BETTER SCHOOLS AMENDMENT

Oklahoma’s 1907 Constitution provided that black and white children must attend separate (racially segregated) school facilities, a situation that endured unchanged for nearly half a century. “Separate,” however, did not necessarily mean “equal” in the quality of education provided. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, sounding the death knell for segregated educational facilities by ruling that separate schools failed to provide black children equal protection under the law. That is, they were inherently (and actually) unequal. With federal funding for education now threatened by any refusal to adhere to the court’s interpretation, most states took measures to integrate their public schools. Oklahoma, the only state with a constitution that mandated separate schools and different funding methods for each, could not simply pass a law requiring school integration.