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Brown V Board of Education and Its Influence on The American Education System

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Brown v. Board of Education

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Separate But Equal Doctrine 

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws —and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown , was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment , which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . 

Thurgood Marshall , the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren , then governor of California .

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II ), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”

Though well intentioned, the Court’s actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the “ Little Rock Nine ”— were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board didn’t achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent  civil rights movement  in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr .), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 .

Runyon v. McCrary Extends Policy to Private Schools

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary , ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation’s public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education , the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation’s school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts . Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press). Cass Sunstein, “Did Brown Matter?” The New Yorker , May 3, 2004. Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org . Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute , April 17, 2014.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE
• Black Power
• The Civil Rights Movement
• In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
• The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”
• The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.

A segregated society

The brown v. board of education case, thurgood marshall, the naacp, and the supreme court, separate is "inherently unequal", brown ii: desegregating with "all deliberate speed”, what do you think.

• James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 387.
• James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25-27.
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 387.
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 32.
• See Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 2004).
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 43-45.
• Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
• Patterson, Grand Expectations, 394-395.

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Educator Resources

Brown v. Board of Education

The Supreme Court's opinion in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 legally ended decades of racial segregation in America's public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement. Read more...

Primary Sources

Links go to DocsTeach , the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

Dissenting opinion in Briggs v. Elliott in which Judge Waties Waring opposed the District Court ruling that "separate but equal" schools were not in violation of the 14th amendment – he presented arguments that would later be used by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas , 6/21/1951

View in National Archives Catalog

English class at Moton High School , a school for Black students, one of several photographs entered as evidence in the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia , which was one of five cases that the Supreme Court consolidated under Brown v. Board of Education , ca. 1951

Order of Argument in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka during which attorneys reargued the five cases that the Supreme Court heard collectively and consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education , 12/1953

Page 11 of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling of 5/17/1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools violated the 14th Amendment, marking the end of the "separate but equal" precedent

Page 3 of a letter from President Eisenhower to E. E. "Swede" Hazlett in which the President expressed his belief that the new Warren court would be very moderate on the issue of segregation, 10/23/1954

Judgment of May 31, 1955, in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) – a year after the ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional – directing that schools be desegregated "with all deliberate speed"

• Brown v. Board of Education Timeline
• Biographies of Key Figures
• Related Primary Sources:  Photographs from the Dorothy Davis Case

Teaching Activities

The "Rights in America" page on DocsTeach includes primary sources and document-based teaching activities related to how individuals and groups have asserted their rights as Americans. It includes topics such as segregation, racism, citizenship, women's independence, immigration, and more.

Additional Background Information

While the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery, it wasn't until three years later, in 1868, that the 14th Amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including due process and equal protection of the laws. These two amendments, as well as the 15th Amendment protecting voting rights, were intended to eliminate the last remnants of slavery and to protect the citizenship of Black Americans.

In 1875, Congress also passed the first Civil Rights Act, which held the "equality of all men before the law" and called for fines and penalties for anyone found denying patronage of public places, such as theaters and inns, on the basis of race. However, a reactionary Supreme Court reasoned that this act was beyond the scope of the 13th and 14th Amendments, as these amendments only concerned the actions of the government, not those of private citizens. With this ruling, the Supreme Court narrowed the field of legislation that could be supported by the Constitution and at the same time turned the tide against the civil rights movement.

By the late 1800s, segregation laws became almost universal in the South where previous legislation and amendments were, for all practical purposes, ignored. The races were separated in schools, in restaurants, in restrooms, on public transportation, and even in voting and holding office. 

Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson . Homer Plessy, a Black man from Louisiana, challenged the constitutionality of segregated railroad coaches, first in the state courts and then in the U. S. Supreme Court.

