Who Am I? Learn About Key Civil Rights Figures

By Charmere Gatson

Maryland Newsline

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

1. In 1950, I was a third grader living in Topeka, Kansas. Because I was black, I was forced to walk several miles to catch a bus to take me to a colored school far from my home. Only white children could attend the closer elementary school.  This situation prompted a suit.

Marsha Brady
Linda Brown
Tempestt Bledsoe
Keshia Knight-Pulliam

2. The great grandson of a former Baltimore slave, I’m also a Marylander who came into the world at a time when blacks were treated unfairly. But I worked to modify this treatment. During my tenure as a lawyer, I argued for the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court in the Brown vs. Board of Education case.

Charles Bledsoe
The Rev. Jesse Jackson
Thurgood Marshall
Booker T. Washington

3. On May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came to a conclusion as I read the Supreme Court’s decision, for which I was chief author. It said, “in the field of public education … ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” Not every state immediately followed the court’s order.

Earl Warren
Maybelline Ephraim
Greg Mathis
Joseph A. Wapner

4. It was not uncommon for my mail to be addressed as the “Colored Lawyer, Topeka.” As one of Topeka’s most prominent attorneys, I was known for taking cases that seemed impossible to win. All three of my sons joined me in my law practice. Together we secured our place in history by arguing the Brown case locally for the Topeka, Kan., plaintiffs.

Thurgood Marshall
Elisha J. Scott Sr.
Charles S. Scott Sr.
A. Leon Higginbotham

5. I was born in 1909 with a purpose: to challenge racial inequality. In my early years, my primary focus was on eliminating lynching and obtaining fair trials for blacks. By the time the '30s rolled around, my focus had shifted, and my new goal was to completely integrate American society.  

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Convention of Colored People's Problems
National Education Association
National Alliance of Black School Educators

6. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1895, I attended the present-day Dunbar High School – the first black high school in the United States. Later in life, my brilliant legal career allowed me to develop a long-term strategy for eradicating the “separate but equal” school segregation concept. I mentored many of the great civil rights defenders of the 20^th century.

James Madison Nabrit Jr.
Charles Hamilton Houston
Thurgood Marshall
Kurt L. Schmoke

7. I became the first black student on May 27, 1958, to graduate from Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., the city’s first high school to desegregate after the Brown ruling. I joined 601 of my white peers in the graduation ceremonies at Quigley Stadium.  

Elizabeth Eckford
Ernest Green
Carlotta Walls Lanier
Minnijean Brown Trickey

8. I was born in Mississippi in 1954, the same year that the Supreme Court handed down its decision ordering the integration of public schools. In 1960, I took a test, along with other black kindergarteners in New Orleans, to see who would go to an integrated school. That fall, at 6, I became the first black child to integrate a white public elementary school in New Orleans.

Oprah Winfrey
Robin Roberts
Vivica Fox
Ruby Bridges

9. I wanted to study and practice law in Maryland, and I applied to the University of Maryland’s Law School. In 1935, the Maryland Court of Appeals handed down a decision on my behalf and ordered the university to admit me to its law school because there were no “separate but equal” facilities for blacks in the state.

Larry Gibson
Donald Murray
Gary Coleman
Emmanuel Lewis

10. I was a system of laws designed to prevent blacks from improving their status or achieving equality. Starting in the 1890s, I was passed throughout the South and enforced segregation well into the 1960s.  

Racial Caste System
Headstrong Segregation
Civil Rights Act
Jim Crow