Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated

The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that “separate but equal” has no place in education.

Linda Brown Smith, Ethel Louise Belton Brown, Harry Briggs, Jr., and Spottswood Bolling, Jr. during press conference at Hotel Americana, 1964

The US Supreme Court’s decision in the case known colloquially as Brown v. Board of Education found that the “[t]he ‘separate but equal ’ doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537, has no place in the field of public education.” The Plessy case, decided in 1896, had found that the segregation laws which created “separate but equal” accommodations for Black Americans, specific to transportation but applicable generally, were not a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Segregation in education had been challenged throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and rulings in a number coalesced to propel Brown to the level of the Supreme Court to address segregation in all public schools.

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Below is an annotation of the opinion, with relevant scholarship covering the legal, social and education history leading up to and after the decision. As always, the supporting research is free to read and download.

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Judgment, Brown v. Board of Education

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954) (USSC+)

Argued December 9, 1952

Reargued December 8, 1953

Decided May 17, 1954

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS*

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment —even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities , even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal.

(e) The “separate but equal” doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537, has no place in the field of public education.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.

In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537 . Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case , the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools.

The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not “equal” and cannot be made “equal,” and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented, the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court.

Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.

An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment’s history with respect to segregated schools is the status of public education at that time. In the South, the movement toward free common schools, supported by general taxation, had not yet taken hold . Education of white children was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences, as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states, and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education.

In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of “separate but equal” did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson , supra, involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education , 175 US 528 , and Gong Lum v. Rice , 275 US 78 , the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada , 305 US 337 ; Sipuel v. Oklahoma , 332 US 631; Sweatt v. Painter , 339 US 629; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 US 637 . In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter , supra, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education.

In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter , there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other “tangible” factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.

In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship . Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

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.

In Sweatt v. Painter , supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school.” In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: “…his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.” Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them 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 ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law , for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system .

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson , this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

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. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity . On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question—the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 15, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954.

It is so ordered.

* Together with No. 2, Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, argued December 9–10, 1952, reargued December 7–8, 1953; No. 4, Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued December 10, 1952, reargued December 7–8, 1953, and No. 10, Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al. , on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Delaware, argued December 11, 1952, reargued December 9, 1953.

[Transcript available from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education ]

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New Evidence about Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement

Uncovering the effects of school racial composition on achievement is difficult, because racial mixing in the schools is not an accident but instead represents a complex mixture of government and family choices. While the goals of the integration of schools legally inspired by Brown v. Board of Education are very broad, here we focus more narrowly on how school racial composition effects scholastic achievement. Our evaluation, made possible by rich panel data on the achievement of Texas students, disentangles racial composition effects from other aspects of school quality and from differences in student abilities and family background. The results show that a higher percentage of Black schoolmates has a strong adverse effect on achievement of Blacks and, moreover, that the effects are highly concentrated in the upper half of the ability distribution. In contrast, racial composition has a noticeably smaller effect on achievement of lower ability blacks, of whites, and of Hispanics -- strongly suggesting that the results are not a simple reflection of unmeasured school quality.

  • Acknowledgements and Disclosures

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

refer to caption

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

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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.

Brown v. Board: An American Legacy

Historical photo of an African American family outside of a house

We ain't asking for anything that belongs to those white folks. I just mean to get for that little black boy of mine everything that any other South Carolina boy gets. I don't care if he's as white as the drippings of snow. The Rev. J.W. Seals, Summerton, SC, 1953

It is, on its face, a story of separateness.

It is the story of two little girls walking through a railroad switchyard in 1950s Topeka, Kansas, lunch bags in hand, unable to attend a nearby white school, making their way to the black bus stop beyond the tracks.

And it is the larger story of countless other African-American children walking great distances, against great odds, to reach their own segregated schools as buses filled with white children passed them by.

But it is, at its heart, a story of togetherness, of courageously good-hearted and open-minded black and white people—and others—working together toward a constitutional ideal.

"When you look at Brown you are looking at a moment so powerful it is the equivalent of the Big Bang in our solar system," says historian and commentator Juan Williams. "It led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It led to sit-ins and bus rides and freedom marches. And even today, as we argue about affirmative action in colleges and graduate schools, the power of Brown continues to stir the nation."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the separate but equal doctrine in American public schools.

The 11-page decision—much shorter than other major decisions of the era, and written by Chief Justice Earl Warren in purposefully unemotional language—was firm and clear: "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

The decision was unanimous. Reaction was not. Newspaper editorials variously praised and condemned the decision. White Southerners vowed opposition. Predictions of ugly resistance came true.

Color lines, certainly, had already been crossed by 1954. Jackie Robinson, for example, had made history on the baseball field the previous decade.

But for those who resisted integration, watching a sport was very different from sending a child to school. Because opposition was fierce, those who fought for integration faced tremendous hardships. Often they lost jobs, were denied credit and were ostracized in white—and sometimes even black—society.

The half-century since Brown has been a series of gains and losses, from segregation to integration and on to a new kind of segregation. Other movements—feminism, the fights for other minority rights, LGBT rights, the rights of people with disabilities—were aided, bolstered and fueled by Brown . And while Brown focused on schools, it also helped in the fight for desegregation of everything from public golf courses to public buses.

On one hand, Brown remains the hallmark of the promise of equality for this nation. On the other, Brown's promise remains, if not broken, certainly unfulfilled.

The road to Brown

It's fitting that Linda Carol Brown and younger sister Terry Lynn had to walk along railroad tracks for their daily journey to school, fitting that so many other children determined to have an education journeyed such long paths to school. The route to Brown was similarly long and arduous, court cases linked together, steaming forward to a destination countless miles away.

The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund pulled the train. In the mid-20th century United States, the NAACP was the most powerful civil rights organization, with membership growing tenfold in the 1940s, to nearly half a million.

