This law came about as a result of civil rights objections to the separate and inferior character of black schools. Detroit Board of Education ignored Public Primary Public Schools act of 1867 that ended segregation in Michigan public education under the reasoning that segregation upheld public order in light of racial animosities that children learned in school. Michigan Supreme Court upheld the ruling of desegregation when black parents challenged the practice of segregation in Detroit public schools by implementing a test case by Joseph Workman to admit his son, “a mulatto of more than one fourth African blood” to an all-white district. This case is also noteworthy in that it took place 85 years before Brown v Board of Education. In practice Michigan schools remain segregated as local school officials continued to uphold the practice.
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