which lawyer tried brown vs board of education

Who was the plaintiff in Brown v . Board of Education?

Montgomery's husband, Oliver Brown, became the lead plaintiff in the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit after attempting to enroll their daughter, Linda Brown, in 1951 in the all-white Sumner...

What was the decision of Brown v . Board of Education?

On May 17, 1954, in a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional. The decision dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public schools and Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of African Americans, particularly in the South.

Who was Brown in Brown v Board?

OKLAHOMA CITY — You may think you know the story of Oliver Brown, the Black father in Topeka, Kan., who was the lead plaintiff in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education. You probably don’t.

What kind of lawyer handles lawsuits against schools?

They cover matters like educational standards, school district and school board authority, student attendance, discipline, and dress code requirements. An education lawyer advises school districts and school boards and represents them in disputes with students, teachers, and parents.

Who was the chief attorney for Brown v. Board of Education?

Board of Education of Topeka . Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs.

Who was the plaintiff in the Brown v. Board of Education case?

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

What states acted in accordance with the verdict?

While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it. In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957.

What was the first act of desegregation?

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

What was Jim Crow's law?

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites —known as “Jim Crow” laws —and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

When did Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka come to the Supreme Court?

When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka .

When was the Separate But Equal doctrine first ruled?

Separate But Equal Doctrine. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

Who was the lead attorney in the Brown v Board of Education case?

Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, was bundled with four related cases and a decision was rendered on May 17, 1954. Three lawyers, Thurgood Marshall (center), chief counsel for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and lead attorney on the Briggs case, with George E. C. Hayes (left) and James M. Nabrit (right), attorneys for the Bolling case, are shown standing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court congratulating each other after the Court’s decision declaring segregation unconstitutional.

When was Brown v. Board of Education?

Attorneys for Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954

Who were the judges in Brown v. Board of Education?

U.S. circuit judges (from left to right) Robert A. Katzmann, Damon J. Keith, and Sonia Sotomayor at a 2004 exhibit on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown v. Board of Education

What was the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka?

483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.

What did the Southerners view Brown as?

Many Southern white Americans viewed Brown as "a day of catastrophe —a Black Monday —a day something like Pearl Harbor ." In the face of entrenched Southern opposition, progress on integrating American schools moved slowly:

How many pages did the Brown II decision have?

However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II ( 349 U.S. 294 (1955)) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".

Why was the Board of Education of Topeka named after Oliver Brown?

The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. The lawyers, and the National Chapter of the NAACP, also felt that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by the U.S. Supreme Court Justices.

When did Brown II take place?

In 1955, the Supreme Court considered arguments by the schools requesting relief concerning the task of desegregation. In their decision, which became known as " Brown II " the court delegated the task of carrying out school desegregation to district courts with orders that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed," a phrase traceable to Francis Thompson 's poem, " The Hound of Heaven ."

When did the Brown ruling happen in North Carolina?

In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting Brown, but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954, the Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the Brown ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D. E. Hudgins Jr., a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to the actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such a progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation.

What did the Supreme Court decide in Brown v. Board of Education?

Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

What was the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board?

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board marked a shining moment in the NAACP’s decades-long campaign to combat school segregation. In declaring school segregation as unconstitutional, the Court overturned the longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine established nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In his opinion, Chief Justice Warren asserted public education was an essential right that deserved equal protection, stating unequivocally that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

What was Brown v Board II?

In a 1955 case known as Brown v. Board II, the Court gave much of the responsibility for the implementation of desegregation to local school authorities and lower courts, urging that the process proceed “with all deliberate speed.”.

What did the Brown verdict inspire?

The Brown verdict inspired Southern Blacks to defy restrictive and punitive Jim Crow laws, however, the ruling also galvanized Southern whites in defense of segregation—including the infamous standoff at a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

How long did Brown shut down schools?

In Prince Edward County, where one of the five class-action suits behind Brown was filed, the Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate funds for the County School Board, choosing to shut down the public schools for five years rather than integrate them.

What county in South Carolina did the Clarendon case take place in?

The case in Clarendon, South Carolina described school buildings as no more than dilapidated wooden shacks. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, the high school had no cafeteria, gym, nurse’s office or teachers’ restrooms, and overcrowding led to students being housed in an old school bus and tar-paper shacks.

When did the government start enforcing desegregation?

Finally, in 1964, two provisions within the Civil Rights Act effectively gave the federal government the power to enforce school desegregation for the first time: The Justice Department could sue schools that refused to integrate, and the government could withhold funding from segregated schools.

What was the landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education?

Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional.

What was the effect of Brown vs Board of Education on the South?

The decision in Brown v. Board of Education forced the desegregation of public schools in 21 states and intensified resistance in the South, particularly among white supremacist groups and government officials sympathetic to the segregationist cause. In Virginia, U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. started the Massive Resistance movement, which sought to pass new state laws and policies as a means of keeping public schools from being desegregated. In one of the most notorious instances of resistance to the decision, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard in 1957 to keep black students from entering Little Rock Central High School.

How many families were involved in the Topeka class action lawsuit?

n 1950, the Topeka Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized another case, this time a class action suit comprised of 13 families.

Which amendment prohibited the operation of separate public schools based on race?

The Justices decided to rehear the case in the fall with special attention paid to whether the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools based on race.

When did black parents start filing court challenges in Kansas?

