated facilities were also unconstitutional, dealing a heavy blow to white supremacist policies in the Jim Crow South.

Ole Miss

In the years leading up to the incident at the University of Mississippi (aka “Ole Miss”), African Americans had begun to be admitted in small numbers to other white colleges and universities in the South without too mu