Mississippi
On this day in 1948
FEBRUARY 7, 1948
Black faculty trainer Gladys Noel Bates sued for equal pay as a result of she earned solely half of what her white counterparts earned in Mississippi.
Inspired by her father, Andrew J. Noel, who was lively within the NAACP and Progressive Voters’ League, she joined the NAACP Youth Council. After instructing at Smith Robertson Junior Excessive College, she requested the Jackson College Board to give up discriminating towards Black academics.
The board denied discrimination, and he or she responded by submitting a lawsuit, aided partly by the NAACP’s Constance Baker Motley. “I’ll sound conceited,” she recalled later, “however it was time for somebody to do one thing.”
Within the wake of her lawsuit, individuals fired pictures into their house, tried to torch the house and left burning crosses. She and her husband additionally misplaced their jobs, and R. Jess Brown, an automotive science and know-how trainer at Lanier Excessive College, took her place within the lawsuit. In the long run, the courtroom dismissed the lawsuit, however the choose famous that racial discrimination was certainly chargeable for the inequity of the salaries for black and white academics. After being barred from instructing elsewhere within the state, Tougaloo Faculty, a personal school that served as a stronghold for civil rights actions, welcomed her.
The couple ultimately moved to Denver, the place each had been employed as academics. Though the U.S. Supreme Court docket refused to listen to the case 4 years later, the struggle proved worthwhile. Mississippi started paying Black academics extra. In 1996, the town of Denver held a day in Bates’ honor. She died in 2010, and a Jackson faculty is now named after her.
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