Brown vs Board of Education was important because it was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The first plaintiff was Oliver Brown, an African-American welder and assistant pastor. The case was brought against the Topeka Board of Education for not allowing his nine year old daughter, Linda, to attend Summer Elementary School, and all white school near their home. In 1954, there were four African-American schools and 18 white schools in Topeka. African American minors had been denied admittance to certain schools based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race. …show more content…
The retaliation was arguably most severe in South Carolina, where whites burned down the house and church of a particularly energized plaintiff reverend Joseph A. Delaine, reportedly fired gunshots at him one night. The great-grandson of a slave, Thurgood Marshall attended Howard Law School prior to becoming the NAACP’s chief legal counsel. They argued that such segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. All lower cases ended in defeat. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the five combined cases known only as Oliver L. Brown et. al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, (KS) et. al.was a monumental judicial turning point for this nation. In May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement. Over one-third of states segregated their schools by law. At the time of Brown v.s. Board of Education ruling, 17 southern and border states, along with the District of Columbia, required their public schools to be racially segregated. In Brown v.s. Board of Education-just one of his 32 appearances before the Supreme Court-Thurgood Marshall opined the state-imposed segregation was inherently discriminatory and emotionally