Argumentative Essay On Brown V. Board Of Education

Brown v. Board of Education is a historic Supreme Court case still taught about in schools today. It was viewed as a huge victory not only for Oliver Brown, but also for the other 200 plus plaintiffs, and African Americans across the nation. However, Malcolm Gladwell always take a second look to see what was missed on his podcast, Revisionist History. Based on what Gladwell presented in his podcast, he does not think that Oliver Brown’s win was a real victory for people of color. The real reason for the Supreme Court decision, the lack of African American children in gifted/talented programs, and the massive dismissal of “Negro” teachers prove that people of color carried the burden of this decision.

To commence, the trace evidence that the

Duke University interviewed Celestine Porter, an African American from the Brown era, and she pointed out that, “They made the students do the integration. They should have teachers first and they didn’t do that.” She brings up the idea that there should have been white teachers at the black schools and black teachers at the white schools. In Leola Brown’s perfect world, this is what would have happened. All memories from the Brown era are the Little Rock Nine and other struggles to integrate students, not of teachers. Speaking of teachers, where did all of the African American teachers go once school districts integrated? You would hope that they went to schools across the respective counties. However, after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Black teachers across the entirety of the South, were fired after districts had to integrate. School boards gave the illusion of fairness, by evaluating all teachers and leaving the good ones. The only problem was that although many Black teachers were evaluated highly before, school boards said that didn’t matter since now they were stacked up against white teachers. Before the Brown decision, there were 82,000 African American teachers in the south. A decade after integration began, half of them had been fired. Again and again we can clearly see the

Board of Education was not the Supreme Court decision it has been painted as in the history books. The case made by the NAACP and hundreds of plaintiffs was based on principle. Some white schools were closer for African American families or the parents should simply have the choice of where their child goes to school. The Supreme Court had other thoughts, citing that segregated schools “retarded” the minds of the African American youth. While many put the burden of integration on the white students, teachers, and schools, it was just the opposite. African American schools closed, a majority of the African American teachers were fired, leaving students in classrooms controlled by white teachers. These students were left in the dark, growing a hate in them from within. They were ignored, while the white students got all the attention, being put in gifted/talented programs more frequently than African American students. Teachers taking an interest in a student is one of the most important part of education. It is sad to realize the truths to this highly revered moment in history and the effects that we can still see