 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1961)

  Questions to Consider  Cases before Brown  Events Leading up to the Lawsuit  School Segregation Map  Who are the Browns?  The Local Parents  The District Court Ruling  The Supreme Court Review  The Opinions of the Court  Decision of the Supreme Court  Impact of the Supreme Courts Decision What’s Ahead

  Does treating people equally mean treating them the same?  What would it mean to treat people equally in these situations? Questions to Consider

  Plessy v. Ferguson  “separate but equal”  Sweatt v Painter  State law schools had to admit qualified African American applicants, even if there was an existing black law school. Cases before Brown In line for registration at University of Texas in 1950

  For much of the sixty years before the Brown case, race relations related to schools in the U.S. had been dominated by racial segregation.  This policy had been permitted in 1896, by the United States Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that as long as the separate facilities for the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Events Leading up to The Lawsuit

  The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that this system of racial separation, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans.  Racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Events Leading up to The Lawsuit (cont)

 School Segregation Map

  As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in the closest neighborhood school in the fall of  They were each refused enrollment and directed to the segregated schools. The Local Parents

  In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, KS., on behalf of 13 Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children.  The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in twelve communities with populations over 15,000. Events Leading up to The Lawsuit (cont)

  The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant pastor at his local church, and an African American.  Brown's daughter Linda, a third grader, had to walk 6 blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house. The Browns

  The NAACP heard about this issue that the Brown family as well as other African American families with school aged children and the segregation they were facing  Thurgood Marshall was NAACP’s chief counsel and the director of it’s legal defense and educational fund. He was also brilliant African American attorney  When he heard about the Brown case, he took it on full force Thurgood Marshall

  The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had upheld a state law requiring "separate but equal" segregated facilities for blacks and whites in railway cars.  The three-judge District Court panel found that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect upon negro children, but denied relief on the grounds that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, and educational qualifications of teachers. The District Court Ruling

  The Court heard 5 NAACP sponsored cases at once.  The Brown case was important in that there was no dispute of rough inferiority of the segregated schools' physical plans, curriculum, or staff. The district court found substantial equality to all such factors.  Associate Justice, Felix Frankfurter used “re- argument” as a tactic to allow the Court to gather a unanimous consensus around a Brown opinion that would outlaw segregation! The Supreme Court Review

  Opinions were often divided among the Justices.  All but one Justice rejected segregation, but most questioned whether the Constitution gave the Court the power to order the end of it.  After Justice Warren was confirmed by Congress, he presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of African Americans. The Opinions of the Court

  Warren argued that the Court must overrule Plessy to maintain its rightfulness as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance.  He wanted the decision to be unanimous and got that when the final two protestors dropped their resistance.  Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the Court. Decision of the Supreme Court

  The Court decided that if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional.  The question was not whether the schools were "equal", which under Plessy they nominally should have been, but whether the doctrine of separate was constitutional.  The justices answered with a strong "no!”  Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned and Brown v. Board of Education was put into action. Impact of the Decision

  Brown v. Board of Education