Brown vs. Board of Education
A landmark court case that occurred in the early 1950's resulted in the desegregation of public schools. This historic Supreme Court case was known as Brown vs. Board of Education. The place was Topeka, Kansas, 1951. A little girl named Linda Brown and her father, Oliver Brown, attempted to enroll Linda in a neighborhood elementary school that accepted whites only. The request was denied, by the White elementary school. The little girl only lived a few blocks from the White elementary school, which would have been a good fit for her. Instead, she ended up traveling about a mile each day to attend the nearest Black school.
Brown decided to request the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP was glad to help in the fight. Mr. Brown and the NAACP moved forward and challenged the segregation law. In 1892, the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision had set a precedent for the issue of "separate but equal," which had been applied to school in the Southern states since then. Parents in other states were also pursuing the challenge to the "separate but equal" doctrine in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware.
Mr. Brown's case was heard by the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. The request by Mr. Brown was to prohibit segregation of the public schools in Topeka. The NAACP argued to the court that separating Black children from White children was sending a wrong type of message to the Black children. The message being sent was that Black children were somehow inferior to Whites and that there was no way that the education being provided could be equal.
The Board of education went on to cite different successful educated American, none of whom attended integrated schools, such as Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, and Booker T. Washington.
In handing down their decision, the judges in this case wrote that "colored children ... " suffered a "detrimental effect" from segregation of the schools (Robinson 2005). However, they believed that the legal precedent set by the Plessy vs. Ferguson case prevented them from issuing the requested injunction and the result was that they ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education.
Mr. Brown and the NAACP appealed the case and it went to the United States Supreme Court in the latter part of 1951. The case was combined with the Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina cases. The Supreme Court handled this case very delicately and deliberated for quite sometime. The case was first heard by the Supreme Court, but a decision was not made at that time. Various interpretations of the
Fourteenth Amendment were discussed and whether the Plessy vs. Ferguson case had violated it. The case was heard again by the Supreme Court in December of 1953.
Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, gladly argued for Brown and the NAACP.
Finally, a decision was made. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the following decision: " ... Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of
race, even though the physical facilities may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? We believe that it does ... We conclude that in the field of
public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place ... (Brown vs. Board 1954). The Supreme Court tasked the nation with implementing this historic decision with deliberate speed. Recognizing the value of education, the court ruled unanimously in favor of equity. The Supreme Court declared that…
