Several Georgetown students joined the ranks of thousands of other students and civil rights activists yesterday near the Supreme Court to protest in favor of affirmative action.

“They say Jim Crow, we say hell no!” the demonstrators shouted as the court heard two cases on the ability of public schools to use race as a factor in deciding school assignments for students.

Parents from the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school systems filed the lawsuits after their children were denied admission to a school of choice because of race-based admission policies.

Luke Massie, national co-chair of the civil rights activist group By Any Means Necessary, estimated that 7,000 people, primarily high school and college students, came to the event.

Ellie Gunderson (COL ’10), assistant secretary of Georgetown’s NAACP chapter, said that she was pleased at the showing for the demonstration.

“I really liked [how] there were just so many organizations that came together,” Gunderson said.

“We just wanted to show the Supreme Court [that] we support integration, not segregation . We do not want the Supreme Court to go through and say segregation is okay,” Danielle Anwar, a member of BAMN said of the rally. “A lot of young people were here, and we were all about equality.”

The rally was followed by a march to the Lincoln Memorial.

Georgetown students also held a panel discussion yesterday evening between administrators and professors in response to the Supreme Court hearings. Zoe Marks (COL ’07), co-chair of Leaders in Educating About Diversity, said that she thinks that having a dialogue on affirmative action is crucial to understanding its impact on education.

“There have not been any events addressing affirmative action this year,” Marks said. “We feel it is of the utmost importance that students not only remain abreast of the issue, but also have the opportunity to explore their own opinions on it and develop their own ideas.”

The Supreme Court hearings yesterday followed a blow to affirmative action supporters last month in Michigan when voters decided to ban affirmative action policies in public schools.

The high court last heard a case on affirmative action policies in 2003, when, in a 5-4 vote, it ruled that the consideration of race in school admissions is legal. Since 2003, however, two seats on the court have changed and the older ruling could be in jeopardy of being overturned.