And Thurgood Marshall served as conductor, the lead NAACP attorney for Brown and the mastermind behind much of its strategy. Marshall would later become the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice.

Brown itself was made up of five separate but similar court cases in four states and the District of Columbia, representing tens of families:

  • Briggs v. Elliott in South Carolina;
  • Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County in Virginia;
  • Gebhart v. Belton (a collection of cases itself, sometimes cited as Belton v. Gebhart or Bulah v. Gebhart ) in Delaware;
  • Bolling v. Sharpe in the District of Columbia (which ended up with a separate court decision); and
  • The actual Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in Kansas.

These cases had been working their way through state and federal courts for several years. Details varied and strategies differed, but each case attacked the forced segregation of black students.

Other cases— Cumming v. Richmond (Ga.) Board of Education, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, Sweatt v. Painter, and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education —were precursors to Brown , earlier attempts at integration and equal rights. (See timeline.)

And two 19th-century Supreme Court cases had created the laws that Brown sought to overturn:

  • 1896's Plessy v. Ferguson, which opened the door to state-sanctioned racial discrimination across the South.
  • And 1857's Dred Scott v. Sanford, which ruled that black people, enslaved or free, were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Reacting to Brown : Hope and hatred

When the Brown decision was announced, the Chicago Defender, a long-standing African-American newspaper, printed this: "Neither the atom bomb nor the hydrogen bomb will ever be as meaningful to our democracy as the unanimous declaration of the Supreme Court that racial segregation violates the spirit and the letter of our Constitution."

While fear of reprisal kept many black people from celebrating publicly, the decision still inspired tremendous emotion. James T. Patterson's book, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy, describes one reaction:

Sara Lightfoot, a 10-year-old black girl, vividly recalled the moment that news of Brown reached her house. "Jubilation, optimism and hope filled my home," she wrote later. "Through a child's eye, I could see the veil of oppression lift from my parents' shoulders. It seemed they were standing taller. And for the first time in my life I saw tears in my father's eyes."

But not all African Americans celebrated. Some worried that desegregation would further alienate black people in white society; that it would lead to the elimination of jobs for black school teachers; that it would do little to eliminate the racism in people's hearts and minds.

Zora Neale Hurston, a noted African-American author, put it this way: "How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?"

Among white people, many in the North and West, unaffected by the ruling, still saw it as positive. Conversely, white southern leaders and southern newspapers loudly and angrily denounced the decision. 

Consider the May 18, 1954, editorial in the Jackson, Miss., Daily News :

Human blood may stain Southern soil in many places because of this decision, but the dark red stains of that blood will be on the marble steps of the United States Supreme Court building. White and Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation leads to mixed marriages and mixed marriages lead to the mongrelization of the human race.

Georgia Gov. Marvin Griffin said, "No matter how much the Supreme Court seeks to sugarcoat its bitter pill of tyranny, the people of Georgia and the South will not swallow it."

Such harsh words foreshadowed the difficulty of implementing Brown .

"With all deliberate speed"

Brown was actually decided in phases. After striking down Plessy and declaring segregation unconstitutional, the Warren Court handled the issue of implementation separately. Brown II , as it has come to be known, was handed down more than a year later, on May 31, 1955.

In that decision, the Supreme Court sent all cases back to lower courts, asking states to desegregate their schools "with all deliberate speed."

An earlier draft of the ruling had used the words "at the earliest practicable date," but that language was struck down, in part as an appeasement to the anticipated resistance of the South. Using the more open-ended "deliberate speed" wording, Brown set no deadlines and left much of the decision-making in the hands of local school officials.

From 1955 to 1960, federal judges would hear more than 200 school desegregation cases. Border states reached 70 percent integration within about two years. Southern states, from grade to graduate school, were hardly changed:

  • In 1956, Autherine Lucy, a black woman seeking admission to the University of Alabama, was called vile names and pelted with rotten eggs by angry white people. Officials excluded her from campus, then expelled her. The university remained all white until the early 1960s.  
  • In 1957, bloody riots erupted as nine black students attempted to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower, a reluctant player in the extended battle, eventually surrounded the school with 1,100 soldiers from the U.S. Army and the Arkansas National Guard. Troops stayed all year.  
  • In 1960 in New Orleans, armed marshals shielded 6-year-old Ruby Bridges as she passed an angry crowd of 150 white people who threw tomatoes and eggs.  
  • And by 1964 in Prince Edward County, Virginia—a full decade after Brown —not a single black child had been admitted to a white school. In fact, the county defiantly closed its public schools for five years rather than integrate them.

"Sleepwalking back to Plessy "

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally gave some teeth to Brown . That act, supported by the executive branch, empowered the federal government to cut funding to schools that continued to segregate their students and gave the U.S. Department of Justice authority to file lawsuits seeking desegregation of schools.

Protest of Brown v. Board

As Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote at the time, "There has been entirely too much deliberation and not enough speed in enforcing the constitutional rights which we held in Brown. "

But even then, integration was fought in a variety of ways. Using the fact that, legally speaking, Mexican Americans were considered "white," schools in Texas and other states created "integrated" schools of Mexican Americans and African Americans, leaving all-white schools unchanged.

It wasn't until 1971 that widespread integration began. That's when a North Carolina case— Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education —allowed school systems to bus students as a way of integrating schools in segregated neighborhoods. Busing remains a volatile issue, but this decision is the one that prompted the highest levels of integration.

The number of black students attending majority-white schools in the South rose from 2 percent in the mid-1960s to nearly 45 percent in the late 1980s, the peak of school integration.

But success brought other changes. The mid-1980s also saw the first lifting of federal court sanctions, allowing schools to return to racial segregation. By 1991, integration levels had returned to pre-1971 levels.

