How Brown V. Board Of Education Changed America

Separate But Not Equal - How Brown v. Board of Education Changed America

Brown v. Board of Education was a court case to desegregate schools. During this time over one-third of states, mostly in the south, segregated their schools by law. Most people don’t know that the lawsuit actually started off as five, in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. Unfortunately all the lower court cases resulted in defeat (Greenspan 1). The bigger issue was still at hand though, it wasn’t only the schools being segregated, it was everywhere. Anywhere you would’ve went during this time period you would’ve seen “Whites only” and “Colored only” signs on just about anything and everything; the signs were displayed on stores,

No matter if you were a colored adult, teenager, or straight out your mother 's womb; if you were colored you weren 't equal in any means. During this time period ‘separate but equal’ was a doctrine thanks to the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling; meaning segregation was technically legal. According to the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling it was legal to segregate public areas but to the fourteenth amendment it was not legal to segregate schools, “Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal” (The National Center for Public Policy Research 2). Everything was separate but certainly not equal, colored people weren’t allowed in certain stores, bathrooms, and even buses. If you were a person of color in this time not only did you have to worry about inequality but you also had an organization that would kill, hang, burn, and skin you. The Ku Klux Klan was a violent organization that targeted minority groups such as people of

Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants, stores or even bathrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare that the mandatory segregation that existed in the states unconstitutional. It was a big step towards complete desegregation of public schools (‘The Leadership Conference’ 1). It was unanimously decided by the United States Supreme Court that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (History.com Staff 1). Thanks to the ruling, between the years of 1995 and 1960, Federal judges held over 200 school desegregation hearings. The ruling also caused a huge spark to the Civil Rights