The high court upheld the lower courts, noting that since the separate cars provided equal services, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was not violated. Thus, the "separate but equal" doctrine became the constitutional basis for segregation. One dissenter on the Court, Justice John Marshall Harlan, declared the Constitution "color blind" and accurately predicted that this decision would become as baneful as the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857.

In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was officially formed to champion the modern Civil Rights Movement. In its early years its primary goals were to eliminate lynching and to obtain fair trials for Black Americans. By the 1930s, however, the activities of the NAACP began focusing on the complete integration of American society. One of their strategies was to force admission of Black Americans into universities at the graduate level where establishing separate but equal facilities would be difficult and expensive for the states.

At the forefront of this movement was Thurgood Marshall, a young Black lawyer who, in 1938, became general counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund. Significant victories at this level included Gaines v. University of Missouri in 1938, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma in 1948, and Sweatt v. Painter in 1950. In each of these cases, the goal of the NAACP defense team was to attack the "equal" standard so that the "separate" standard would in turn become susceptible.

Five Cases Consolidated under Brown v. Board of Education

By the 1950s, the NAACP was beginning to support challenges to segregation at the elementary school level. Five separate cases were filed in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware: 

• Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al.
• Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R.W. Elliott, et al.
• Dorothy E. Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al.
• Spottswood Thomas Bolling et al. v. C. Melvin Sharpe et al.
• Francis B. Gebhart et al. v. Ethel Louise Belton et al.

While each case had its unique elements, all were brought on the behalf of elementary school children, and all involved Black schools that were inferior to white schools. Most importantly, rather than just challenging the inferiority of the separate schools, each case claimed that the "separate but equal" ruling violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The lower courts ruled against the plaintiffs in each case, noting the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of the United States Supreme Court as precedent. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education , the Federal district court even cited the injurious effects of segregation on Black children, but held that "separate but equal" was still not a violation of the Constitution. It was clear to those involved that the only effective route to terminating segregation in public schools was going to be through the United States Supreme Court.

In 1952 the Supreme Court agreed to hear all five cases collectively. This grouping was significant because it represented school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one. Thurgood Marshall, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs (he argued the Briggs case), and his fellow lawyers provided testimony from more than 30 social scientists affirming the deleterious effects of segregation on Black and white children. These arguments were similar to those alluded to in the Dissenting Opinion of Judge Waites Waring in Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R. W. Elliott, Chairman, et al . (shown above).

These [social scientists] testified as to their study and researches and their actual tests with children of varying ages and they showed that the humiliation and disgrace of being set aside and segregated as unfit to associate with others of different color had an evil and ineradicable effect upon the mental processes of our young which would remain with them and deform their view on life until and throughout their maturity....They showed beyond a doubt that the evils of segregation and color prejudice come from early training...it is difficult and nearly impossible to change and eradicate these early prejudices however strong may be the appeal to reason…if segregation is wrong then the place to stop it is in the first grade and not in graduate colleges. 

The lawyers for the school boards based their defense primarily on precedent, such as the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, as well as on the importance of states' rights in matters relating to education.

Realizing the significance of their decision and being divided among themselves, the Supreme Court took until June 1953 to decide they would rehear arguments for all five cases.

The arguments were scheduled for the following term. The Court wanted briefs from both sides that would answer five questions, all having to do with the attorneys' opinions on whether or not Congress had segregation in public schools in mind when the 14th amendment was ratified.

The Order of Argument (shown above) offers a window into the three days in December of 1953 during which the attorneys reargued the cases. The document lists the names of each case, the states from which they came, the order in which the Court heard them, the names of the attorneys for the appellants and appellees, the total time allotted for arguments, and the dates over which the arguments took place.

Briggs v. Elliott

The first case listed, Briggs v. Elliott , originated in Clarendon County, South Carolina, in the fall of 1950. Harry Briggs was one of 20 plaintiffs who were charging that R.W. Elliott, as president of the Clarendon County School Board, violated their right to equal protection under the fourteenth amendment by upholding the county's segregated education law. Briggs featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs from some of the nation's leading child psychologists, such as Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose famous doll study concluded that segregation negatively affected the self-esteem and psyche of African-American children. Such testimony was groundbreaking because on only one other occasion in U.S. history had a plaintiff attempted to present such evidence before the Court.

