Hey there, welcome to this day. Jody Abergan here, and this is some Sunday context where we bring you new

conversations and episodes from the archives to provide a little context for what is going on in the

world or in the world of our show. Now, this past week, we ran a two-parter on the Plessy v. Ferguson case,

which codified the idea of

separate but equal and opened the door to the Jim Crow era in the American South.

Today, an episode from the archives about the people who started to close it.

So we cut to 1951 and black students in Virginia who walked out of their school over unequal conditions.

Their legal case would help set the stage for Brown v. Board, which dismantled separate but equal.

As we discussed in the episodes we did this past week, it is really schools and elections where so many of these battles over justice and representation are fought,

and is the reason that so many

key Supreme Court cases hinge on those two areas.

Like many of you, I'm sure I'm thinking about these landmark rulings of the first half of last

century, as we see the Supreme Court of this moment enable enormous changes to voting rights

legislation.

We will see where this is all headed, but the context

of the past does give us a sense of how progress works and doesn't work and what stands in the way.

And today also a reminder that there have been those moments and those people who have fought for

progress and a more pluralistic representative country. So I think it's worth taking a listen to.

Now, before we bring you that episode, I was poking around,

and I noticed that our fellow Radiotopia show, The Kitchen Sisters,

have done an episode about Plessy v. Ferguson,

and they were looking specifically at that story that I mentioned

...