Brown V. Board Of Education Case Study

Former Secretary of State William P. Rogers defines equality as the foundation of America (Rogers 1). Yet in the 1950’s, this was not the case. After slavery had been emancipated in the 1860’s, white Americans turned a blind eye towards the African American community and began to draw lines between the races. The idea of ‘separate but equal’ spread from restaurants, to water fountains, and eventually to schools, putting African Americans at a disadvantage only because of the color of their skin. After years of racial persecution, young Linda Brown’s daily inconvenience invigorated the fight for equal rights. Therefore, The Brown v. Board of Education case influenced American segregation, because unlike other instances of desegregation, it

The biggest enemy of Brown v. Board of Education was history, and more specifically, the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Brown case was initially brought to the courts because Oliver Brown, father of Linda Brown, thought that the 23-block trek his daughter went every morning to school was not justified, especially because another school was only a few blocks away. Unfortunately for the Browns, this was a white-only school that rejected Linda because of her skin color, but, “The activities of the NAACP began focusing on the complete integration of American society. One of their strategies was to force admission of blacks into schools... where establishing separate but equal facilities would be difficult and expensive for the states,” (National Archives 4). “Each of the school districts involved had improved the tangible aspects of its black schools, but Brown brought segregation, per se, squarely before the Court,”(History 3). This allowed the

Board of Education had many implications for what the future would hold, but the most immediate was the end of school segregation; This led to what was a long and arduous journey to desegregate schools across the nation. To understand the desegregation of schools, one must understand how they were segregated in the first place. Many American school districts participated in segregation, and it was not beneficial to anyone whose skin had a dark tone. “All [School segregation cases] document inadequate funding for segregated schools—meaning that many black children lacked playgrounds, ball fields, cafeterias, libraries, auditoriums, and other amenities provided for white children in newer schools. In Summerton, South Carolina, and Hockessin, Delaware, school buses were only provided for whites, while black children had to walk. In Claymont, Delaware, and Farmville, Virginia, there was no senior high school for black pupils” (Selected Articles 15). Not only was segregation a burden on minorities, but it came at a cost to white citizens too. Most whites living in segregated communities were met with higher taxes due to the need to maintain two school systems at once, preserving half-empty classrooms, and building new schools, all in hope of keeping the races divided (Selected Articles 7). Once the official decision of the Brown case was dealt out, a process new to Americans had begun: Desegregation. As with any process, the first try is rarely the best, and this held