Thurgood Marshall, the noted NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court Justice, argued the Briggs case at the District and Federal Court levels. The U.S. District Court's three-judge panel ruled against the plaintiffs, with one judge dissenting, stating that "separate but equal" schools were not in violation of the 14th amendment. In his dissenting opinion (shown above), Judge Waties Waring presented some of the arguments that would later be used by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas . The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia

Marshall also argued the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, case at the Federal level. Originally filed in May of 1951 by plaintiff's attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, the Davis case, like the others, argued that Virginia's segregated schools were unconstitutional because they violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. And like the Briggs case, Virginia's three-judge panel ruled against the 117 students who were identified as plaintiffs in the case. (For more on this case, see  Photographs from the Dorothy Davis Case .)

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Listed third in the order of arguments, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was initially filed in February of 1951 by three Topeka area lawyers, assisted by the NAACP's Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg. As in the Briggs case, this case featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs that segregation had a harmful effect on the psychology of African-American children. While that testimony did not prevent the Topeka judges from ruling against the plaintiffs, the evidence from this case eventually found its way into the wording of the Supreme Court's May 17, 1954 opinion. The Court concluded that:

To separate them [children in grade and high schools] 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.

Bolling v. Sharpe

Because Washington, D.C., is a Federal territory governed by Congress and not a state, the Bolling v. Sharpe case was argued as a fifth amendment violation of "due process." The fourteenth amendment only mentions states, so this case could not be argued as a violation of "equal protection," as were the other cases. When a District of Columbia parent, Gardner Bishop, unsuccessfully attempted to get 11 African-American students admitted into a newly constructed white junior high school, he and the Consolidated Parents Group filed suit against C. Melvin Sharpe, president of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia. Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP's special counsel, former dean of the Howard University School of Law, and mentor to Thurgood Marshall, took up the Bolling case.

With Houston's health already failing in 1950 when he filed suit, James Nabrit, Jr. replaced Houston as the original attorney. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court on appeal, George E.C. Hayes had been added as an attorney for the petitioners, beside James Nabrit, Jr. According to the Court, due to the decision in Plessy , "the plaintiffs and others similarly situated" had been "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment," therefore, segregation of America's public schools was unconstitutional.

Belton v. Gebhart

The last case listed in the order of arguments, Belton v. Gebhart , was actually two nearly identical cases (the other being Bulah v. Gebhart ), both originating in the state of Delaware in 1952. Ethel Belton was one of the parents listed as plaintiffs in the case brought in Claymont, while Sarah Bulah brought suit in the town of Hockessin, Delaware. While both of these plaintiffs brought suit because their African-American children had to attend inferior schools, Sarah Bulah's situation was unique in that she was a white woman with an adopted Black child, who was still subject to the segregation laws of the state. Local attorney Louis Redding, Delaware's only African-American attorney at the time, originally argued both cases in Delaware's Court of Chancery. NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg assisted Redding. Belton/Bulah v. Gebhart was argued at the Federal level by Delaware's attorney general, H. Albert Young.

Supreme Court Rehears Arguments

Reargument of the Brown v. Board of Education cases at the Federal level took place December 7-9, 1953. Throngs of spectators lined up outside the Supreme Court by sunrise on the morning of December 7, although arguments did not actually commence until one o'clock that afternoon. Spottswood Robinson began the argument for the appellants, and Thurgood Marshall followed him. Virginia's Assistant Attorney General, T. Justin Moore, followed Marshall, and then the court recessed for the evening.

