This was the very first school desegregation case filed in the United States. Black families in Boston, Massachusetts applauded the city’s creation of two public schools serving Black children.

In Ohio, some people believed that those with mixed-race ancestry should share the same rights afforded to fully-white citizens. Enos Van Camp had a distant Black ancestor, but he considered himself and his family to be white.

Susan Clark trudged up the hill near her home to Grammar School No. 2, an all-white public school in her neighborhood. Susan had taken all the classes available at the all-Black school run by her church and she wanted to continue her education.

Joseph Workman attempted to enroll his biracial son into a school. The school denied the boy because of his race.

William Garnes was a Black resident of Norwich, Ohio, and the father of three school-age children. A school for Black children was maintained in Hilliard, Ohio, but that was around 80 miles away from the Garnes family’s home.

Nelson Stoutmeyer, a Black laborer, asked the Ormsby County public schools’ Board of Trustees to admit his 7-year-old son, David. David met all the requirements for admission, but the Board denied his application because Nevada law excluded Black children from public schools.

Carter, a Black man who resided in Lawrence Township, was the father of Mary and Edward Carter, and the grandfather of Lucy and John Carter. They all lived in the same home. There was not a public school for Black children in the local school district, so Carter took his grandchildren to enroll at the nearest common school for white children. The director of the school and a teacher refused to admit them.

Harriet A. Ward and her 12-year-old daughter, Mary, lived in San Francisco where students had the right to attend the public school nearest to their home. The Wards lived closest to the Broadway Grammar School. Harriet took Mary to the school. She was denied admission.

On September 14, 1874, third-grader Charles H. Dove applied for admission to Torrence School. Although there was space available, school officials denied Charles because of his race. They ordered him to attend an all-Black school. The closest school for Black children was at least ten blocks from Charles' home, while Torrence School was just three blocks away.

Smith, a 16-year-old boy from Keokuk, passed the exam necessary to be admitted to high school. Despite Smith’s qualifications, the Board of Directors of the Keokuk School District refused to admit him.

William T. Lewis, a Black student, applied for admission to the first-year class of the College of Law of the University of Florida. He was qualified in all aspects to be accepted as a student but was denied admission because of his race.

Arnold Bertonneau and his two children lived in New Orleans about three blocks away from a school. After applying to attend, the children were denied because the Chief Superintendent would not admit Black children.

Lowman Hill was a small community just outside Topeka. In 1890, Topeka took over Lowman Hill and the Topeka School Board took over the Lowman Hill School. For ten years, this small school remained integrated. Then, in 1900, six weeks before the school year began, the school burned down.

The Lincoln School was the only school in Quincy that Black children were allowed to attend.  Even though the city was divided into eight different school districts, all the Black students were excluded from the white schools and were forced to travel long distances to attend the Lincoln School.

A twelve-year-old girl attempted to enroll in her Brooklyn neighborhood’s school, public school No. 5. The all-white school denied her application because of her race. Her parents sued and argued that the Black school she was assigned to was inferior.

Mitchell brought this case against Gray et al., school trustees. Mitchell questioned the constitutionality of the Indiana act of May 13th, 1869, which allowed for separate schools for Black children.

The Tapes bought a home in Cow Hollow, a mostly white neighborhood, where they raised their children Mamie, Frank, and Emily. When Mamie became old enough to attend primary school, the Tapes wanted her to attend their neighborhood’s school rather than travel daily to a mission-run school in Chinatown. In 1884, Principal Jennie Hurley denied Mamie admission to the Spring Valley Primary School.

Thomas McFall wanted better educational opportunities for the Black community in Quincy, so he made a petition to the Attorney General, against the School Board of Education of the City of Quincy and its board members.

The Illinois General Assembly passed a law saying public school systems must educate Black students. As a result, many communities built separate schools for Black children. These schools were often smaller, farther from families’ homes, and in poorer condition than schools for white students.  John Peair tried to enroll his children, Tony and Cora, in a good high school in their district, but they were refused.

After the passing of the Act of 1885, the Robeson County Board of Education built and maintained separate schools for Native American (primarily Croatan) students, as well. Nathan McMillan wanted his children to attend the public school for Croatan children.

Edmond wanted his children to have a good education, so in 1888, he tried to enroll his 12-year-old son, Arthur, in the public, all-white Visalia High School. Crookshank, a teacher at Visalia Highl, denied Arthur admission and told Edmond that Arthur must attend the Visalia Colored School, an ill-equipped, unequal school with classes held in a Black farmer’s barn.