African American parents in Kansas began filing court challenges as early as 1881. By 1950, 11 court challenges to segregated schools had reached the Kansas State Supreme Court. None of the cases successfully overturned the state law.

When did Warren support Mexican students?

Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems in 1947, after Mendez v. Westminster and when Brown v. Board of Education was reheard, Warren was able to bring the Justices to a unanimous decision. On May 14, 1954, Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Court, stating, "We conclude that, ...

When did the NAACP appeal to the Supreme Court?

The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 and were joined by four similar NAACP-sponsored cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

When did Heman sweat apply to law school?

In 1946 , an African American man named Heman Sweat applied to the University of Texas' "white" law school. Hoping that it would not have to admit Sweat to the "white" law school if a "black" school already existed, elsewhere on the University's campus, the state hastily set up an underfunded "black" law school.

Who was denied admission to the University of Missouri Law School?

Canada (1938) Beginning in 1936, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund decided to take on the case of Lloyd Gaines, a graduate student of Lincoln University (an all-black college) who applied to the University of Missouri Law School but was denied because of his race.

What was the result of the Plessy decision?

Sadly, as a result of the Plessy decision, in the early twentieth century the Supreme Court continued to uphold the legality of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination. In the case of Cumming v.

What did the Plessy decision mean?

The Plessy Decision. Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "All men are created equal," due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the United States until after the Civil War (and, arguably, not completely fulfilled for many years thereafter). In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified ...

What were the laws of many states that blacks and whites could not use the same public facilities?

In other words, the laws of many states decreed that blacks and whites could not use the same public facilities, ride the same buses, attend the same schools, etc. These laws came to be known as Jim Crow laws.

Why was the University of Maryland rejecting black applicants?

Disappointed that the University of Maryland School of Law was rejecting black applicants solely because of their race, beginning in 1933 Thurgood Marshall (who was himself rejected from this law school because of its racial acceptance policies) decided to challenge this practice in the Maryland court system.

When did the Louisiana state laws start to be challenged?

Although many people felt that these laws were unjust, it was not until the 1890s that they were directly challenged in court. In 1892, an African-American man named Homer Plessy refused to give up his seat to a white man on a train in New Orleans, as he was required to do by Louisiana state law.

Why was Brown v. Board of Education important?

It was used as precedent to overturn other laws mandating or permitting segregation. And while racial inequality in America's schools continues, Brown v. Board helped to spark the civil rights movement , and began a long journey toward a more equal educational system in America.

What is the significance of Brown v. Board of Education?

Supreme Court history. It's main holding, that segregated schools are inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, was both an important legal precedent and a decision with a huge social impact.

Why did the plaintiffs lose in the lower courts?

Board were fighting against a significant history of laws and court decisions promoting segregation. This was the predominant reason why the plaintiffs lost in lower courts. For example, in Kansas the lower court agreed with the plaintiffs that segregation harmed black children.

Why was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka called Brown v. Board?

The school board refused. The NAACP chose the Brown family because they perceived them to be the most sympathetic plaintiff. That is why the case is called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, even though the case involved plaintiffs in multiple states. Most simply refer to it as Brown v. Board.

What did the Brown decision not do?

The court, having held that segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, did not examine whether it also violated the due process clause. And while impactful, the decision in Brown was not as expansive as it might at first appear.

When did Brown v Board take place?

Board. The Supreme Court took the relatively unusual step in Brown v. Board of hearing oral arguments twice, once in 1953 and again in 1954. The second round of oral arguments was almost entirely about the circumstances of the Fourteenth Amendment's passage and its intended effect on public education.

When was Brown v. Board decided?

Much has been written over the decades about this landmark case, decided on May 17, 1954 . Legal scholars still argue over Brown v. Board's impact today, as well as the legal and social underpinnings of the decision.

What was the Brown v Board of Education case?

Board of Education (1954) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the “Separate but Equal” doctrine and outlawed the ongoing segregation in schools. The court ruled that laws mandating and enforcing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, ...

Which court case did the Browns win?

However, the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas ruled against the Browns, justifying their decision on judicial precedent of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v.

What was the significance of Brown v. Ferguson?

This decision led to more integration in other areas and was seen as major victory for the Civil Rights Movement. Many future litigation cases used the similar argumentation methods used by Marshall in this case. While this was seen as a landmark decision, many in the American Deep South were uncomfortable with this decision. Various Southern politicians tried to actively resist or delay attempts to desegregated their schools. These collective efforts were known as the "Massive Resistance," which was started by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd. Thus, in just four years after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the affirmed its ruling again in the case of Cooper v. Aaron, that government officials had no power to ignore the ruling or frustrate and delay desegregation.

What did the Brown II ruling say about segregation?

Nonetheless, since the ruling did not list or specify a particular method or way of how to proceed in ending racial segregation in schools, the Court's ruling in Brown II (1955) demanded states to dese gregate "with all deliberate speed.".

When did the Oliver Brown case start?

The events relevant to this specific case first occurred in 1951, when a public school district in Topeka, Kansas refused to let Oliver Brown’s daughter enroll at the nearest school to their home and instead required her to enroll at a school further away. Oliver Brown and his daughter were black.

Which amendment is the Supreme Court ruling on separate educational facilities?

The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous and felt that " separate educational facilities are inherently unequal ," and hence a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Overview

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The Court's decision partially overruled its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational fa…

Background

District court case

Supreme Court arguments

Decision

Reaction and aftermath

Legal criticism and praise

Brown II