Still on the Books: Jim Crow and Segregation Laws Fifty Years after Brown v. Board of Education a Report on Laws Remaining in the Codes of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia

Abstract

Fifty years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, laws designed to enforce racial segregation in public schools remain on the books throughout the former Confederate states. ... Southern states donated public property and services to these schools, offered tuition grants to children who attended them, and allowed private school teachers to join desirable state pension programs. ... I. Laws on the Books Designed to Prevent Public School Integration ... A slightly more subtle technique was to authorize racial segregation by choice rather than by state mandate. Although public school students in Alabama may not choose to attend a school exclusively with classmates of a particular political party, religious faith, or professional aim, the Alabama Constitution does allow them to choose the race of their fellows: ... D. Other Segregation Laws (Mississippi, Missouri, West Virginia) ... In the West Virginia code, two statutes dating to the era of racial segregation still contain the word "Negro." ... A. Tuition Grants to Segregated Private Schools (Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia) ... B. Segregated Private School Teachers Granted Public Pensions (Alabama, Georgia, Virginia) ... This encouraged current public school teachers to transfer to newly created segregated private schools, and made it easier for those schools to hire new teachers in the future. Arkansas and Virginia repealed their statutes in the 1980s, but those of Alabama and Georgia remain on the books. ...

Keywords: jim crow laws, still on the books, Brown v. Board of Education, discrimination, desegregation