Gary Orfield of Harvard University's Civil Rights Project put it this way: "We are, in essence, sleepwalking back to Plessy. "

The 1970s through the 1990s also spotlighted new forms of segregation, fueled by a history of so-called "white flight" from cities to suburbs, particularly in the North and Midwest. By the opening of the 21st century, the nation's most segregated public schools were found not in the South but in Illinois, New York and New Jersey.

There, and in other areas across the country, black and Latino students live in segregated, urban neighborhoods and attend overcrowded, under-funded, low-achieving schools, while most of their white counterparts attend affluent, nearly all-white schools in suburban America.

Separate and unequal continues: More than 80 percent of black and Latino segregated schools are in high-poverty areas, compared with 5 percent of segregated white schools.

Today, the arguments are about affirmative action and the disparities created by the use of property taxes to fund schools. Just last year, the Supreme Court offered a split decision on affirmative action admissions to college, upholding race-based admissions at the University of Michigan's Law School but striking down a similar process used for Michigan's undergraduates.

The issues have changed, but the fundamental question remains: How equal are American educational opportunities?

So many things

In the end, Brown is as simple as equality and as complex as justice.

Brown is the courage of Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old girl in Farmville, Virginia, who in 1951 led a black student walkout of 450 young people, shaming adults into taking up the cause of integration. As one of the Brown lawyers explained at the time, "We didn't have the nerve to break their hearts."

It is the activism of Esther Brown, a white Jewish woman who, along with the NAACP, fought school segregation in several Kansas cities, becoming herself a target of white hatred.

It is the persistence of McKinley Burnett, the Topeka NAACP president who, well before the Brown case, tried to persuade the Topeka Board of Education to integrate its schools.

It is the hindsight of Kenneth Clark, a psychologist who testified in Brown about the harm done to black children by segregation. Forty years after Brown , Clark wrote that the United States "likely ... will never rid itself of racism and reach true integration. While I very much hope for the emergence of a revived civil rights movement with innovative programs and dedicated leaders, I am forced to recognize that my life has, in fact, been a series of glorious defeats."

It is all those children of color, in so many states, moving with determination and hope toward the promise of equal education.

And it is those two little girls in Topeka, walking on the packed earth of a railroad switchyard, reminding us all that education in this free land is less free for some children than it is for others, the journey longer, more fraught with pitfalls, then and now.

Photograph by Carl Iwasaki/Time-Life Pictures

Beyond Black and White

All five of Brown v. Board of Education's cases involved African-American plaintiffs. But the historical legacy and aftermath of Brown drew from a richer cultural and political spectrum.

There was 1927's Gong Lum v. Rice in Mississippi, in which a Chinese-American girl fought for the right to attend the white school rather than the black school. The Lum family made the case that the girl wasn't black. The court ruled she wasn't white, allowing school officials to categorize children as they saw fit.

In the 1940s—but still predating Brown —there was Mendez v. Westminster School District , when a Mexican-American family fought for and won the right to attend integrated schools in California.

The NAACP closely watched the California case, since its concerns mirrored those of the cases that would become Brown. Earl Warren, the man who would later write the Brown decision, was governor of California at the time.

The California case illustrated the layers of segregation and oppression present in the mid-20th century United States. The Mendez family had moved into the district in which their children faced discrimination because they were called on to oversee the farm of a Japanese-American family who had been interned during World War II.

Similar stories are found at the time of the Brown decision. In one school district in rural Texas in the mid-1950s, Mexican-American students were held in Spanish-language classrooms—even if they were able to speak English—in first and second grades before being integrated with white students.

Most Mexican-American students were kept in first grade for four years, followed by several years in second grade. Most students reached third grade at precisely the age they dropped out to go to work with their families in the fields.

In 1957, a court ruled the practice was "purposeful, intentional and unreasonably discriminatory" and ordered a new system for assigning students.

Brown , too, would be used to wage battles for inclusiveness on behalf of children with disabilities. At the time of Brown , nearly every state prohibited children with epilepsy from attending public school, even though medications were available to control seizures.

In praising Brown , Lillian Smith of Clayton, Georgia, wrote this in a 1954 letter to the New York Times : "All these children, some with real disabilities, others with the artificial disability of color, are affected by this great decision."

This article is a concise examination of school segregation, the Brown case and its relevance in the ongoing struggle for school equity. Build on this history using one or more of the following activities.

1. The Supreme Court concluded in its Brown decision that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Using the web or school library, research how the resources of segregated schools differed. Construct 3-D models of a white school and a school for children of color in the pre- Brown era.

2. Create songs, raps, poems or spoken word pieces about the legacy of Brown. Host a school assembly to showcase students' work.

3. Pretend it's May 17, 1954. Write the front-page headline and lead story for your local newspaper. Use poster board or multimedia to display students' stories—contrasted against the front page that actually ran in your community newspaper.

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The Papers of Justice Tom C. Clark, Civil Liberites and Civil Rights Cases of the U S Supreme Court

  • Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
  • Brown v. Board of Education I & II (1954, 1955)

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research paper on brown v board of education

Center for American History, UT Austin DI Number 01668 Hickman (R.C.) Photographic Archive, 1949-1961, 1969 Thurgood Marshall, A. Maceo Smith and other

While the decisions of the Supreme Court in  Sweatt v. Painter  and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education  led to the desegregation of graduate and professional schools in 1950, many black children continued to be denied admission to white elementary and high schools under state laws either permitting or requiring segregation.

In the fall of 1950, Reverend Oliver Brown attempted to enroll his eight-year-old daughter, Linda, at Sumner Elementary School. Sumner was the elementary school nearest their home in Topeka, Kansas. The principal refused to enroll Linda, who attended all-black Monroe Elementary School, because Sumner Elementary was open only to white children. With the assistance of the NAACP, Reverend Brown filed suit against the Board of Education.

