Lament and Hope: A Pan African Quad-Centennial Devotional Guide - Flipbook - Page 24
SEPTEMBER
Lament and
Hope in Angola
A History of
Migration,
Immigration and
Enslavement
Mrs. Nettie Hunt, sitting on steps of Supreme Court, holding newspaper, explaining to her daughter Nikie
the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision banning school segregation. Library of Congress
Both the concept and the phrase “separate but equal” came from an 1896 court decision, Plessy
v. Ferguson, which held that it was constitutional for railway companies to provide “separate but
equal” services for their customers. It validated the “Jim Crow” laws that southern states had
begun to enact starting in the late 1870s. This legal racial segregation separated African Americans
from whites in schools, housing, jobs, and public gathering places. Although the U.S. Supreme
Court overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” in 1954 and the specific segregation of
children in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, the failure to end “separate but equal”
in practice, rather than only in law, has led to today’s cycle of under-investment in many students
of color. Higher school spending is associated with a significantly lower risk of students facing
hunger and poverty as adults. In a rapidly changing information-based economy, education is
more important than ever to students’ ability to compete for jobs that will support a family.
Source: Bread for the World’s Racial Wealth Gap Policy Packet (http://files.bread.org/institute/simulation/Racial-Wealth-Gap-Policy-Packet.pdf)
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LAMENT and HOPE: A Pan-African Devotional Guide