Brown v. Board of Education
Photo of plaintiffs in the case.
Also pictures is Thurgood Marshall
(second from the right)
who worked with the NAACP on the case.
He will later become the first
black Supreme Court Justice of the US.
| In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was the norm across America. Southern schools were segregated under de jure segregation; laws specifically prohibited integration. Most Northern schools were segregated too, under de facto segregation. Although no laws enforced segregation in these schools, segregation existed because segregated neighborhoods provided the students for the local schools and because school districts were sometimes deliberately split up to ensure segregation. Though these schools were said to be "separate but equal," in reality most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. Repeated attempts for decades by blacks to ensure the equality of their school system had been met with deaf ears. Thus the tactic of school integration was first and foremost to better the quality of education of black students. " |
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In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a
railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school
was only seven blocks away. Seeing no need for his daughter to make this lengthy and somewhat dangerous trip each day, Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white
elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the
head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to help, as it had long wanted to
challenge segregation in public schools. With Brown's complaint the NAACP said, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an
injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools. |
| The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown's case from June 25-26, 1951. At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal. The Board of Education's defense was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the
segregation they would face during adulthood. The board also argued that segregated schools
were not neccessarily harmful to black children; great African Americans such as Frederick
Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver had overcome more than just
segregated schools to achieve what they achieved. |
| Because of the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, which upheld segregation on the basis it was not unconstitutional, the court stated that it felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education. As no Supreme Court had yet ruled against Plessy v. Ferguson' precedent, the Court felt justified in its decision. Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951 and their case was combined with other cases that challenged school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The Supreme Court first heard the case on December 9, 1952, but failed to reach a decision. In the re-argument, heard from December 7-8, 1953, the Court requested that both sides discuss "the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868." (9) The re-argument shed very little additional light on the issue. The Court had to make its decision based not on whether or not the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had desegregated schools in mind when they wrote the amendment in 1868, but based on whether or not desegregated schools deprived black children of equal protection of the law when the case was decided, in
1954. Stating that the idea of segregation held no power in the domain of public education, the Supreme Court struck down Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools across America.
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| The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional thus paving the way for the larger Civil Rights struggle to come. (Photo and Information courtesy of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams and the Library of Congress) |
