During the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, various approaches have been taken to end the segregation of African Americans. The practitioner approach and nonviolent civil disobedience were just a few of the tactics practiced to end segregation. Both had worked parallel, one helped the other.
During the Brown v. Board of Education case 1954, Thurgood Marshall's practitioner approach fought segregation by means of implicating the laws previously set forth by the constitution. "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (Cornell Law School, 14th Amendment - Section 1)." Marshall proclaimed that segregation was unconstitutional and had strived to reverse the "separate but equal" doctrine that governed the American society for half a century.
The Brown case involved a lawsuit against the segregation of white and black children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation. A few black parents from Kansas contacted the NAACP in the late forties to include their names on the suit challenging the constitutionality of Jim Crow schools (Williams, 198).
Robert Carter, Marshall's deputy, had recommended that the lawyers begin to use a controversial sociological method to show the damage segregation has done to African-Americans. Kenneth Clark, a black psychological expert, went along with the suggestion Carter had made and conducted tests on black children using black and white dolls. The results were compelling because most of the black children always said that the white dolls were prettier, smarter, and better (Williams, 197).
"I remember one young man," Clark recounted.
