Essay/Term paper: Brown vs. board of education

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Humanities Essays

In 1896 the Supreme Court had held in

Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation was permissible as

long as equal facilities were provided for both races.

Although that decision involved only passenger

accommodations on a rail road, the principle of "separate

but equal" was applied thereafter to all aspects of public life

in states with large black populations. Brown v. Board of

Education of Topeka, Kansas, decided on May 17, 1954,

was one of the most important cases in the history of the

U.S. Supreme Court. Linda Brown had been denied

admission to an elementary school in Topeka because she

was black. Brought together under the Brown designation

were companion cases from South Carolina, Virginia, and

Delaware, all of which involved the same basic question:

Does the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment

prohibit racial segregation in the public schools? It was not

until the late 1940's that the Court began to insist on equality

of treatment, but it did not squarely face the constitutionality

of the "separate but equal" doctrine until it decided the

Brown case. In a brief, unanimous opinion delivered by

Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court declared that: "separate

education facilities are inherently unequal" and that racial

segregation violates the equal protection clause of the 14th

amendment. In a moving passage, the chief justice argued

that separating children in the schools solely on racial

grounds "generates a felling of inferiority as to their status in

the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a

way unlikely to be undone." Although the decision did not

bring about total integration of blacks in the schools, it

resulted in efforts by many school systems to remove the

imbalance by busing students. The Court's decision had far

reaching effects, influencing civil rights legislation and the civil

rights movement of the 1960's.