BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION

Brown vs. Board of Education

[Date of submission]



Brown v. Board of Education

Introduction

Origins

It all started when Linda Brown, the daughter of Oliver Brown had to walk almost a mile to a bus stop via railroad switching station. After that she waited for the school bus of black elementary school. To be more precise, waiting for the bus of the school where only African American children went. This sounds absurd simply because the white elementary school, which was located in Topeka, Kansas, was just a few blocks away from her home. The white elementary school was the one where only white students went. All these elements raised only one question upon people's mind that was racism.

Since racism was at its peak in the 1950's. This was a landmark in history where racism was recognized and the elements that led to this activity were uprooted. Upon hearing the incident Oliver Brown, immediately went to the white school for her daughter's admission, but she was never allowed in that school. Brown then went to McKinley Burnett, the chief of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was extremely curious to help the Browns, as it was waiting for this opportunity to segregation issue for a long time. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right complainant at the right time.” Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would prevent the segregation of Topeka's public schools. (Freddy, 2004)

Constitutional Convention and Civil Rights

Civil rights leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph fought for equal rights for African Americans long before the mid-1900s. But it is the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s that are viewed as the events that changed the landscape regarding race and racial discrimination in the United States.

In addition, while the lawyers and activists who fought for Brown viewed themselves as dissenters, the decision sparked formidable dissent and activism against the decision itself. The Brown decision overturned an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plessey v. Ferguson, in which the Court ruled by a vote of 7-1 that railroad companies that had separate cars for Black people and White people were within their rights as long as the railroad cars had equal facilities. While the Court acknowledged the Fourteenth Amendment, it ruled that “it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” Thus, the law of the land for 58 years was referred to as “separate but equal” and was used to justify separate schools for Black and White children. (Ely, 2004)

Impacts of the amendment and law suit

The Brown decision was the most powerful judicial act of educational reform in the United States that addressed race, ...