The Knox family lived in the city’s Second Ward, but eight-year-old Bertha and ten-year-old Lilly weren’t allowed to attend the Second Ward school because it only admitted white children. The Knox girls had to walk past the school and a good distance farther to get to the Fourth Ward school that Black children were permitted to attend.

Brummell’s family lived in school district number 4 in Grundy County. His four children were the only school-age Black children in the area, so no separate school was ever established for their education. There was a separate school for Black children in the town of Trenton (in the same county), but that school was 3.5 miles from Brummell’s home.

James R. Hare wanted his children to attend a white school. The Board of Education of Gates County claimed Hare’s children were Black and refused them.

Thomas Martin, a father of five children, claimed that the Board of Education failed to provide the necessary facilities to afford his children the benefits of a common-school education. Camp Hill School was for white students only, and the Board refused to admit Martin’s children because they were Black. There was no separate school for Black children, nearby.

Elizabeth and Samuel Cisco lived in the city of Jamaica, New York. They refused to allow their son to go to the local public school for Black students because they believed it was inferior to local white schools. When they attempted to enroll their son in an all-white school, he was denied because he was Black.

Minnie and Ambrose Bibb were seven and eight years old when they returned from summer break to resume studying at the Washington school, the same school they had attended the previous school year. Instead of the usual welcome, they were told that all Black children had to leave and attend one of the two new schools designated as Black schools. The other five schools in the city of Alton became white schools.

Wong Him applied to the Clement Grammar School but was denied by the principal and the Board of Education because he was of Chinese descent.  

In 1879, the Kansas State Legislature passed a law that allowed “first class cities” (cities with more than 15,000 residents) to create separate, segregated schools for Black and white students. Coffeyville was a “second class city” (with fewer than 15,000 residents). Still, the city segregated Lincoln School with separate classes for Black and white students.

Fannie S. Rowles presented herself for admission to the seventh grade at Emerson School in Wichita. School officials refused to admit her because of her race. They told her to enroll at Park, a segregated school for Black children.

The principal at Brookland School admitted blonde-haired, blue-eyed Isabel Wall into the first grade without question. Ten days later, the principal expelled Isabel after school officials heard that her father, Stephen Wall, had a great grandparent who was part Black.

Young Troy and Loucreta Mullins wanted to attend their local whites-only school in Pike County, Kentucky. Edmond Belcher, trustee of the school district, told the Mullins children they couldn’t attend because they were “colored.”

Samuel Bayless, a merchant and activist, wanted his two daughters to attend the white school near their home. Otherwise, the Bayless girls would have to walk across active train tracks to get the closest school they were allowed to attend.

William Crawford and his wife were both half-Native and half-white. They had five children. Their two daughters, Juanita (age 9) and Naoma (age 8) had attended a public school for two years. September 27, 1912, the Crawford girls were turned away from the school they had been attending, due to their race. .

J.S. Johnson, a white man, married a woman who had less than 1/8 “Black blood,” as was legal per North Carolina state law. They had four children: Arthur, Fannie, Carl, and Andrew. Johnson sent his oldest child, Arthur, to the local white public school. A teacher sent Arthur home after two days because the school classified him as Black.

The Tuckers enrolled the three eldest boys, Dudley, Eugene, and Herbert, in a local white public school called Dalcho School. They did well there for two years. Eventually, the school’s Board of Trustees yielded to public pressure and expelled the boys.

The East Galena School admitted students regardless of race. When the school became overcrowded, Superintendent R. E. Long hired Mildred Grigsby, a Black teacher, to teach all the Black children in a separate room. The students were pulled from their grade-specific classrooms and lumped together in a mixed-age class.

Antonio Grandich and his family lived in Hancock County, Mississippi. Grandich wanted his four children to be admitted to the county’s white public school. The Board of Trustees denied the children, alleging they were Black.

Jacob Jones Jr. was enrolled in Dunbar School, a public school for Black children. In Muskogee County, schools were funded by property taxes, but the amount of taxpayer money available for white schools far exceeded the amount that could be used to pay for separate Black schools.

In 1891, the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened an “Indian Day School” for Native children living in the Big Pine School District. This facility was continuously underfunded, prepared students only for manual labor jobs, and provided a poor education compared with local public schools. In 1923, a 15-year-old Paiute girl named Alice Piper applied to a much better public school, Big Pine High, but was denied admission due to her race.

