To what extent was Brown v Board the most significant and influential milestone in the fight for civil rights in the United States? By: Beatriz Zanellato Imagine living in a world where your quality of life is solely dependent on your race, and the existing rules to protect your basic human rights are, essentially, loopholes that allow a racist society to continue behaving the same, exact and oppressive way. That is a pretty close description of America for the most part of the 20th century - a country that promised that “no person shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”, under the 14th amendment, but instead preached the absurd lie of “separate but equal”, to justify the huge disparity between treatments of black and white citizens; a sentence that triggered whole generations to act and protest for equality, for protection under law, to break systemic discrimination. From Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks, W. E. B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King Jr, the fight for civil rights in America goes beyond centuries and is embedded in the history of the country, and it is still not over.
We are accustomed to a multicultural, accepting society that functions on the basis of respect, so it is difficult, revolting even, to imagine segregation and intolerance of different races. Unfortunately, that has once been the reality of millions of African-Americans, denied access to education on the basis of their skin colour, a barrier that stopped many from following and achieving their dreams, an endless cycle that prevented social mobility, and tried to mute voices and remove their influences on the nation. It is important to acknowledge the progress made in 1954 to tackle this huge educational issue, where a constitutional change, a massive victory, set the path for more change to create a fairer country. It was an influential step for desegregation, and though highly significant, it falls just short of most important, as that spot is reserved for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
32