In Clarendon County, South Carolina, schools for black children were funded at only a quarter of the level of schools for white children. The school board did not provide funds for supplies, building maintenance or buses to black schools. Reverend Joseph Albert DeLaine began circulating a petition among the black community requesting the school board provide buses. After the school board refused to provide a bus, parent Harry Briggs filed suit against Roderick W. Elliot, chairman of the school district, in a case known as Briggs v. Elliot.

In Prince Edward County, Virginia, all-black Moton High School was severely underfunded and overcrowded. Barbara Johns, a sixteen-year-old Moton junior, was a member of the school chorus, drama group, New Homemakers of America and student council. In the fall of 1950, she convinced the student council to ask the school board for better facilities for black students. The school board failed to respond, and Johns and the student council organized a strike. For the next two weeks, students picketed outside the school or stayed at their desks with their books closed. The student council contacted the NAACP to request their assistance to pursue legal action. The suit Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was brought on behalf of 117 Moton students and argued that school segregation in Virginia should be ended.

In Wilmington, Delaware, black high school students were bused to Howard High School, located in a seedy section of downtown. Ethel Belton and her children lived in suburban Claymont, near the new Claymont High School, but her children took a 50 minute bus ride each way to attend Howard. After her children were denied admission at Claymont, Ethel Belton filed suit against the individual members of the school board in a case known as Belton v. Gebhart.

In Washington, D.C., black schools were severely overcrowded, often running double and triple schedules in order to accommodate the students, whereas white schools were half empty as a result of white flight to the suburbs. In September 1950, Gardner Bishop, a local barber and activist, led a group of 11 children and their parents to all-white John Philip Sousa Junior High in an attempt to enroll the children. After the children were denied enrollment, suit was filed against C. Melvin Sharpe, president of the board of education, in a case known as Bolling v. Sharpe.

After being denied the relief requested by various federal district courts, these cases reached the United States Supreme Court. The Court consolidated the cases of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kan., Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va., and Gebhardt v. Belton. In these cases, the arguments focused on whether the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprived black children of equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Since Bolling v. Sharpe dealt with the District of Columbia rather than a state, the argument in that case focused on whether segregation of the public schools of Washington D.C. violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

In December 1952, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in these cases. In an unusual move, the Court requested time for additional oral arguments, which were held in December 1953. In May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decisions of the Court in both Brown and Bolling. In Brown, the Court found that segregation in public education had a detrimental effect on minority children because it was interpreted as a sign of inferiority. The long-held doctrine that separate facilities were permissible provided they were equal was rejected. This unanimous opinion sounded the death-knell for all forms of state-maintained racial separation.

In Bolling, the Court found that racial discrimination in the Washington, D.C. public schools denied blacks due process of law as protected by the Fifth Amendment. Due to the legal peculiarities of the District of Columbia, Chief Justice Warren noted that the Fifth Amendment did not contain an equal protection clause while the Fourteenth Amendment, which was the basis of the decision in Brown, did contain one. Lacking an equal protection standard on which to base the invalidation of the District's segregation, Warren relied on the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of "liberty" to find the segregation of the Washington D.C. schools unconstitutional.

In May 1955, the Supreme Court issued an enforcement decree applicable to both Brown and Bolling, commonly known as Brown II. The Court held that the problems identified in Brown and Bolling required varied local solutions. Chief Justice Warren conferred responsibility on local school authorities and the courts which originally heard school segregation cases. They were to implement the principles which the Supreme Court embraced in the Brown decision. Warren urged localities to act on the new principles promptly and to move toward full compliance with them "with all deliberate speed."

View Cases:

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) ​

Bolling v. Sharp, 347 U.S. 497 (1954)

Brown II, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)

  • Docket Sheet
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  • About Brown v. Board of Education Brown Foundation
  • Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand" Library of Congress
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  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Brown v Topeka Board of Ed. Famous Trials, by Professor Douglas O. Linder
  • Case Profile: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka University of Michigan Law School, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
  • Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Education National Archives more... less... Biographies of Key Figures Brown v. Board of Education Timeline Order of Argument in the Case, Brown v. Board of Education
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  • Brown v. Board of Education C-SPAN, Landmark Cases: 12 Historic Supreme Court Decisions
  • Looking Back: Brown v. Board of Education National Public Radio

research paper on brown v board of education

Journal Articles

  • "Brown, Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement" by Michael J. Klarman Virginia Law Review 80, no. 1 (1994): 7–150. more... less... Link is to HeinOnline (login required). Also available in print at the Tarlton Law Library .
  • "Brown II: A Case of Missed Opportunity?" by Trina Jones Law & Inequality 24, no. 1 (2006): 9–30.
  • "Brown II: Ordinary Remedies for Extraordinary Wrongs" by James E. Pfander Law & Inequality 24, no. 1 (2006): 47–80.
  • "Brown v. Board of Education: A Selected Annotated Bibliography" by William H. Manz Law Library Journal 96, no. 2 (2004): 245–266.
  • "Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in Constitutional Struggles Over Brown" by Reva B. Siegel Harvard Law Review 117, no. 5 (2004): 1470–1547.
  • "Supreme Court Law Clerks' Recollections of Brown v. Board of Education" by John David Fassett et al. St. John's Law Review 78, no. 3 (2004): 515–567.
  • "Supreme Court Law Clerks' Recollections of Brown v. Board of Education II" by Gordon B. Davidson, Daniel J. Meador, Earl E. Pollock, and E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. St. John's Law Review 79, no. 3 (2005): 823–885.
  • "Tangled Up in Brown" by Allan Ides Howard Law Journal 47, no. 1 (2004): 3–28. more... less... Link is to HeinOnline (login required). Also available in print at the Tarlton Law Library .
  • "Was Brown's Declaration of Per Se Invalidity Really Out of the Blue? The Evolving 'Separate But Equal' Education Jurisprudence from Cumming to Brown" by Mark Strasser Howard Law Journal 47, no. 3 (2004): 769–794. more... less... Link is to HeinOnline (login required). Also available in print at the Tarlton Law Library .
  • "What Really Happened in Brown v. Board of Education" by Mark Tushnet and Katya Lezin Columbia Law Review 91, no. 8 (1991): 1867–1930. more... less... Link is to HeinOnline (login required). Also available in print at the Tarlton Law Library .
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The Constitution in American History

Brown vs. Board of Education Research Paper

Introduction, analysis and discussion, reference list.

