And Justice for All
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Kansas commemorates the landmark Supreme Court case that ended school segregation.
By RYAN DOUGHERTY
What began as a fight to ensure equal education for elementary school students in Topeka, Kansas, developed into the building block of the civil rights movement, empowering African Americans to crusade for equal justice amid the bleak racism and segregation of the 1950s and 1960s.
Before 1954, segregation existed in many American schools, as well as in restaurants, hotels, and other aspects of day-to-day life. Many African-American children in Topeka were forced to attend schools miles from their homes, though white elementary schools were nearby. In other cases outside Topeka, African-American children attended poor facilities lacking basic school equipment.
Several African-American parents in Topeka, including Oliver Brown, tried unsuccessfully to enroll their children in white schools. On the parents' behalf, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had long hoped to challenge segregation in schools, organized a class-action lawsuit to end public school segregation in Topeka.
The U.S. District Court of Kansas heard the case in June 1951. The NAACP argued that segregation taught black students that they were inferior to whites and that separate learning facilities were inherently unequal. The Board of Education countered that school segregation would prepare black children for social conditions they would face in adulthood.
The district court sympathized with NAACP's case but ruled against it—deciding it could not supersede an 1896 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed for separate but equal facilities.
The NAACP appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952, and the case joined with existing suits challenging school segregation on behalf of hundreds of students in Virginia, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Delaware. The case, known as Oliver L. Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, was presented by attorney Thurgood Marshall. It was Marshall who said that children who do not learn together will not know how to live together.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court's decision hinged on one question: Do segregated schools deprive African-American students of equal educational opportunities? In May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that separate education facilities were unequal, ordering the desegregation of schools across the country. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: "To separate [African-American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."
Despite the ruling, desegregation met heavy resistance and even violence throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Riots erupted in places such as Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. The ruling did not abolish segregation in other public areas, but many historians point to the Brown case as the launching of the civil rights movement in America.
Buoyed by the ruling, African Americans were inspired to fight against racism and injustice. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 further eliminated a rash of state and local laws that had relegated African Americans to second-class status.
It could be argued that the civil rights movement came full circle when, in 1967, Thurgood Marshall returned to the scene of the Brown trial, this time to be sworn in as the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
RYAN DOUGHERTY is news editor.