Celia Thurman-Watts sued the Board of Education of the City of Coffeyville and Superintendent A. I. Decker in the Kansas Supreme Court to compel them to admit her sixteen-year-old daughter to the local high school.

The segregated South often acted as a two-color society, focused on segregation between white and Black citizens. This sometimes left Asians and Asian Americans in a confusing gray area where it was not clear if they should be segregated with white or Black people.

Following summer break, Martha Lum began her second year at Rosedale Consolidated School. After recess on the first day back, the superintendent said she’d have to leave because she was Chinese, not white.

Max Peters and his son, Wesley, were "Mission Indians."  They resided on land reserved for Native people who did not live in tribal relations and, instead, lived like other American citizens. The land on which the Peters lived was within the exterior boundaries of the Pauma School District of San Diego County, California.

In 1876, Texas State Law provided for separate schools for white and Black students. Students of Mexican descent were considered racially white, but they often faced prejudice due to their ethnicity and were not always treated the same as white students from non-Hispanic “Anglo” backgrounds. After 1920, many Texas school districts began to maintain separate schools for Mexican and Mexican American children.

During the early 1920s, there were some integrated schools in Topeka, especially in areas where Black schools were too overcrowded to take on more students. Some white parents pushed for segregation and separate but equal schools. The city was able to pass an $850,000 bond to both alleviate overcrowding and enforce complete segregation by building new schools.

In September 1927, Alberta Cheeks enrolled as a tenth-grade high school student at Virginia Street School, a Black school. Soon after, Cheeks and 17 other Black students were transferred to Emerson High School, an all-white school. The white students protested.

Mr. Farmer's children were denied admission to the local white school because the school considered them to be Black. Mr. Farmer sued the school board of Mobile County and asked the court to require his children to be admitted because he considered his children to be white.

Doris Weaver was a Black college student who attended The Ohio State University. While residing on campus, she was assigned to live with a white instructor rather than in a dorm with other students.

Donald Gaines Murray was a twenty-two-year-old resident of Baltimore City who graduated from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He met the standards for admission to the University of Maryland (UM) Law School but was denied because he was Black.

Margaret finished 7th grade, the highest grade available at her school, and received a certificate from her principal saying she should be promoted to 8th grade. This would mean moving on to a local high school. Though Margaret was zoned for Catonsville High, an all-white school, Black students like her were expected to travel to Baltimore City with the county paying tuition for them to attend the all-Black high school, there.

Lloyd Gaines graduated from Lincoln University in 1935. Because Lincoln University did not have a law school, Gaines applied to the one at the University of Missouri. The university registrar, Silas W. Canada, would not admit Black students and refused Gaines admission.

Lucile Bluford attended the University of Kansas as the only Black student in their journalism program. She graduated in 1932. In 1939, the University of Missouri’s Graduate School accepted her application. When she attempted to enroll, the university registrar, Silas W. Canada, turned her away.

On January 26, 1940, Oaland Graham, Jr., a twelve-year-old Black boy, finished the sixth grade at Buchanan Elementary School. Three days later, he tried to enroll in the seventh grade at Boswell Junior High School. He was denied admission by the principal and by the Topeka Board of Education because of his race.

A black student is seeking a writ of mandamus to compel his admittance to the University of Tennessee. The petitioners allege that they are qualified to enter the University of Tennessee, the training provided at the University is not available to black students in any other state-supported institutions, and they have been denied access because of their race, which is a violation of their constitutional rights.

Boyd and Hattie Asher lived in Leslie County, Kentucky. They wanted their seven-year-old son, Bruce, to attend the local public white school. Principal Roy Huffman refused Bruce’s admission on account of his perceived race.

Louise Kerr, a Black woman, claimed she was refused admission to a library training class conducted by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore City. Kerr claimed she was rejected because of a policy designed to exclude Black people.

The Mendez family moved to Westminster in 1943. Sylvia's father, Gonzalo, asked his sister, Sally, to enroll his children along with her children. Her children were admitted, but Gonzalo's were not.

The community of South Park, Kansas was founded in 1887. In 1888, the community built the Walker School, a one-room school. In 1912, another school was built for white children to attend while Black children continued to learn at Walker. By the late 1940s, Walker had two rooms and was horribly rundown.

