Brown vs Board of Education

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Brown vs Board of Education


Who did Brown represent and what did they want?

Oliver Brown, a black resident of Topeka, Kansas, attempted to enroll his daughter in the school closest to their home. The Topeka school district denied her admittance and required her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school further away. Mr. Brown brought a case against the school district’s action. The District Court in Topeka determined that segregation in public education does have a detrimental effect upon black children, but it denied Brown relief on the ground that the black and the white schools were, “substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers.” Brown and twelve other black families, in comparable circumstances, filed a class-action lawsuit against Topeka Board of Education in U.S. federal court. The plaintiffs asserted that the Board’s segregation mandate was unconstitutional. By the time their case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, it had been joined by five cases with similar claims against segregation: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Gebhart v. Belton and Bolling v. Sharpe.


What was the result of the Brown vs Board of Education case and why was it important?

The Brown v. Board case resulted in a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which overruled the “separate but equal” opinion set in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. This 1954 unanimous judgment ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. History shows that the end of the Civil War brought about laws that promoted racial equality. Sadly by the 1900s, a segregated society had developed that condemned blacks citizens to second-class citizenship. Brown v. Board became a catalyst in race relations in the United States.  The decision, in this case, sparked laws and protests that culminated in the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. An Act that officially outlawed segregation in America.



Uscourt.gov

Americanhistory,si.edu/brown/history/index.html

 

History.com/black=history/brown

 

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