On the morning of December 8, Moore resumed his argument, followed by his colleague, J. Lindsay Almond, Virginia's Attorney General. Following this argument, Assistant United States Attorney General J. Lee Rankin, presented the U.S. government's amicus curiae brief on behalf of the appellants, which showed its support for desegregation in public education. In the afternoon, Robert Carter began arguments in the Kansas case, and Paul Wilson, Attorney General for the state of Kansas, followed him in rebuttal.

On December 9, after James Nabrit and Milton Korman debated Bolling , and Louis Redding, Jack Greenberg, and Delaware's Attorney General, H. Albert Young argued Gebhart , the Court recessed. The attorneys, the plaintiffs, the defendants, and the nation waited five months and eight days to receive the unanimous opinion of Chief Justice Earl Warren's court, which declared, "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."

The Warren Court

In September 1953, President Eisenhower had appointed Earl Warren, governor of California, as the new Supreme Court chief justice. Eisenhower believed Warren would follow a moderate course of action toward desegregation. His feelings regarding the appointment are detailed in the closing paragraphs of a letter he wrote to E. E. "Swede" Hazlett, a childhood friend (shown above). On the issue of segregation, Eisenhower believed that the new Warren court would "be very moderate and accord a maximum initiative to local courts."

In his brief to the Warren Court that December, Thurgood Marshall described the separate but equal ruling as erroneous and called for an immediate reversal under the 14th Amendment. He argued that it allowed the government to prohibit any state action based on race, including segregation in public schools. The defense countered this interpretation pointing to several states that were practicing segregation at the time they ratified the 14th Amendment. Surely they would not have done so if they had believed the 14th Amendment applied to segregation laws. The U.S. Department of Justice also filed a brief; it was in favor of desegregation but asked for a gradual changeover.

Over the next few months, the new chief justice worked to bring the splintered Court together. He knew that clear guidelines and gradual implementation were going to be important considerations, as the largest concern remaining among the justices was the racial unrest that would doubtless follow their ruling. 

The Supreme Court Ruling

Finally, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous opinion: school segregation by law was unconstitutional (shown above). Arguments were to be heard during the next term to determine exactly how the ruling would be imposed.

Just over one year later, on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, now referred to as Brown II (also shown above). It instructed states to begin desegregation plans "with all deliberate speed." Warren employed careful wording in order to ensure backing of the full Court in his official judgment.

The Brown decision was a watershed in American legal and civil rights history because it overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine first articulated in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. By overturning Plessy , the Court ended America's 58-year-long practice of legal racial segregation and paved the way for the integration of America's public school systems.

Despite two unanimous decisions and careful, if not vague, wording, there was considerable resistance to the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education . In addition to the obvious disapproving segregationists were some constitutional scholars who felt that the decision went against legal tradition by relying heavily on data supplied by social scientists rather than precedent or established law. Supporters of judicial restraint believed the Court had overstepped its constitutional powers by essentially writing new law.

However, minority groups and members of the Civil Rights Movement were buoyed by the Brown decision even without specific directions for implementation. Proponents of judicial activism believed the Supreme Court had appropriately used its position to adapt the basis of the Constitution to address new problems in new times. The Warren Court stayed this course for the next 15 years, deciding cases that significantly affected not only race relations, but also the administration of criminal justice, the operation of the political process, and the separation of church and state.

Parts of this text were adapted from an article written by Mary Frances Greene, a teacher at Marie Murphy School in Wilmette, IL.

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Brown v. Board of Education, Essay Example

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You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 established that segregation is legal for as long as facilities for different races are ‘equal’ (PBS n.d.). Despite the 13 th and the 14 th Amendments, African Americans received inferior treatment than White Americans in many parts of the country, especially the South. The laws in many states which together came to be known as the Jim Crow laws, required blacks and whites to use different facilities and attend different schools among other things. In early 1950s, NAACP lawyers brought class action lawsuits on behalf of African American school children and their families to allow black children to attend the same schools as white children. One of these class action lawsuits was Brown v. Board of Education in which the plaintiff Oliver Brown alleged Topeka, Kansas schools were violating Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because white and black schools are not equal nor they could be. The federal court dismissed the case so the case went to the Supreme Court. Brown’s appeal was consolidated with other school segregation cases which were represented by chief counsel Thurgood Marshall (PBS n.d.).