John H. Wrighten attended South Carolina State College. Prior to his graduation in 1946, Wrighten applied to the all-white University of South Carolina, seeking admission to the state’s only available law school. Wrighten had the educational qualifications and good character needed to qualify, but his application was quickly denied because of his race.

In 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court decided that separation "within one of the great races, without a specific state law requiring the separation, was not permitted" in California.

Instead of admitting Sipuel Fisher to the University of Oklahoma’s (OU) Law School, the State Board of Regents had quickly created the Langston University Law School for Black students, an under-staffed and under-supported program consisting of two part-time faculty who would meet students in the State Capital’s Senate rooms.

On September 11, 1946, Leon A. Norris, a young Black man, applied to the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts for admission to the art and art teacher training programs. His application was declined because, for fifty years, the institute had maintained a policy of admitting only white students.

Lemuel Sipuel was to serve as the plaintiff but because Sipuel wanted to avoid putting his legal career on hold, he declined. His younger sister, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, stepped forward, instead. As expected, despite her outstanding qualifications, the University of Oklahoma denied her application to their law school because of her race.

In this case, Black students claimed that the Pulaski County School Board denied them educational opportunities and facilities equal to those provided for white children.

Lyman T. Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in Greek and a master’s degree in history. He became a high school teacher, but took two years off to serve in the military during World War II. When the war ended, Johnson returned home eager to fight racism and injustice in his own country.

In April of 1949, Rose Boyd, a Black Floridian, applied to the University of Florida. She was qualified in all aspects but was denied admission because of her race.

Wesley and Wilbert Brewton were two brothers who, along with another classmate, applied to Hadley Technical High School, a white school. The Superintendent of Instruction refused them admission because of their race and argued they could attend Washington Technical High School, a school for Black students.

Twelve Black students in Fort Smith, represented by their parents, sued the Board of Directors of the Fort Smith Special School District and the Superintendent of Schools. Lincoln School was more than fifty years old, unsafe, and unsanitary.

Thirteen-year-old Marguerite Daisy Carr’s school, Browne Junior High, became one of the most overcrowded public schools in Washington DC. Students received half the instruction time they had gotten, before. Marguerite applied to the white junior high which carried a full-day schedule, but they denied her because she was Black.

From 1946 to 1948, the Black students who attended Hoffman-Boston High School in Arlington County, Virginia could access courses and facilities, many of which were only available to white students, by applying to the School Board to pay their tuition at Washington-Lee High School. For the school years 1948 to 1949, the School Board refused to pay for the Black students' tuition.

Harold T. Epps, Robert Davis Glass, Floyd B. McKissick, Soloman Revis, Harvey Beech, Walter Nevin, Perry V. Giliard, James Lassiter, and J. Kenneth Lee applied for admission to the University of North Carolina (UNC) Law School. They met the school’s requirements but were refused because they were Black.

In April of 1949, Benjamin F. Finley, a Black student, applied to the University of Florida to enter graduate school and study agriculture. He was qualified in all aspects but was denied admission because of his race.

In April of 1949, William T. Lewis, a Black student, applied for admission to the first-year class of the College of Law of the University of Florida. He was qualified in all aspects to be accepted as a student but was denied admission because of his race.

In April 1949, a young Black man named Oliver R. Maxey applied for admission to the University of Florida to study chemical engineering. Maxey qualified for admission in all aspects but was denied because of his race.

Esther McCready was a Black woman who met all the requirements for admission to the University of Maryland's School of Nursing. She applied but was refused admission because of her race.

George W. McLaurin applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma to pursue a Doctorate in Education. The school rejected him because he was Black.

Brooks Parker was a young student who sought admission into the University of Delaware after the college he’d been attending, Delaware State College, lost its accredited status. Delaware State College was a historically-Black institution while the University of Delaware only admitted white students.

In May of 1948, the trustees removed all grades at Kirby Elementary except the first and second. Soon after, they closed the school altogether. Black residents E. C. Bagsby, Eugene Robinson, and Edward Radford, requested that Kirby be maintained. The trustees refused while still maintaining an elementary school and high school for white children.

On February 26, 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School. Theophilus Shickel Painter, the University’s President, rejected Sweatt because he was Black.

St. Louis had two institutions for training teachers: Harris Teachers College for white students and Stowe Teachers College for Black students. Marjorie V. Toliver sought to transfer from Stowe to Harris because Stowe was not accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and she felt this would halt her progress in the teaching field. Her application was denied.

