Brown V Board Of Education Essay

736 Words3 Pages

Brown v. Board of Education was a crucial cornerstone of the civil rights movement and is regarded as one of the most important Supreme Court decisions. This lawsuit drew attention to the racial disparities that African Americans experienced and called into question the "separate but equal" ideology that was implemented in educational facilities. The Supreme Court justices unanimously held in this landmark case that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Segragation went against the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which maintains that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Brown's judgment did not result in instant integration; instead, during the …show more content…

In his complaint, Brown contended that schools for Black children were in no way equal and that their constitutional rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment were being violated and denied by the segregated educational systems. According to the article "Brown v. Board of Education," the board admitted there was an issue but declined to take action despite having the matter heard by the US District Court for Kansas. “The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine” (Editor, 2009). Their reasoning for this attitude stemmed from the concept that separation should be legalized because all-Black and all-White schools had identical facilities, transportation, curricula, and so on. The Browns eventually appealed their case to the United States Supreme Court, claiming that segregated schools were inequitable despite having equivalent amenities. Finally, the Court decided that segregating pupils in public schools based on race was an unlawful …show more content…

The ramifications of Brown v. Board of Education were almost immediately visible, with almost 12-million African American students attending schools in nearly 21 states. In a U.S History textbook, the section “School Segregation” mentions that “Within a year after the Brown decision, there were more than five hundred school districts in the nation that had obeyed the order to desegregate (2022)”. For the first time in history, white and black children were permitted to sit side by side in locations such as Washington, D.C. Others in the South, on the other hand, had conflicting feelings. Southeners were strongly opposed to desegregation and worked hard to integrate; they did not want their children to go to school, ride the bus, or even be in the vicinity of black children. A notable case can be seen in the article “Brown v. Board of Education United States law case”, when the author mentions how “violent protests erupted when African American teenagers (known as the Little Rock Nine) attempted to attend a white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957–58” (Dugnigan, n.d). The students were finally allowed entrance when President Eisenhower dispatched US soldiers and assumed charge of the state National Guard. Until the 1960s, many Southern schools were nearly entirely