The Supreme Court gave an unanimous decision under the guidance of Chief Justice Earl Warren that racial segregation in schools indeed violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court noted the importance of public education in the 20 th century and asserted that denial to good public education would hurt a child’s future. The court also took notice of psychological studies that segregation leads to inferiority complex among children from minority groups. The court ruled that even if physical facilities of black and white schools may be equal, racial segregation still leads to inherent inequality and, thus, unconstitutional (PBS n.d.). Thus, racial segregation which was ruled constitutional by Plessy v. Ferguson case was rendered unconstitutional by Brown v. Board of Education case.

Brown v. Board of Education ruling made it clear that U.S. Constitution is color-blind and all citizens should not only have access to similar quality services but to the same services. The ruling also sent the message that equality will not be achieved in America unless different races seek integration rather than segregation. The ruling also paved the way for civil rights movement because the Court was finally on the right side.

The court realized that segregation enabled discrimination against non-white Americans and recognized the fact that that equality cannot be possible under ‘different but equal’ doctrine. The ruling was also acknowledgement of the fact that inferior quality services were being provided to non-white Americans.

Another impact of the Brown v. Board of Education case was that it also helped paved the way for improvement in economic status of African Americans. Not only the case encouraged greater participation of African Americans in the political system of the country that Southern Congressmen made it a priority to prevent political rise of African Americans but over the long term, it also helped build African Americans middle class. It sent the message to African Americans that they now had at least a chance to change their fate and had protection under the law which was initially denied to them. The case also affirmed the importance of legal system in advancing social progress.

PBS. Brown v. Board of Education (1954). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html (accessed March 27, 2014).

—. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.html (accessed March 27, 2014).

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Brown v. board of education essay.

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, 169 U.S. 537 (1896), ruling that blacks and whites be allowed to attend the same public schools. The decision was a major blow to the system of southern de jure segregation, which required by law that blacks and whites be separated in all areas of public facilities, such as waiting rooms, restaurants, hotels, buses and trains, drinking fountains, and even cemeteries.

Racial segregation in public schools was especially problematic because it was clear that schools for white children and schools for black children were not equal and could not be made equal if they were to retain racial separation. The average amount spent by southern cities for each black pupil was usually less than half that spent on each white pupil. In many parts of the South, black children were forced to travel long distances to attend schools lacking basic facilities and qualified teachers. Some rural schools provided instruction for only 3 months out of the year; others provided no high school for black children. Even in urban areas of the South, schools were overcrowded and lacked the amenities of whites-only schools.

The case of Brown v. Board of Education rested on a class action suit filed in 1951 against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas, by the local NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) on behalf of 13 plaintiffs. Among those plaintiffs, Oliver Brown—for whom the case is named—served on behalf of his daughter, Linda Brown. Miss Brown lived in a racially mixed neighborhood but had to travel more than an hour to attend school because her neighborhood school was segregated white. Because Kansas was a border state, and Topeka was not racially segregated in all areas of public facilities (e.g., waiting rooms), the NAACP strategically chose the city as its next battleground in the effort to desegregate public life. It was just one of five cases decided within the Brown decision, which included cases from South Carolina (Briggs v. Elliott), Delaware (Gebhart v. Belton), Virginia (Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County), and Washington, D.C. (Bolling v. Sharpe). Out of the five cases, Brown v. Board of Education was the only case predicated on black parents’ constitutional right to send their children to local neighborhood schools. This was a major shift in the argument for dismantling a system of racial inequality and segregation: that racial segregation is inherently unequal regardless of the quality of public facilities.

