Board Of Education Dbq

“During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education, there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.” - Jonathan Kozol. This quote represents the public's overall viewpoint in the decision of Brown v. Board of Education. December 9, 1952, through May 17, 1954, were important years for the fight for the civil rights movement in America. Though before this, in 1896 a case was brought to the Supreme Court dealing with racial inequalities. Plessy v. Ferguson was brought due to Homer Plessy refusing to sit in a Jim Crow railcar. Plessy claimed that making him move due to his race was a violation of his 13th and 14th Amendment rights

African Americans have been oppressed since slavery, and have been trying to change that one step at a time. Public facilities before 1896 were heavily segregated due to the fact that the social class system placed one race above another. Education had, and still has, a huge impact on a child's life. Everyone wants an equal opportunity to succeed and prosper in life, and to do that, a good education is needed. Just before Brown v. Board, only one in every seven African Americans received a high school degree, whereas one in every three white people received a high school degree (Brownstein and National Journal). There could be multiple reasons for this statistic. One is that African Americans had a harder time finding a decent education. Because schools were segregated and people of color were at a disadvantage, they had to travel long miles to get an education. Also, another statistic shows that only 1 out of every 40 African Americans obtained a college degree (Brownstein and National

Sharpe is the third case. It was held in the District of Columbia when eleven African Americans were denied access to John Philip Sousa Junior High School. The parents from the Anacostia neighborhood calling themselves the Consolidated Parents Group took this situation to court (U.S. National Park Service). Charles Hamilton Houston, the special counsel of the NAACP represented the parents until he became extremely ill and was replaced by James Nabrit. The students were denied access because of the race and not because there were no open spaces. There were several open classrooms. Nabrit claimed that not being admitted into John Phillip Sousa Junior High School was infringing on their 5th Amendment right of due process and also their 14th Amendment right of not having privileges deprived of them. The case was originally dismissed because the court claimed that segregated schools were constitutional. Nabrit appealed to the Supreme Court and the court ruled that the 14th Amendment was not applicable in the District of Columbia.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is the most famous case out of the five. In 1950 thirteen parents took their children to nearby schools to get them enrolled for the upcoming school year in August. Every single African-American child was denied access and had to be sent to one of four schools in the city for African-Americans (U.S. National Park Service). Though there were thirteen parents and twenty kids involved Oliver Brown’s name was