The 20 th century saw the American education system faced with the issue of segregation, resulting in many students being denied the chance to attend schools of their choice on the basis of their race. During this time, schools adopted structured curricula that were not student-centered.

With time, however, the American education system underwent a major transformation process. Today, the American educational curricula are not only student-centered, but also inclusive. In addition, different policies have also been passed in support of an inclusive education system. The passing of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) 2001 is also part of the educational reforms that were envisaged in the American education system. The policy was part of educational initiatives aimed at promoting education in the United States.

The campaign has given all students equal educational opportunities regardless of their socio-cultural, economic, or racial backgrounds. However, high cost of education and income discrepancies among the Americans of diverse socio-economic backgrounds have been the major setbacks in ensuring that education for all is realized. The current research paper examines the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case as a major turning point for the education system in the U.S.

The objective of the research paper is to develop a vision of education for the future based on past educational theories, trends and practices. The premise of the study is that school and educational systems have been undergoing progressive transformation.

The decision made by the Supreme Court as regard the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case is of importance to the American educational system. In addition, it also challenged the Plessy v. Ferguson , bringing to end segregation in the school system (Miller, 2004).

Previously, separate schools were set for Whites and Blacks (Cozzens, 1998). To encourage equality in school facilities (libraries and offices) and equal pay, civil rights activists and other human rights groups in America fought endlessly for change. In other words, the struggle for education for all started a long time ago and was part of civil rights movement in the U.S.

In the case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas , the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools posed a detrimental effect on colored students (Miller, 2004). In addition, Black students were denied an equal chance to benefit from the same educational system as their White counterparts. Consequently, Black students developed an inferiority complex, thereby affecting their learning capabilities (Cozzen, 1998).

The ruling further stated that segregation in schools had the capacity to retard the mental and educational development of Black students (Miller, 2004). This is because it was thought to deprive the students some of major benefits enjoyed in racially integrated schools. As such, there was need to implement an integrated school system. Following this ruling, students from minority races could now be admitted to public schools hitherto regarded as a preserve for the Whites.

Many people credited and applauded the ruling of the Supreme Court on the Brown case for the change it brought to the education system. Others saw the decision as a turning point for the schools admission system (Miller, 2004). For instance, minority students who had been denied places on White public schools could easily get admitted.

In addition, the Supreme Court ruling made the Plessy v. Ferguson interpretation and ruling invalid. The case allowed for the protection of Minorities as required in the Fourteenth Amendment on Equal Protection Clause. This meant that Black students could be admitted in schools which were previously the preserve of White students.

The ruling by the Supreme Court on this case was a major milestone in the U.S. education systems as schools became disintegrated allowing students of mixed races to attend same learning institutions. However, despite the recommendation to integrate minority students with white students, there still lacked a framework which specified an implementation plan for the proposed changes (Cozzens, 1998). However, this was a historical step towards full disintegration of public schools (Cozzens, 1998).

Drawing from the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case, it is important to note that full disintegration of public schools was a progressive act in the education system. According to Kremer (2005), progressive education was initiated in the 20 th century as part of educational reforms in public schools.

Furthermore, it was a philosophy that focused on how students should be taught in schools. It was “a response to the traditional way of teaching kids, which was very structured, dry, and authoritarian” (Kremer, 2004, p.32-33). As a result, progressive education focused on the adoption of humanistic values and democratic behaviors, as opposed to the traditional authoritative strategy.

Progressivism as an educational theory is based on the premise that schools should be child centered. The progressive model of education has been described as “new education” which advocates for the combination of education and actual experience (Kumar, 2004). The underlying philosophy in progressive model of education has been to change how schools teach students.

The education system has undergone tremendous transformation through the adoption of the progressivism philosophy as progressive educators have helped students reach conscientization. According to Kumar (2004), conscientization involves the breaking of prevailing mythologies in education to create new degrees of awareness, especially awareness of oppression. In other words, the progressive model focuses on continuity in the education system.

Just like in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case ruling, progressivism called for constant change in school system rather than being static. Currently, the education system has adopted the K-12 education system in public schools which encourages compulsory education for all. Moreover, there is an emerging trend in the schools system in regard to how students learn and how schools teach (Wilen-Daugenti & McKee, 2008).

For example, compared to the 20 th century, the current education process has now evolved into collaborative learning. Different stakeholders have come on board to transform the education system through research and students placements. The emerging trends are a sign that segregation in school system has continued to decline even as the number of minorities continues to increase (Stevenson, 2010).

The U.S education system requires visionary leaders who can implement policies which allow for continuity in the system. My vision of the purpose and structure of schools in the future entails embracing a progressive model which is student-centered. In other words, schools should adopt a curriculum which embraces both education and actual experience.

Although the current K-12 education system faces some challenges, the incorporation of NCLB has led to improvement in the education system. Nonetheless, a visionary curriculum which embraces the global changes to make our students excel academically, gain the necessary skills and knowledge which would make them competitive at international markets is necessary.