One of the compelling arguments used in the Brown decision against segregated schools was that segregation causes psychological harm to individuals forced into segregation by the dominant group. This argument was based on the social scientific work of psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark. Clark and Clark conducted experiments in which they showed black children in segregated schools and non-segregated schools pictures of brown and white dolls. A majority of black children tested in a southern segregated school said that they preferred white dolls over brown dolls, leading the researchers to conclude that segregation caused self-loathing and acceptance of racist stereotypes in these black children.

Clark and Clark also argued that the lack of cross-status contact inherent in segregation causes hostility and suspicion between races. The historical assumption behind racial segregation was that segregated groups are intellectually and socially inferior and thus should be separated from the dominant group. The Clarks and other social scientists questioned this assumption by making the point that segregation produces inequality by creating different and unequal environments resulting in observable differences between races. This was effectively argued in an appendix (signed by 32 prominent psychologists) to the appellants’ briefs in the Brown, Briggs, and Davis cases. A number of other social scientific works were cited in these briefs, including Gunnar Myrdal’s famous work on U.S. racial inequality, An American Dilemma, of 1944.

Brown v. Board of Education was decided in a unanimous 9-0 vote on May 17, 1954, in favor of the plaintiff. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the court. He argued that public education was an increasingly important right of U.S. citizens and that individuals who are denied equal access to education are denied full citizenship in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Although the separate facilities for black and white children in Kansas were not measurably different, Warren argued that forced legal segregation makes black children feel inferior, retarding their “educational and mental development,” and concluded that separate but equal facilities in education are inherently unequal.

The Brown ruling was a victory for civil rights, but it was not until 1955 that the Supreme Court ordered states to comply with the ruling “with all deliberate speed” (in an ambiguous, open-ended ruling often referred to as Brown II). Not until the 1970s did many southern schools become desegregated, by which time many white students had fled to private schools. Subsequent critiques of the Brown ruling question the effectiveness of public school desegregation, which some argue did nothing to solve the problem of racial inequality, institutional racism, and segregation in other, nonpublic areas of life.

In 2006, the Supreme Court reassessed Brown’s legal interpretation in two cases, dealing with Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. Both cities had color-conscious policies that specifically sought to create a more balanced and racially integrated school system. Although students in each city had school choice, they could be denied admission based on race if their attendance would disrupt the racial balance in the school. On June 27, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 vote along ideological grounds that school admission programs in Seattle and Louisville violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection to individuals. Because this decision stipulates race cannot be used to decide where students go to school, educators believe it may lead many districts to drop efforts at racially balancing schools.

Bibliography:

• Barnes, Robert. 2007. “Divided Court Limits Use of Race by School Districts.” Washington Post, June 29, p. A01.
• Clark, Kenneth B., Isidor Chein, and Stuart W. Cook. 2004. “The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation: A (September 1952) Social Science Statement in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court Case.” American Psychologist 59(6):495-501.
• Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.
• Patterson, James T. 2001. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Theses and Dissertations

Original intent: brown vs. board of education, white backlash, & the enduring power of de facto segregation.

Aaron Brand , CUNY Hunter College Follow

Date of Award

Winter 1-6-2022

Document Type

Degree name.

Master of Arts (MA)

First Advisor

D'Weston Haywood

Second Advisor

Jonathan Rosenberg

Academic Program Adviser

This thesis examines the factors and outcomes surrounding Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. The events that predated it and the resistance that followed determined the chain of consequences from this perceived victory over racial bias. The calculated and persistent backlash against integration obscured Brown’s intent of educational opportunity.

Recommended Citation

Brand, Aaron, "Original Intent: Brown vs. Board of Education, White Backlash, & the Enduring Power of De Facto Segregation" (2022). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/822

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Supreme Court Eras. Brown vs. Board of Education Essay

The question regarding equality was urgent throughout the history of humankind. The primary purpose of the paper is to provide the in-depth analysis regarding a possible decision made by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in the case that would be a different era of the Supreme Court, namely the Lochner Era.

