Brown Vs. Board of Education

Throughout the majority of the history of America, the nation has been deeply segregated concerning the equality between whites and blacks. It began with the idea of slavery which started near the beginning of our country’s birth and continued for a great deal of time afterwards. The idea of a segregated society however, was not fully established until the later portion of the nineteenth century. A culture such as this was causing irreparable damage on the African American community, and a change was bound to occur at some point. Although initially creating a backlash for the issue of black equality in America, the Brown vs. Board of Education case was one of the most significant milestones in the shaping and development of desegregation throughout the country.

In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the town of Topeka, Kansas. The plaintiffs in the case were thirteen members in this community who sued on behalf of their twenty children who were students in the area. During the fall of that year Oliver L. Brown, a worker and assistant pastor of his church, attempted to enroll his daughter Linda Brown, into one of the white schools in the area. His goal was to have his child go to a school that was closer to home, in order to make the commute less strenuous. In spite of his efforts, his daughter was denied acceptance into the school, and was instead directed to one of the other black schools in the city. The reason he gave for suing the board was for, “enforcing a Kansas law that permitted, but did not require, cities like Topeka to maintain separate school facilities for white and black children” (Brown, Landmark Decisions). All of the parents wanted the current policy dealing with segregation in schools, to be reversed in every aspect. This dilemma, sprouting mainly from past Supreme Court cases dealing with the issue, was now left up to the decision of the court (Kluger, Simple Justice).

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time was the very prestigious and well known, Justice Earl Warren. Prior to his career as the justice, Warren had been the Governor of the state of California for three separate terms of office. In addition, he was the decider in many other historic cases that were partly responsible for making America what it is today. These include such memorable cases as Gideon vs. Wainwright and Miranda vs. the state of Arizona. One of the Supreme Court cases that he was not involved in was the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, which took place in the year 1896. Similar to the Brown case, Plessy vs. Ferguson dealt with the issues of segregation in other types of public places. Homer Plessy, who was one eighth black and the remainder white, was ordered to sit in the colored section of a train car and when he refused, was arrested and then jailed. The seven to one decision made by the court, was against Plessy and they felt that the state of Louisiana was in no way violating any of the rights given to him by the fourteenth amendment. After this case was concluded, it helped to increase the segregation practices that had already been instituted in the some of the southern states. This helped to form the foundation of a separate but equal idea, which said that as long as facilities were of equal quality, classified segregation was entirely legal (Lieberman, The Evolving Constitution).