Brown vs. Board of Education: Its Impact on Education and Subsequent Civil Rights Laws

RULE: The court concluded that the segregation of African American school children “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 Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern

Lawyers for Brown v. Board were sent from the NAACP. The NAACP was created in 1909 and stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Its mission is to protect the educational, social and economic rights minorities throughout the United States. One way the NAACP fought for equality was to supply lawyers for those whose rights were violated. (Benoit, 17-19)

Sixty-two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. The decision from the Plessy v. Ferguson case was lawfully denounced by the Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown case, which was initiated by the members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), served as a stimulus for challenging segregation in all areas of society, especially in public educational institutions. Among the support for the desegregation in school systems, there was a young yet compelling voice who was heard by numerous ears in the rural city in Farmville, Alabama. The virtuous and determined Barbara Johns, who was only a high school student then led her tiny, hovel-like school’s student body and the Farmville community to file a lawsuit in the hope of terminating the inequality in regards to the educational system.

The book “Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents” is Waldo E. Martin’s observation on not just the landmark case of Brown v. Board but also the institutionalized racism that was overcome to get there. It also documents other cases that Brown v. Board built upon to get the decision that challenged “separate but equal”. In this text Martin gives a glimpse into not just what the court order did from a legislative standpoint, but from a human standpoint, what happened to the people, community, and society in general both prior and in the wake of the of this monumental decision.

The arguments against segregation were presented by Thurgood Marshall, James Narbit Jr. and George Hayes. The lawyers claimed Separate but Equal Doctrine was violated and that Plessy was unconstitutional in the first place, as it violated the right of equal protection. Also, psychological

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case that was decided by the Supreme Court of America in 1954. It is a case that is believed to have brought to an end decades of increasing racial segregation that was experienced in America’s public schools. The landmark decision of this case was resolved from six separate cases that originated from four states. The Supreme Court is believed to have preferred rearguments in the case because of its preference for presentation of briefs. The briefs were to be heard from both sides of the case, with the focus being on five fundamental questions. The questions focused on the attorneys’ opinions about whether Congress viewed segregation in public schools when it ratified the 14th amendment (Benoit, 2013). Changes were then made to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Board of Education(1954) case were Linda Brown, Oliver Brown, Robert Carter, Harold Fatzer, Jack Greenberg, Thurgood Marshall, Frank D. Reeves, Charles Scott, and John Scott("Teaching with documents:," ). Linda lived not to far from a local African American school, but her father had other plans for her and wanted her to go to an all white school so that she could obtain a better education. She was denied the opportunity, so her father teamed up with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP). The 14th Amendment was violated when she was denied the right to go to the all white school(Collins). The 14th Amendment says that a states have to give citizen equal protection under all circumstances. Brown v. Board of Education was not immediately ruled. This case ruling was deliberately thought through and started the trend of desegregating schools years later. In the opinion they believed that segregating the white and black students was the right thing to do. Students would be “offended or intimidated” if they had peers of a different race. That was their way of saying that she should not be allowed to attend the all white school in her community. This case had no had no dissenting opinion. By the case beginning combined to other similar case it was brought to the Supreme Court. They overruled “separate but equal” because of the previous case Plessy v. Ferguson because it violate the 14th amendment("Brown v. Board," 2012).

The Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 is known for desegregating public schools in the U.S. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled “in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal had no place” (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954). It was the 1st major educational policy. The Court’s decision in Brown created not just desegregation strategies, but also instructional approaches such as Title I programs, magnet schools, and bilingual and multicultural education (Contreras & Valverde, 1994).

The Supreme Court ruled that education was extremely important and "the very foundation of good citizenship" 1. In addition, the Supreme Court said segregation implied inferiority in a child and made them not want to try as they wouldn't be recognized if they did 1. The court supported good education as being necessary to succeed in life. They ruled access to a good education was “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”

The 1960s had arrived, and equality in theory was being achieved, but it was still not being practiced in reality. As mentioned earlier in Sweatt v. Painter, various leaders such as Antonio Maceo Smith, Carter Wesley, and John J. Jones sued the University of Texas because of the denial of admission to Texas Law School. The Supreme Court ruled that Sweatt can attend the University of Texas, which meant integration. It was in ways similar to Brown v. Board where they ruled segregated schools were unequal, which led to being unconstitutional.

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) was a landmark Supreme Court Case that overturned the separate but equal ideology established by the earlier Supreme Court Case Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). The Plessy vs. Ferguson court case had a profound affect on the social interaction of racial groups in the late 19th to early 20th century causing tension between the two most prominent races within the United States, the Caucasians and the African Americans, which included Hispanics and other non-white citizens. The Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of Education eradicated legal racial discrimination given to the state government by the implementation of Jim Crow Law in schools and public settings leading to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement which fought to put an end to the white supremacy and give all people especially those of color equal rights and protection under a court of law and in the eyes of government.

The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case is a well-known case that went to the Incomparable Court for racial reasons with the leading body of training. The case was really the name given to five separate cases that were heard by the U.S. Preeminent Court concerning the issue of isolation in state funded schools. These cases were Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.), Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel Every case is distinctive; the principle issue in each was the lawfulness of state-supported isolation in government funded schools (Delinder, 2004).

The key holding of the Court was that, even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Earl Warren argued that the question of whether racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and thus beyond the scope of the separate but equal doctrine, could be answered only by considering “the effect of segregation itself on public education.” Citing the Supreme Court’s rulings in Sweat v. Painter (1950), and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (1950), which recognized “intangible” inequalities between African American and all-white schools at the graduate