Brown vs Board of Education

On Sunday, May 17, we observed the 66th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that unanimously struck down segregrated schools and outlawed the old separate-but-equal principle in public facilities. While it would take years for the ruling to become reality throughout the nation, it was a monumental legal start.

Led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, five lawsuits from South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Kansas were combined into the Brown vs. Board of Education case. One of those lawsuits involved the Rev. Joseph DeLaine of Clarendon County, SC. DeLaine's home and church were burned and he eventually left South Carolina and settled his family in New York before moving to Charlotte's McCrorey Heights neighborhood. 

Click here for a recorded interview with B.B. DeLaine, the first African-American teacher at Garinger High School and the son of the Rev. Joseph DeLaine, as he talks about segregation and the changes he witnessed.

See below for documentaries by WBTV-TV's Steve Crump on "Brown at 60" and "9/4/57" featuring Dorothy Counts Scoggins who was the face of Charlotte's school desegregation efforts.