For context, let me drop some history about the North Carolina Central University School of Law Because the history makes it easy to understand why this is happening
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Going by some stories about North Carolina I've read from other people here, I think I have a general idea of where this is hdeaded.
sep 2, 2025, 2:31 pm • 1 0 • view
You might recall from your history classes that "separate but equal" was the legal mantra for the apartheid system the US had throughout the Jim Crow era If a govt provided separate facilities of equal quality for whites and non-whites, no violation of the 14th Amendment's "equal protection" clause
sep 2, 2025, 2:33 pm • 90 10 • view
In practice, the facilities were never actually equal Anything the Government intended for black folk was intentionally underfunded and left to decay, so long as the courts would go along with it You could see it in the NC General Assembly, where the "colored" bathrooms are tiny af
sep 2, 2025, 2:34 pm • 112 4 • view
(Those bathrooms later got repurposed into the women's bathrooms, so even after time required limiting the racism, the misogyny was still good to go)
sep 2, 2025, 2:35 pm • 145 9 • view
Two sides of the same coin.
sep 2, 2025, 2:38 pm • 0 0 • view
The unequal treatment should have been illegal But judges have unique talents for ignoring the obvious in the name hewing to the precedents they like 🙃 So this was nationwide practice for decades And along comes the Supreme Court case Missouri ex rel Gaines v Canada
sep 2, 2025, 2:35 pm • 102 7 • view
Lloyd Gaines wanted to go to law school at the University of Missouri The UM law school was whites only, so it told Gaines to politely go f*ck himself Gaines filed suit, arguing that his Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated b/c Missouri didn't have a law school for blacks
sep 2, 2025, 2:37 pm • 89 6 • view
Missouri's lawyers were smart enough to know they had a big problem with that lawsuit So they offered to pay 100% of Gaines's enrollment costs at literally any other law school in any adjacent state, just not Missouri Gaines told them to get rekt
sep 2, 2025, 2:38 pm • 119 7 • view
The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States Where SCOTUS ruled 6-2 that Gaines's rights had been violated, because Missouri had already set a precedent of providing separate but equal educational facilities Court opinion here: supreme.justia.com/cases/federa...
sep 2, 2025, 2:39 pm • 91 5 • view
You'll notice that opinion was released in December 1938 Holding that if a state didn't provide a law school for blacks, it would have to admit blacks to its whites-only law schools At the time, North Carolina only had a whites-only law school, at UNC Chapel Hill So...
sep 2, 2025, 2:41 pm • 83 8 • view
With a degree of alacrity usually reserved for natural disasters and other emergencies, the North Carolina General Assembly hauled ass on writing + debating + adopting a bill to create a "separate but equal" law school in 1939 It passed on March 1st, just 2.5 months post-Gaines
sep 2, 2025, 2:41 pm • 99 7 • view
You'll undoubtedly be shocked (shocked!) that the "but equal" part was missing, of course So Sweatt v Painter (SCOTUS) happened in Texas in 1950 Then McKissick v Carmichael (4th Circ) happened in NC in 1951 Then Brown v Board happened in 1954 McKissick opinion: law.justia.com/cases/federa...
sep 2, 2025, 2:43 pm • 87 4 • view
I object to the characterization of anything this legislature does as having "alacrity" unless it is referring to the public-facing process of hollowing out an existing bill to repurpose it and pass legislation the GOP knows will be controversial.
sep 2, 2025, 2:46 pm • 5 0 • view
Aside: a bunch of the public schools here were built under separate but equal and you can definitely tell who the schools were meant for, even here in a very blue district
sep 2, 2025, 2:38 pm • 1 0 • view