African-American, Black History, & Civil Rights Educational Posters, Prints, & Charts Index
for Black History Month in social studies classrooms, home schoolers, theme decor for offices.

Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Mary Ann Shadd, Rosa Parks, Jesse Owens, Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poiter.

History Through a Lens -
Integration at Central High School (Little Rock, AR)

• 1997 - 40th Anniversary Desegregation Observances
• more History Through a Lens poster series

Brown v Board of Education poster no longer available

Brown v Board of Education Topeka, Kansas
5-17-1954 - “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

What caused the case? In 1951, Karen Brown was denied admission to an all-white elementary school in Topeka, Kansas. Instead, she was told to attend an all-black school in another neighborhood. Her father sued the school district for not letting his daughter attend the school closest to her home. Together with similar cases from South Carolina, Virginia an Delaware, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court under the title, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Thurgood Marshall, who later became the Supreme Court's first black Justice, argued fhat segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection to all citizens.
What did the court do? - In an unanimous decision, the Supreme Court set aside its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. That ruling had allowed “separate but equal” facilities for whites and blacks. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that racially separate public schools are always wrong – no matter how “equal” in quality. The Court further undermined the Plessy ruling by finding that such “separate but equal” facilities do encourage the idea that blacks are inferior to whites.
What was the impact? Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka did not bring about the immediate integration of all public schools. But it did have far-reaching effects. School systems across the nation began to integrate blacks into what had been all-white schools. Many began busing programs in an effort to balance the mix of races. And to a very large degree, the decision helped encourage the growth of the historic civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

• background on Brown v Board of Education

Plessy v. Ferguson Poster

Plessy v Ferguson
5-18-1896, affirmed a ‘separate but equal’ policy that allowed widespread segregation to thrive in the South. Pless v Ferguson upheld the “Jim Crow” laws that helped maintain segregation in the South.

What caused the case? The case of Plessy v. Ferguson arose when Homer Plessy, a black man, objected to a Louisiana state law requiring separate railroad cars for black and whites. Mr. Plessy was arrested when he refused a condutor's order to sit in the car for black passengers. In a trial, Mr. Plessy was found guilty of breaking the law. In response, he sued the judge in the case, a man named John Ferguson. His suit claimed that the Louisiana law went against the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which guarantees to all citizens the equal protection of the laws.
What did the court do? - The Supreme Court reviewed Mr. Plessy's claim that the Louisiana law violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection guarantee. But the Court upheld the law. It agreed that the 14th Amendment did guarantee all citizens equal protection. However, it said that separate facilities did not take away this protection – as long as the facilities were truly equal. Moreover, it denied that such "separate but equal" facilities would necessarily make black feel inferior to whites.
What was the impact? In Plessy v. Ferguson, the court said it would allow “separate but equal” public facilities for blacks and whites. And in the years that followed, many states did set up racially separate public facilities. But these facilities were seldom equal. In fact, accommodations for whites were almost always superior to those for blacks. In effect, the ruling made it easier for widespread segregation to exist throughout the South and elsewhere for more than 50 years.

• background on Plessy v Ferguson

America: A Nation of Immigrants -
West Africa (slavery)

• Continent of Africa poster
• more Nation of Immigrants posters
• Africa & African Cultures poster

• more Africa posters
• more masks posters

Man and Boy Reading Book About Africa

• reading posters

In 1787 William Wilberforce, an independent Member of Parliament, met with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists that included Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Lord Middleton, who persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition.