Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka

The anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka is one of the more unusual celebrations on this site. However, it is very significant as the case brought about a huge cultural change within the United States.

On this date the US Supreme Court unanimously issued a historic decision holding that segregation in public education was a denial of the right to equal protection under the law, and directing the lower courts to oversee the desegregation of the nation's schools "with all deliberate speed."

This decision, which established the principle that segregation is unconstitutional, formed the legal basis for the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s.

In the early 1950s, racial segregation in public schools (and in all public places) was the norm across America. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts.

In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enrol her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused.

Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time."

Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.

The US District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown's case over two days in June 1951. At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal. One of the expert witnesses, Dr. Hugh W. Speer, testified that: "...if the coloured children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these coloured children must live, then the coloured child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation."

The Board of Education's defence was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood. The board also argued that segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children; great African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver had overcome more than just segregated schools to achieve what they had achieved.

Although the District Court stated that the evidence in favour of the abolition of segregation was persuasive, because of a previous precedent, the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, they felt "compelled" to rule in favour of the Education Board.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and after two hearings (the first was indecisive), on May 17, 1954, by a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs.

Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the 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 ruling required the desegregation of schools across America, declaring it unconstitutional.

If you're looking for a way to commemorate this event, you might be interested in this article: Commemorations with Cross Stitch

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