To get a better understanding regarding the issue, the question concerning the Loncher Era of the Supreme Court should be taken into consideration. As a matter of fact, the epoch lasted from 1895 till 1937 (Pope, 2013). It is worth stating that during this period, the urgent discussions regarding the fourteenth amendment took place across the Unite Stated. It is essential to point out that the fourteenth amendment can be considered as the most democratic amendment throughout the history of America. It was focused on the proclamation of the quality among all the citizens of the United Stated no matter race or skin color. In addition, it was stated that every state that would ignore the amendment should be punished. The period of Loncher solved the economic problem regarding the working hours and the level of wage.

The case Brown v. Board of Education was a turning point in the history of the United States. The case proved that the separation of students on the basis of their skin color is unconstitutional (Tisdale, 2013). The decision of the Supreme Court was significant for the fight for human rights and the establishment of equality. However, it should be stressed that the decision of the Supreme Court might be different in other time, for example, Loncher Era. Although the fourteenth amendment was focused on human rights, it is worth highlighting that the society was not ready to change their attitude towards black people and be tolerant and respectful (Hall & Feldmeier, 2012). The decision regarding the case Brown v. Board of Education could be different during this era. Society needed something that could unite people and show that everyone needs to be respected no matter skin color or racial believes. Such stimulus for changing the opinion and attitude was the Second World War and the involvement of the United States in it. The war proved that racial and national discrimination, fascism ideology, and the belief that one race is dominant could lead to severe consequences. During the Second World War, Afro-Americans proved that they worth respect and should be treated equally. The Civil War, the Loncher Era, the Second World War, and other significant events consequently led to the change of the attitude towards Afro-Americans. They came a long way towards the deserved equality and the case Brown v. Board of Education proved that racial or national peculiarities and differences should never be the reason for discrimination. The decision of the Supreme Court was expected; however, it would be nonsense in any other era. There is no place for racial discrimination in the democratic society, and the decision by the Supreme Court highlighted it once again.

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that the case Brown v. Board of Education was significant for the history of the United States as it consequently led to the establishment of the democratic society. The question regarding equality and attitude towards racial groups was urgent that time and demanded a solution. The approved fourteenth amendment in the Loncher Era of the Supreme Court contributed to making the decision towards equality, tolerance, and democratic society.

Hall, D., & Feldmeier, J. (2012). Constitutional values: Governmental powers and individual freedoms (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Pope, T. (2013). Social contract theory in American jurisprudence: Too much liberty and too much authority . New York, NY: Routledge.

Tisdale, R. (2013). Brown V. Board of Education . New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group.

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IvyPanda . "Supreme Court Eras. Brown vs. Board of Education." February 26, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/supreme-court-eras-brown-v-board-of-education/.

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Home > Law > Faculty Scholarship > FAC_ARTICLES > 1041

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The international legacy of brown v. board of education.

Brian E. Ray , Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University Follow

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Publication date, publication title.

McGeorge Law Review

Brown v. Board of Education, racial segregation

The authors describe the international legacy of Brown v. Board of Education in two discrete but related parts. First, they survey the international and domestic political contexts of the decision, which other commentators have convincingly demonstrated played a prominent role in the debates surrounding legalized segregation and in the arguments before the Supreme Court in the case itself. Important in this section is the intense and widespread international attention that was paid both to the problem of race relations in the U.S. and the decision in Brown . This background sets up the conclusions the authors draw from their survey of international use of Brown in the second section: notwithstanding the relatively few actual citations to Brown, its importance as an example of social change through the legal process-and in the face of apparent majority opposition-has enabled Brown and the United States model of democracy generally to play a significant role in the development of human rights throughout the world.

Repository Citation

Ray, Brian E., "The International Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education" (2004). Law Faculty Articles and Essays . 1041. https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/fac_articles/1041

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