I | INTRODUCTION |
Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka, landmark court case of 1954 in which
the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared that it was
unconstitutional to create separate schools for children on the basis of race.
The Brown ruling ranks as one of the most important Supreme Court
decisions of the 20th century. At the time of the decision, 17 southern states
and the District of Columbia required that all public schools be racially
segregated. A few northern and western states, including Kansas, left the issue
of segregation up to individual school districts. While most schools in Kansas
were integrated in 1954, those in Topeka were not.
II | SEGREGATION IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS |
Racial segregation in Southern public schools
dates to the 1860s. Before the American Civil War began in 1861, a number of
northern states also allowed or required segregated schools. However, throughout
the 19th century more than 95 percent of all blacks lived in the South, so
segregation there affected an overwhelming majority of America’s black
population. After the Civil War ended in 1865, and especially after the end of
Reconstruction in 1877, the South continued to segregate its schools and other
facilities. In the influential case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
the Supreme Court upheld the practice of segregation as long as the separate
facilities were “equal.” By 1900, the South was an entirely segregated
society.
In 1909 blacks and whites, led by W. E. B. Du
Bois and Arthur and Joel Spingarn, formed the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization dedicated to fighting for
racial equality and ending segregation. The NAACP challenged segregation through
its Legal Defense and Education Fund. From 1936 to 1950 the organization won a
number of cases leading to the desegregation of law schools and other
professional schools at segregated universities in Mississippi, Maryland,
Oklahoma, and Texas. The NAACP also had some success in forcing states to
equalize public school funding and to pay teachers in black schools at the same
rate as those in white schools. But throughout the South, public education for
blacks remained terribly inadequate.
III | LEGAL BACKGROUND OF BROWN |
Brown v. Board of Education
developed from several court cases involving school segregation. One of these
cases, based in Clarendon County, South Carolina, illustrated the unfairness of
segregation. In the 1949-1950 school year the average annual expenditure for
white students in Clarendon County totaled $179, but for blacks it was only $43.
The county’s 6531 black students attended school in 61 buildings valued at
$194,575. Many of the black schools lacked indoor plumbing or heating. The 2375
white students in the county attended school in 12 buildings worth $673,850.
These buildings had far superior facilities. Teachers in the black schools
received, on average, salaries that were one-third less than teachers in the
white schools. In addition, the county provided free school buses for whites but
failed to provide them for blacks. These circumstances led blacks in Clarendon
County to sue to create equal schools. In the case, Briggs v.
Elliott (1950), the United States district court in South Carolina
ordered equal funding of black schools but refused to mandate racial integration
of the schools.
Meanwhile, in Delaware, Virginia, Kansas, and
the District of Columbia, other cases emerged in the early 1950s that challenged
the legality of racially segregated schools. These cases were consolidated into
one case that became known as Brown v. Board of Education, named
after the lead plaintiff in the Kansas case, Oliver Brown.
Brown filed the suit against the Topeka
Board of Education on behalf of his daughter, Linda Brown. At age seven, Linda
Brown had to travel 1 hour and 20 minutes each morning to her segregated school
for black children. If her bus was on time, it dropped her off at school a half
hour before the school opened. Her bus stop was 6 blocks from her home, across a
hazardous railroad yard, and her school was 21 blocks from her home. Linda
Brown’s white friends attended a local school only 7 blocks from her home. They
did not have to ride a bus or face dangerous crossings to reach their school.
Oliver Brown argued that he wanted the same conditions for his daughter.
As chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense
and Education Fund, Thurgood Marshall planned the strategy for arguing
Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court. In
representing Linda Brown, he argued that the “equal protection clause” of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States requires that
states treat all citizens alike, regardless of race.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the
Brown case in 1952, but the justices did not decide the case that year.
Political divisions on the court ran deep, and the weak leadership of Chief
Justice Frederick Moore Vinson made a decisive ruling unlikely. The court
scheduled reargument in case for 1953, but Vinson died before arguments began.
His replacement, former California governor Earl Warren, was a skilled
politician who brought renewed authority to the court. Moreover, Warren believed
that segregation was fundamentally wrong. He successfully persuaded all of the
other eight justices to support a single opinion to end segregation. Warren
himself wrote the statement of the court’s decision, a document known as the
opinion of the court. Warren’s opinion explained the context of the law in
regards to the case, and detailed the reasons why the court reached its
judgment. It was his first major judicial opinion since joining the court that
year.
IV | THE OPINION |
The question before the court was simple: “Was
segregated education unconstitutional?” In the first half of his opinion, Warren
did not answer that question, and he gave no hint of the decision the court
would make. Reading the opinion in a courtroom packed with news reporters, he
simply explained the facts of the cases before him and the history of the
American doctrine of “separate but equal.” Warren acknowledged that the history
of the law regarding segregation was inconclusive, particularly as it was
addressed in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment,
ratified in 1868, requires that every state give equal protection under the law
to all persons, without regard to race. Warren reviewed the histories of the
14th Amendment, public education, and segregation. Then, speaking for a
unanimous court, Chief Justice Warren concluded, “In approaching this problem,
we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the amendment was adopted, or even to
1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public
education in the light of its full development and its present place in American
life throughout the Nation.”
Warren stressed the importance of education
to a democratic society, claiming that education is “perhaps the most important
function of state and local governments.” He emphasized that “It is the very
foundation of good citizenship.” Warren then restated the original question
before the court and provided an answer: “Does segregation of children in the
public schools solely on the basis of race . . . deprive the children of the
minority group of equal educational opportunity?” His answer: “We believe that
it does.”
Warren supported his analysis with references
to research performed by sociologists and psychologists on the damage to
children caused by mandatory segregation. Finally, Warren concluded by saying
that “in the field of education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no
place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This ringing
statement was followed by a single paragraph of carefully written conciliatory
language. Warren declared that segregation was unconstitutional, but that the
decision would have no immediate effect on the parties involved. Instead, the
court would hear reargument in the case the following year to consider how to
implement its decision.
In April 1955 the court heard 13 hours of
arguments over four days on how to end segregation in the public schools.
Ultimately, in what is popularly known as Brown II (1955), the Supreme
Court turned the implementation of desegregation over to the federal district
courts in the South. The district courts were ordered to desegregate schools
with “all deliberate speed,” an ambiguous phrase that allowed many Southern
judges to avoid desegregation for years. Linda Brown did not attend an
integrated school until 1955, when she had reached junior high school. None of
the children of the 20 plaintiffs in the Clarendon County case ever attended
integrated schools. Nevertheless, Brown helped launch the modern civil
rights movement and led to other court decisions that struck down all forms of
legalized racial discrimination. By having segregation in the schools declared
unconstitutional, civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall won one of the most
important victories of his life.
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