The future structure of schools has to adopt curricula and policies that allow for change, fosters the need for collaboration in different sectors, and integrates different learning styles and approaches.

As advocated for by the progressive model of education, the structure should be accommodating to all students, including those who are physically challenged. In other words, education systems have to be more accommodative and progressive in order to give room for new changes and ideas. They should not rely on structured and authoritarian curriculum.

The education and schools systems continue to undergo transformation. The decision of the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case was a major turning point in the schools systems as it encouraged disintegration of public schools. In addition, a progressive model of education has played a major role in schools and education system as it allows child centered form of education. As part of transformation in education, progressivism philosophy focuses on education and experience.

The model tries to do away with traditional ways of teaching and instead adopt new trend in the education system. Such new trends in the education system have shown progressivism philosophy and what the plaintiffs fought for in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case.

School systems have changed and minority students are no longer denied the chance to join public schools. My vision of the education purpose and structure of schools in the future should be based on the progressive model and education offered should be continuous and not static.

Cozzens, L. (1998). Brown v. Board of Education . Web.

Kremer, R. (2005). Progressive education: One parents journey. Education/Ideology , 6(1), 32-42.

Kumar, A. (2004). Philosophical trends, theories of educational intervention and adult learning . Web.

Miller, J. (2004). Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: Challenging school segregation in the Supreme Court . New York, NY: PowerKids Press.

Stevenson, K. R. (2010). Educational trends shaping school planning, design, construction, funding and operations . Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Building Sciences.

Wilen-Daugenti, T., & McKee, A. G. R. (2008). 21st century trends for higher education: Top trends, 2008–2009. California: Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group.

  • Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Brown vs. Board of Education. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brown-vs-board-of-education/

"Brown vs. Board of Education." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/brown-vs-board-of-education/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Brown vs. Board of Education'. 28 October.

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How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: September 29, 2023 | Original: March 27, 2018

Nettie Hunt explaining to her daughter Nickie the meaning of the high court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Dolls are for kids. So why were they in front of the most esteemed judges in the United States?

As they deliberated on Brown v. Board of Education , the landmark 1954 case that eventually overturned “separate-but-equal” segregation in the United States, the Supreme Court Justices contemplated oral arguments and pored over case transcripts. But they also considered baby dolls—unexpected weapons in the plaintiffs’ fight against racial discrimination.

The dolls were part of a group of groundbreaking psychological experiments performed by Mamie and Kenneth Clark, a husband-and-wife team of African American psychologists who devoted their life’s work to understanding and helping heal children’s racial biases. During the “doll tests,” as they’re now known, a majority of African American children showed a preference for dolls with white skin instead of Black ones—a consequence, the Clarks argued, of the pernicious effects of segregation.

The Clarks’ work, and their testimony in the underlying cases that became Brown v. Board of Education , helped the Supreme Court justices and the nation understand some of the lingering effects of segregation on the very children it affected most.

For the Clarks, the results showed the devastating effects of life in a society that was intolerant of African-Americans. Their experiment , which involved white- and brown-skinned dolls, was deceptively simple. (In a reflection of the racial biases of the time, the Clarks had to paint a white baby doll brown for the tests, since African American dolls were not yet manufactured.) The children were asked to identify the diapered dolls in a number of ways: the one they wanted to play with, the one that looked “white,” “colored,” or “Negro,” the one that was “good” or “bad.” Finally, they were asked to identify the doll that looked most like them.

The dolls used in Kenneth and Mamie Clark's studies at their Northside Center for Child Development, founded in 1946. (Credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Kate Clark Harris in memory of her parents Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in cooperation with the Northside Center for Child Development)

All of the children tested were Black, and all but one group attended segregated schools. Most of the children preferred the white doll to the African American one. Some of the children would cry and run out of the room when asked to identify which doll looked like them. These results upset the Clarks so much that they delayed publishing their conclusions.

Mamie Clark had connections to the growing legal struggle to overturn segregation—she had worked in the office of one of the lawyers who helped lay the foundation for Brown v. Board of Education. When the NAACP learned of the Clarks’ work, they asked them to participate in a case that would later be rolled into the class-action case that went to the Supreme Court. So Kenneth Clark headed to Clarendon County, South Carolina, to replicate his test with Black children there. It was a terrifying experience, he recalled later, especially when his NAACP host was threatened in his presence. 

“But we had to test those children,” he recalled . “These children saw themselves as inferior and they accepted the inferiority as part of reality.”

Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark shot for Vogue in 1968. (Credit: Cecil Beaton/Condé Nast via Getty Images)

Thurgood Marshall was eager to use the Clarks’ work in the bigger class-action case that would become Brown v. Board of Education , but not everyone was convinced. Attorney Spotswood Robinson  told an observer that it was “crazy and insulting to persuade a court of law with examples of crying children and dolls,” writes historian Martha Minow.

But the court didn’t think so. Kenneth Clark testified at three of the trials and helped write a summary of all five trials’ social science testimony that was used in the Supreme Court case. He told judges and juries that African American children’s preference for white dolls represented psychological damage that was reinforced by segregation.

“My opinion is that a fundamental effect of segregation is basic confusion in the individuals and their concepts about themselves conflicting in their self images,” he told the jury in the Briggs case. The sense of inferiority caused by segregation had real, lifelong consequences, he argued—consequences that started before children could even articulate any information about race.

Dr. Kenneth Clark, a New York psychologist and educator, at the North Side Center for Child Development he and his wife founded in Harlem. (Credit: AP Photo)

The Clarks’ work and testimony were part of a much broader case that combined five cases and covered nearly every aspect of school segregation—and some historians  argue that the doll tests played a relatively insignificant part in the court’s decision. But echoes of the Clarks’ results ring through the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court justices.

“To separate [Black 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 ever to be undone,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren in the opinion. The Clarks’ work had helped strike down segregation in the United States.

