Separate But Equal is a television docudrama aired in 1991. Written and directed by George Stevens, Jr., the three-hour movie was aired in two parts, on two separate nights and that allowed time for a lot of detail to be covered, especially important in a movie that dealt with one of the most critical issues in American history: racial segregation in the public schools. Separate But Equal tells the story of the legal and moral struggle to overturn the injustice of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that mandated ôseparate but equalö treatment for African Americans. Of course the treatment was never equal, and most likely was not intended to be so.
The separate-but-equal policy stated that blacks and whites would receive the same services ûin schools, hospitals, public bathrooms and other facilities. But all the facilities proved to be unequal, with African Americans receiving much poorer facilities. The movie centers on the true story of the NAACP challenge of racial school segregation in Brown vs. Board of Education. As the movie reveals, the legal battle was the first major victory of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The first part of the movie takes place in the segregated school system of Claredon County, South Carolina when a local reverend and school principal, fed up with the small amount of funding black schools are receiving compared with white schools, convince a family to bring a legal case before the local school board. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) decide to get involved in the case, and bring it ûand three others û to the United States Supreme Court. The NAACP team is headed by Thurgood Marshall (very well acted by Sidney Poitier), who later would become the first African American Supreme Court justice. Marshall realizes that if school segregation is struck down, it would be the first step toward eliminating legal racial segregation in...