DISCRIMATION

The Supreme Court Justices are appointed to make important decisions that involve major public concern. These people may have the most power in Congress and they make some of the most important decisions. These issues have political, civil, and social implications that can affect nearly every citizen of the United States. At the end of the Nineteenth Century, public opinion with concern to African American social equality was based on the color of one's skin. Bicke 45)

Blacks recognized that they were treated as an substandard race civilly and socially, while white people refused to even acknowledge blacks as human beings. Finally by the middle of the Twentieth Century, public opinion began to change. The agreement of separate but equal facilities based on the race resulting from the Plessy vs. Ferguson court decision no longer coincided with the overall public who for the first time began to recognize the discrimination that African Americans had experienced for so long. The idea that blacks were being neglected in the education system was finally being challenged because it was believed that the blacks were not receiving the educational opportunities that the white students were receiving. When the justices decided in 1953 that they could no longer use precedence as means for justification of inequalities presented to the African Americans, they concluded that the policy of separate but equal in relations to the education system was unconstitutional.  

The Supreme Court Justices were faced with a difficult task. It was up to them t decide if the policy of that time was unjust and discriminating against the black race, lowering their opportunity to be educated fairly. The public opinion had a important influence of the Supreme Court Justices decision. For the first time ever the Supreme Court saw that a substantial part of the public, demonstrated by the support of well accepted organizations, were calling for the end of discrimination and persecution of any group of minorities. The beginning of the fourteenth amendment states that "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; ...without due process of law..." The AVC, CIO, American Jewish Congress, American Federation of Teachers, Federation of Citizens' Association of D.C., and the Attorney General of the United States all agreed with the implications of the amendment in that no state can take the rights and liberties away from any individual without some sort of illegal action being taken. They called for the "artificial barriers to the free and natural association of peoples" to be brought to an end. There always are people who think they are better than others are, and who are trying to stop the advancement of the "inferior" peoples. One of the many court cases that have attempted to clear the human race of this corrupt way of life was named Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. While Brown v. Board mandated the end of segregation, prejudice and inequitable treatment still existed.

There always ...