Brown VS Board of Education

Until May 17, 1954, when the decision was made for the Brown VS Board of Education case, schools had to be segregated by law. This was because of the Plessy VS Ferguson case in 1896 that forced facilities to be separate but equal on the terms of race.

There were many lawsuits filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, but the class-action suit filed by Oliver Brown against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas became the most famous. It was filed in 1951 when his daughter, Linda Brown, was stopped from entering Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

Initially, it was decided that segregated schools created “a sense of inferiority” for minorities, however, were still separate but equal. When the case progressed, a justice stated, “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

While this statement and the overall verdict criminalized segregation, it was not automatically successful, as racial tensions were still present. In fact, most attempts made by black children to attend school were only made possible by executive deployment of the National Guard.

This movement marked a milestone in the Civil Rights Movement and fueled subsequent acts like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Unfortunately, even today, there are struggles to end racial inequalities in the public school system, especially when comparing wealthier neighborhoods to disadvantaged neighborhoods.