Court Case: Brown Vs. Board Of Education

Throughout the history of America, blacks have continuously been perceived as inferior to whites. At first, due to the legality of slavery, blacks were not identified as people, but property. This was a regular practice until the passing of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, which granted rights to black inhabitants of America. Hypothetically, these rights were to make newly freed slaves equal to their white cohabitants, but this wasn’t the case. Court cases, laws, and illicit practices, ensured that blacks would remain inferior to whites. However, in the mid-20th century, a desire for equality in all aspects of public life became more prominent among the black community. An important court case that further ensured the progression

Board of Education consisted of 5 different cases with a similar premise, but the well-known story of behind the groundbreaking event began in Topeka, Kansas with a man named Oliver Brown. Due to the segregation laws in Kansas at the time, his third-grade daughter, Linda, could not attend a nearby white school and had to trek a mile to a bus stop to attend a black school that was much further away. Consequently, Oliver Brown attempted to enroll his daughter in a local school for whites in 1950 with several other black families. As expected, they were turned down. However, under the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, Brown, and other black families filed a lawsuit against the board of education of

Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court believed that segregation of public education based only on race is unconstitutional due to the fact that this practice of segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment. This groundbreaking decision overturned the “separate but equal” principle of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The Court agreed with Brown that “separate but equal” facilities are naturally unequal. In addition, they verified Brown’s conclusion of the sense of inferiority segregation instilled in African American children and the terrible effect on the educational and personal growth of African American children.

Although Brown v. Board of Education verified the unconstitutionality of the segregation of public education, the act of integration was not immediately instituted. As a result, in the year 1955, the Court met again to discuss on how to end segregation. This was one year after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Four days later, Chief Justice Warren declared Brown II. This decision commanded the federal district courts to execute desegregation with “all deliberate