Today, one of the Black dolls is on  display at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Kansas, and integration is the law of the land. But the racial biases the couple documented in the 1930s and 1940s still exist. In 2010, CNN  commissioned an updated version of the study using cartoon depictions of children and a color bar that showed a range of skin tones—and found results that were strikingly similar to those shown by the Clarks.

In the new test, child development researcher Margaret Beale Spencer tested 133 kids from schools with different racial and income mixes. This time, the studies looked at white children, too. And though Black children seemed to hold more positive views toward Black dolls, white children maintained an intense bias toward whiteness.

“We are still living in a society where dark things are devalued and white things are valued,” Spencer  told CNN. Jim Crow segregation may no longer exist in the United States, but racial bias is alive and well.

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Law & Crime

Denied 'rightful place in history': Supreme Court refuses to rename Brown v. Board of Education after family of first school desegregation case filed

M ain: Nathaniel Briggs discusses his petition to the Supreme Court to change the name of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to Briggs v. Elliott (Screengrab via YouTube/WLTX). Inset: the justices of the United States Supreme Court are shown. (Alex Wong/Getty images).

The United States Supreme Court declined to even consider correcting a clerical error that descendants of civil rights activists say resulted in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka being known by the wrong case name for nearly seven decades. According to the family involved, an “inadvertent clerical misstep” has deprived them of “their rightful place in history in spite of the great physical, emotional, and financial risks” taken by their loved ones.

During the early 1950s, five cases challenging the constitutionality of state-sponsored racial segregation in schools reached the Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.), Bolling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel. The cases arose from different school districts and had different underlying facts, but focused the same central legal issue.

In 1952, the Supreme Court consolidated all five cases under the name Brown v. Board of Education. Renowned civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who went on to become the first African American Supreme Court justice, argued the cases on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The court’s 1954 ruling — that “ separate but equal ” facilities for Black people and white people are inherently unequal and therefore violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — became one of the most well-known precedents in legal history.

Nathaniel Briggs, the son of Harry and Eliza Briggs of the Briggs v. Elliott case, said in a November 2023 filing that the case should never have been known as “Brown,” and that notoriety connected with the momentous civil rights victory should have belonged to their family. Without a correction, the Briggs family’s role in Southern school desegregation would continue as little more than a footnote to history, they argued.

The signature lines from the case that came to be known as Briggs v. Elliott is shown with Henry and Eliza Briggs as the top two plaintiffs (screengrab via YouTube/WLTX).

Attorney Thomas Mullikin, who represented Nathaniel Briggs and his five children in their 2023 filing, told press at the time that Briggs v. Elliott had actually been the first case filed and deserved the name recognition instead of the Brown case.

“Being first in life sometimes does matter,” Mullikin quoted from his clients’ petition.

“These petitioners stood courageously for a matter of great importance only to find themselves in harm’s way and their place in history discarded,” argued the petitioners in their 2023 petition to the justices.

The relative timing of the various cases is a somewhat complicated matter. The Briggs plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in 1951 in the Eastern District of South Carolina that challenged segregated school bus transportation. A three-judge panel granted an injunction to equalize educational facilities in the county and ordered it to desegregate within six months. However, it denied an injunction abolishing segregation altogether on the grounds that there was no legal precedent for such a decision. The Briggs petitioners appealed the denial and while that appeal was pending, a district court in Kansas decided Brown v. Board of Education.

Over the next three years, the various desegregation cases were appealed, re-heard, and re-appealed several times. Briggs was the first of the cases appealed to the Supreme Court and according to the current Briggs petitioners, it was the panel’s decision in the Briggs case that became the ultimate basis for the Court’s decision in what became known as Brown v. Board of Education.

The current petitioners said that at the time, the court clerk incorrectly docketed Brown before Briggs — a simple error that had the dramatic result of relegating the courageous Briggs plaintiffs to being simply “a companion case” to Brown that thereafter “faded into relative anonymity.” They urged the Supreme Court to correct the record, recognize the Briggs family for their great sacrifice, and put an end to the “misappropriat[ion] of their rightful place in history.”

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the current Briggs petitioners gave context for what it meant for their family members to become civil rights plaintiffs in the segregated South :

In the sweltering heat of segregation in the South, families assembled to sign a petition challenging the egregiously unfair education system. For some, signing was tantamount to a death sentence. This valiant act would strike a match that would lead the civil rights movement across the country and cost these heroic families their physical, emotional, and economic security.

Those petitioners “faced unimaginable physical and financial terror,” and risked “horrible deaths” and “unspeakable emotional and physical threats,” the petition continued. Still, the courageous petitioners “stood for righteous relief in the presence of bitter hatred” that cost them dearly.

“To subordinate these courageous Americans is to deny the very significance of our jurisprudence as the fair and blind system that provides a path for meaningful redress of inequities rather than through less legitimate means,” read the brief. “Being first sometimes matters.”

The Briggs family also argued that using the caption from the Kansas case was especially unfair given the context of the two locales.

“Unlike Briggs, which arose in the deep south, Brown was a case out of Topeka, Kansas,” they explained. Black schools in segregated South Carolina at the time were not only “dilapidated, overcrowded, and underfunded” to a greater degree than their counterparts in Kansas, but the Topeka school district also began integrating its schools as early as 1941.

The justices were apparently unconvinced. The Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of mandamus Monday without comment.

The post Denied ‘rightful place in history’: Supreme Court refuses to rename Brown v. Board of Education after family of first school desegregation case filed first appeared on Law & Crime .

Denied 'rightful place in history': Supreme Court refuses to rename Brown v. Board of Education after family of first school desegregation case filed

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  1. Brown v. Board of Education and the Development of Special Education

    Brown v. Board of Education and the Development of Special Education - Mitchell Yell, 2022 , 1954). Although the details of the case are well known, the enormous effect the ruling had on the educational rights of students with disabilities is less well known.

