To celebrate Black History Month in Special Collections and University Archives, learn more about the local Civil Rights Movement with the Raymond B. Witt papers, an attorney and member of the Hamilton County Board of Education, who represented the Board during the twenty-six year desegregation case, Mapp v. Board of Education.
About Mapp v. Board of Education
From Mapp v. Board of Education, 1963, Nos. 15038, 15039:
This school desegregation case involves the public schools of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The plaintiffs, a group of Negro public school children of Chattanooga, appearing by their parents, as next friends, filed their complaint on April 6, 1960, asking an injunction to compel the desegregation of that city’s public schools. The Chattanooga schools were at that time admittedly segregated. In its answer, defendant school board admitted its duty to desegregate “with all deliberate speed,” Brown v. Board of Education, but answered that it had been, and was then, conducting a program of “elucidation” to prepare the community of Chattanooga for the initiation and carrying out of the desegregation commanded by the Brown decision. It insisted that further time was needed for such indoctrination and conditioning to the end that desegregation could have an orderly beginning and that, when started, could be continued without the collisions, inefficiency and possible violence that might accompany too precipitate a start or too rapid accomplishment of total desegregation.
Learn More
View our Civil Rights subject guide or stop by Special Collections and University Archives to view our collections.
Sources
Witt, Raymond B. Raymond B. Witt papers. 1950-1989.
Mapp v. Board of Education, 1963, Nos. 15038, 15039.