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14th Amendment Ratified
The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 as a response to the Civil War, grants each person born in the United States citizenship and made it illegal for any state to deprive their citizens from life, liberty, property, or equal protection of the law. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a supreme court case that challenged the constitutionality of segregation, and in a 7 to 1 vote, "separate but equal" was ruled constitutional under the the 14th Amendment, establishing legal justification for segregation. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education unanimously overturned the ruling established in 1896 that "separate but equal" was a constitutional legal doctrine, stating that separate was inherently unequal. -
Mansfield Desegregation Incident
On the day of school registration in 1956, when T.M. Moody tried to register three black students, hundreds of white people from Mansfield and surrounding rural communities gathered outside of Mansfied High to protest integration. These protesters were joined by the mayor and police chief of Mansfield as well as the Texas Rangers, dispatched by governor Allan Shivers to prevent integration in Mansfield in direct defiance of the Supreme Court ruling two years prior. -
Little Rock Nine
To prevent integration of high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, several segregationist councils created a blockade to physically prevent the nine black students from entering the previously white school. To aid the segregationists, governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent integration, but in response to Faubus' actions, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to force the National Guard to stand down. -
Mansfield Integration
After nearly a decade of financial turmoil as a result of losing federal and state funding, the Mansfield Independent School District quietly integrated.