  2. Brown v. Board of Education

    Haylee Orlowski. "Grayscale oughts: Reactions to Brown v. Board of Education." James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal 8, no. 1 (2021): 63-73. http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol8/iss1/7. is full issue is brought to you for free and open access by JMU Scholarly Commons.

  3. Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated

    Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that "separate but equal" has no place in education. Linda Brown Smith, Ethel Louise Belton Brown, Harry Briggs, Jr., and Spottswood Bolling, Jr. during press conference at Hotel Americana, 1964

  4. The Impact of Brown v. Board of Education on Student Learning in Public

    This article discusses three aspects of Brown v. Board of Education. The first section offers a brief judicial history of desegregation in American public schools. ... SUBMIT PAPER. International Journal of Educational Reform. Journal indexing and metrics ... former public school building and central office administrator and associate ...

  5. Introduction

    Brown v. Board of Education: A Resource Guide In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court legally ended racial segregation in public schools, overruling the "separate but equal" principle set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson. This guide provides access to digital materials, websites and print resources. Digital Collections Have a question? Need assistance? Use our

  6. Brown v. Board of Education and the Development of Special Education

    Abstract. May 2020 was the 66th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In this case, perhaps the most important ruling of the 20th century, the Supreme Court ruled that the racial segregation of Black children in public schools was unconstitutional. In addition, the ruling in Brown v.

  7. Brown v. Board of Education

    Black History Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education By: History.com Editors Updated: January 19, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009 copy page link Getty Images Brown v....

  8. New Evidence about Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of

    New Evidence about Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin Working Paper 8741 DOI 10.3386/w8741 Issue Date January 2002

  9. Originalism and Brown v. Board of Education

    A three quarters consensus about access to a desegregated education which existed in 1868 thus had vanished by 1954. We therefore suggest that Brown v. Board of Education finds more support in State constitutional law from 1868 than it does from State constitutional law in 1954. Contrary to the received understanding, Brown v.

  10. The Jurisprudential Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

    Board of Education North Dakota Law Review, Vol. 81, p. 115, 2005 University of Memphis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 13 30 Pages Posted: 6 Jul 2010 Kevin H. Smith University of Memphis - Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law Date Written: 2005 Abstract That Brown v.

  11. PDF Culture and Conversation: Rethinking Brown v. Board of Education a

    The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision was a significant change in social justice and human rights. There is ongoing debate about public education not as a private commodity but as a public good that must be made available on equal terms. Recently, schools are entering an era of second-generation segregation.

  12. 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.

  13. Fifty Years On: Brown v. Board of Education and American Psychology

    Special issue of the APA journal American Psychologist, Vol. 59, No. 6, September 2004. Includes articles about the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, specifically the scientific attacks on the decision; the effects of segregation and consequences of desegregation; intractable self-fulfilling prophecies; social science research; and increasing the number of African American ...

  14. Brown Vs. Board of Education: Law or Politics?

    Board of Education, based on the conference notes, with the goal of explaining why they found the case so hard. (At the first conference discussion, in December 1952, it was not obvious whether a majority existed to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson). I argue that for several justices, most notably Frankfurter and Jackson, Brown presented a conflict ...

  15. PDF Originalism and Brown v Board of Education

    United States Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Educa-tion.3 The legendary Brown opinion eviscerated the "separate but equal" doctrine in the context of public school education.4 In the nearly sixty years since Brown was decided, there have been many academic debates about the

  16. The Jurisprudential Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

    This chapter is an updated version of a paper presented at a university research workshop sponsored by The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change in October 2003 and at a symposium sponsored by The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change in ... 2. James L. Hunt, Brown v. Board of Education After Fifty Years: Context and Synopsis ...

  17. Brown v. Board: An American Legacy

    Beyond Black and White. All five of Brown v.Board of Education's cases involved African-American plaintiffs. But the historical legacy and aftermath of Brown drew from a richer cultural and political spectrum.. There was 1927's Gong Lum v.Rice in Mississippi, in which a Chinese-American girl fought for the right to attend the white school rather than the black school.

  18. Brown v. Board of Education: A Resource Guide

    An article by Professor Gary Orfield and research associate Chungmei Lee, considers changes in the country and in the districts directly affected by Brown. ... In the landmark desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education, the court said "separate" was inherently unequal. In a series of stories, NPR explores the high court's decision and ...

  19. Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), [1] was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.

  20. Brown v. Board of Education I & II (1954, 1955)

    Brown v. Board of Education I & II (1954, 1955) - The Papers of Justice Tom C. Clark - Tarlton Law Library at Tarlton Law Library Case Summaries Center for American History, UT Austin DI Number 01668 Hickman (R.C.) Photographic Archive, 1949-1961, 1969 Thurgood Marshall, A. Maceo Smith and other While the decisions of the Supreme Court in Sweatt v.

  21. 82.03.06: From Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education: The

    Week 4: Brown V. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas During this week we will study the Brown decision of 1954 and the reaction of a group of dissenting Southern congressmen. In this decision the Supreme Court concluded that in the field of education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unacceptable.

  22. Brown vs. Board of Education

    The current research paper examines the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case as a major turning point for the education system in the U.S. The objective of the research paper is to develop a vision of education for the future based on past educational theories, trends and practices.

  23. How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education The dolls were part of a group of groundbreaking psychological experiments performed by Mamie and Kenneth Clark, a husband-and-wife team of African American...

  24. Denied 'rightful place in history': Supreme Court refuses to ...

    The Briggs petitioners appealed the denial and while that appeal was pending, a district court in Kansas decided Brown v. Board of Education. Over the next three years, the various desegregation ...