Essay On The Effects Of Segregation On African American Education

Pouring Rain. Freezing temperatures. Aching muscles. These were conditions that Linda Brown faced frequently as she walked a long trek to school every morning. In the year 1950, Linda Brown, a third grader, attended an all black school in Topeka, Kansas, a mile from her home. Although, an all white school was approximately four blocks from her house. Many other African American children suffered similar consequences because schools throughout the United States had been segregated at the time. There had been many cases against segregation in the Supreme Court, but none of them had succeeded to end the racial discrimination in public education until the NAACP filed the twelfth case, Brown V. Board of Education ("Brown V. Board (Kansas)"). Because the Brown v. Board of Education proved that the segregation of schools was illegal, the civil rights movement was ignited during the 1950s, and the fight for equal education for African Americans began (“Brown V. Board”).

Before the 1950s, if a city in Kansas had over 15,000 people, then they were allowed to segregate their schools. In Topeka, Kansas, there were fourteen more schools for white children than there were for African American children. Many black children had to walk more than a mile to get to school every morning, so the NAACP, a civil rights organization for African Americans, formed a group of parents who would try to enroll their kids in an all white school ("Brown V. Board (Kansas)"). Oliver Brown, the father of Linda Brown, was one of these parents. He and the other parents were rejected from enrollment into the white schools, so the NAACP used this information to file lawsuits (McBride). One of these cases was the Brown v. Board of Education, one of the most significant cases in American history, which ruled that the black schools were unequal to the white schools