Brown v. Board of Education

Civil rights has been and continues to be a huge issue and point of conversation in this country. There have been countless cases of civil rights, and civil liberties issues over the years. The United States has improved drastically in handling these issues, and gets better all the time at giving everybody equal rights.

Although there are many current civil rights, and liberties issues still today. I want to talk specifically about the issue of segregation based on race. And to be even more specific on the supreme court case, "Brown v. board of Education." Ultimately this case decided that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools by race, and jumpstarted the civil rights movement era. This overturned the previous supreme court case of Plessy v. Ferguson that instigated the separate but equal clause. The supreme court ruled that separate was not actually equal in these schools. The schools for African Americans were far inferior to those for the white people.

The issue that jumpstarted this groundbreaking decision was that of Oliver Brown and his daughter Linda. Linda was only a 3rd grader, but in order to get to school she had to walk a mile through a railroad, even though there was a white school only 7 blocks from her house. I assume that this was probably not very safe for a young black girl. her father tried to enroll her into the white school, but the principal of the school refused.

Brown brought the issue to the NAACP and they were more than glad to help. After all, they had been looking for an opportunity to overturn segregation in schools. They brought the case to the district court for the state of Kansas. In this case the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message that black people were inferior to whites. Expert witness Dr. Hugh W. Speer, testified that:

"...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation."

The judges agreed with the expert witness that segregation had a detrimental affect on children. However, they felt that they could not overturn the supreme court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson which made school segregation legal. Keeping this in mind compelled the court to rule in the favor of the Board of Education. Brown and the NAACP were not done fighting though,

Brown and the NAACP appealed to the supreme court in october of 1951. The supreme court had to decide whether or not desegregated schools deprived black children of equal protection of the law. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous Court:

"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."

The supreme court had officially struck down plessy's separate but equal doctrine for education. The supreme court had ruled in favor of the plaintiff and required desegregation in schools across america. Although segregation was still prominent in other aspects of life. Such as, public places like restaurants and bathrooms. It was a huge start to the civil rights movement, and showed African Americans everywhere that they could make a change.

Sources:
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html
http://www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZS.html