On July 12, 1950, twelve Black students applied to the Louisiana State University (LSU) Law School, where they were all denied admission due to their race.

On May 18, 1949, Black school-age children filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina against the Durham Public School District, claiming it deprived them of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Clarendon county in South Carolina was home to 32,000 people, of which over 70% were Black. White people owned over 85% of the land. Many white landowners leased land to Black tenant farmers, who mostly grew cotton. Clarendon County refused to fund buses for Black students, which led to there being 61 “colored” schools scattered throughout the area.

Latino parents living in Arizona asked the Tolleson Elementary School Board to allow their children to attend the white schools instead of the singular segregated school that was designated as the “Mexican school.”

This case involves four Black students who applied to The University of Tennessee. Gray and Alexander applied for admission to the graduate school. Blakeney and Patterson applied to the college of law. They all qualified for admission but were denied because they were Black.

Upon returning from serving abroad in the U.S. Army, nine Black men wanted to be admitted to the University of North Carolina (UNC) Law School. After the unsuccessful Epps v. Carmichael (1950) case, Floyd McKissick, Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, and Kenneth Lee, who were rejected because of their race by UNC's School of Law, once again sued the President of the University and the Dean of the Law School for admission.

In 1948, the NAACP began organizing parents in Dover and Bridgeville to push back against segregation and unequal treatment.

After losing Wilson v. Beebe (1951), NAACP attorneys Louis Redding and Jack Greenburg brought forward two new lawsuits, Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart.

In April 1951, Robert R. Moton High School student Barbara Rose Johns organized a two-week, 450-student strike to protest poor school conditions in Farmville, Virginia.
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Virgil Hawkins, director of public relations at Bethune-Cookman College, applied for admission to the University of Florida (UF) College of Law, the only public law school in the state. Despite his academic and professional qualifications, the Florida Board of Control rejected his application because he was Black.

This case involved a group of Black high school students who resided in the city of Clinton in Anderson County, Tennessee. These Black students weren’t allowed to attend all-white Clinton High School.

In 1941, Kenneth Miller was born deaf. When he became old enough to attend school, his mother, Louise Burrell Miller, tried enrolling him at the Kendall School, their city’s school for deaf and/or blind children. Unfortunately, this school only accepted white students.

Yvonne Moses was a public school student in the District of Columbia’s Division 2, which was set up just for Black students. There was only one elementary school in Division 2, Daniel Payne School.

Pensacola Vocational School, for educating adults in auto mechanics, was open to all properly qualified citizens of Escambia County. 37-year-old Simpson White held similar qualifications to admitted applicants. He presented himself to the County Superintendent, Dan J. Anderson, who refused to admit him because of his race.

Under North Carolina state law, racial segregation was required for public schools, but racial discrimination was prohibited.

In 1879, the Kansas State Legislature passed a law that allowed large cities in Kansas to create separate, segregated schools for Black and white students.

Five Black students living in Bowie County, Texas, sought to be admitted to Texarkana Junior College which, under Texas law, was open to white students only. They applied to the college president for admission, but the Board refused to admit them because of their race.

The Chestang family petitioned the Mobile County School Board to admit their son to the public school for white children. The Board denied the petition, so the Chestangs appealed with the Alabama Supreme Court.

Six Black students in Wichita County properly applied for admission to Hardin Junior College, which was open to white students only. The applicants possessed all the qualifications for admission, but the Board of Trustees and the college’s officers rejected them because they were Black.

NAACP lawyers for appellants. This is a per curiam decision. The case involves questions of racial discrimination in relation to public school facilities in a school district of Missouri.

Charles Hamilton Houston (lead counsel for the NAACP), Gardner Bishop (a community organizer and Civil Rights activist), and James Nabrit Jr. (a Howard University law professor and attorney), wanted to challenge segregation head-on instead of just seeking “separate but equal” schools.

Black students Clara Dell Constantine, Martha Jane Conway, Charles Vincent Singleton, and Shirley Taylor were denied admission to Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI). The institute’s President told the students, "Sorry, but SLI  is an all-white college.”

The Milford School District in Delaware only operated one public high school. Multiple Black students sought admission into this school and they were all enrolled. Then, on September 30, 1954, Edmund F. Steiner, the president of the Milford Board of Education, removed the Black students’ names from Milford High School’s records solely because of their race.