Oliver L. Brown et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas Thurgood Marshall led a life in the pursuit of equality, and was on a path destined to lead him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Read More... Carter was part of the legal team that developed the NAACP’s strategy for ending segregation.
The first African American admitted to the Delaware bar, Louis Redding was part of the NAACP legal team that challenged school segregation. As the first white attorney for the NAACP, Jack Greenberg helped to argue Brown v.
Harold Boulware served as the chief counsel for the South Carolina NAACP chapter and was instrumental in the Briggs case. Instrumental in the Davis case, Robinson went on to become the first African-American appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. After working with Charles H. Houston, Shores went on to argue the Lucy v.
The case was litigated by some of the nation’s best attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall, Robert Carter, Jack Greenberg, Constance Baker Motley, Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, Louis Redding, and James Nabrit, among others. More than six decades after Brown v.
Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice.
Listed third in the order of arguments, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was initially filed in February of 1951 by three Topeka area lawyers, assisted by the NAACP's Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg.
Thurgood MarshallThurgood MarshallSucceeded byWilfred FeinbergPersonal detailsBornThoroughgood MarshallJuly 2, 1908 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.DiedJanuary 24, 1993 (aged 84) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.22 more rows
Thurgood MarshallIn Brown v. Board of Education, the attorney for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall. He later became, in 1967, the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the case went to the Supreme Court, Marshall argued that school segregation was a violation of individual rights under the 14th Amendment. He also asserted that the only justification for continuing to have separate schools was to keep people who were slaves "as near that stage as possible."
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall Marshall, who also served as lead counsel in the Brown v. Board of Education case, went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history.
Thurgood MarshallThe U.S. 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.
Thurgood Marshall was a member of the NAACP legal defense team in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He later became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Led the NAACP Legal Defense team in Virginia in the Brown vs.
Carter was part of the legal team that developed the NAACP’s strategy for ending segregation.
As the first white attorney for the NAACP, Jack Greenberg helped to argue Brown v. Board of Education at the U.S. Supreme Court level.
Nabrit took over Charles Hamilton Houston's work on the Bolling v. Sharpe case which went to the U.S. Supreme Court alongside four others.
Charles Bledsoe worked to recruit plaintiffs willing to stand up to the school board while also researching and recruiting expert witnesses.
George E.C. Hayes was responsible for starting the oral argument of Bolling v. Sharpe, the case which originated in the District of Columbia
Oliver Hill was assigned to the Davis case, and agreed to help them if they would try to integrate, not equalize the schools.
After working with Charles H. Houston, Shores went on to argue the Lucy v. Adams case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the five cases were heard together by the Court in December 1952, the outcome remained uncertain. The Court ordered the parties to answer a series of questions about the specific intent of the Congressmen and Senators who framed the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and about the Court’s power to dismantle segregation. Then the Court scheduled another oral argument in December 1953.
Brown itself was not a single case, but rather a coordinated group of five lawsuits against school districts in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia starting in December 1952 . To litigate these cases, Marshall recruited the nation’s best attorneys, including Robert Carter, Jack Greenberg, Constance Baker Motley, Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, Louis Redding, Charles, and John Scott, Harold R. Boulware, James Nabrit, and George E.C. Hayes.
But striking down segregation in the nation’s public schools provided a major catalyst for the civil rights movement, making possible advances in desegregating housing, public accommodations , and institutions of higher education.
On that day, the Supreme Court declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” unconstitutional and handed LDF the most celebrated victory in its storied history.
Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown was ultimately unanimous, it occurred only after a hard-fought, multi-year campaign to persuade all nine justices to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine that their predecessors had endorsed in the Court’s infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
As then-Senator Obama observed in a 2008 speech in Philadelphia, “segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education – and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.”
It was not until LDF’s subsequent victories in Green v. County School Board (1968) and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971) that the Supreme Court issued mandates that segregation be dismantled “root and branch,” outlined specific factors to be considered to eliminate effects of segregation, and ensured that federal district courts had the authority to do so.
May 17, 1954 marks a defining moment in the history of the United States. On that day, the Supreme Court declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” unconstitutional and handed LDF the most celebrated victory in its storied history. Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.
These LDF lawyers were assisted by a brain trust of legal scholars, including future federal district court judges Louis Pollack and Jack Weinstein, along with William Coleman, the first black person to serve as a Supreme Court law clerk.
But striking down segregation in the nation’s public schools provided a major catalyst for the civil rights movement, making possible advances in desegregating housing, public accommodations , and institutions of higher education.
Wrapping up his presentation to the Court in that second hearing, Marshall emphasized that segregation was rooted in the desire to keep “the people who were formerly in slavery as near to that stage as is possible.” Even with such powerful arguments from Marshall and other LDF attorneys, it took another five months for the newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren’s behind-the-scenes lobbying to yield a unanimous decision.
This research included psychologist Kenneth Clark’s now famous doll experiments, which demonstrated the impact of segregation on black children – Clark found black children were led to believe that black dolls were inferior to white dolls and , by extension, that they were inferior to their white peers.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971) that the Supreme Court issued mandates that segregation be dismantled “root and branch,” outlined specific factors to be considered to eliminate effects of segregation, and ensured that federal district courts had the authority to do so.
Board of Education was ultimately unanimous, it occurred only after a hard-fought, multi-year campaign to persuade all nine justices to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine that their predecessors had endorsed in the Court’s infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
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.
Attorneys for Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954
On May 17, 2019, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education turns 65. On this date in 1954, the Court declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” unconstitutional and handed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. ( LDF) the most celebrated victory in its storied history. Brown v. Board of Education invalidated racial segregation in public schools throughout the United States and paved the way for integration in nearly every aspect of American life. The case was litigated by some of the nation’s best attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall, Robert Carter, Jack Greenberg, Constance Baker Motley, Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, Louis Redding, and James Nabrit, among others.
Board of Education, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and other civil rights organizations will be hosting a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, May 16th. Find out more here.
Sent the week before the 65 th anniversary of Brown, LDF’s opposition letter cites Park’s failure to support the momentous ruling during his confirmation hearing as a disqualifying factor.
Educational documents from the case at the National Archives.
As part of its Overlooked series, the New York Times recently published an obituary for Barbara Johns, an courageous student organizer and one of the plaintiffs in Brown.
Jack Greenberg, LDF’s second Director-Counsel and a member of the Brown legal team, discusses LDF’s strategy in Brown, the experience of arguing before the Court, the long road to desegregation, and his friendship with Thurgood Marshall.
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
(son of the original Brown team member), with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, persuaded Linda Brown Smith —who now had her own children in Topeka schools—to be a plaintiff in reopening Brown. They were concerned that the Topeka Public Schools' policy of "open enrollment" had led to and would lead to further segregation. They also believed that with a choice of open enrollment, white parents would shift their children to "preferred" schools that would create both predominantly African American and predominantly European American schools within the district. The district court reopened the Brown case after a 25-year hiatus, but denied the plaintiffs' request finding the schools "unitary." In 1989, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit on 2–1 vote found that the vestiges of segregation remained with respect to student and staff assignment. In 1993, the Supreme Court denied the appellant School District's request for certiorari and returned the case to District Court Judge Richard Rodgers for implementation of the Tenth Circuit's mandate.
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:
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".
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 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.
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 ."
Jack Greenberg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. Greenberg became the leading counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund after the Brown case, replacing Thurgood. He also helped find the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and helped establish other organizations that help global humanitarian.
Charles Hamilton Houston was the head of the NAACP. Later in 1938, his partner, Thurgood Marshall took his place as the head of the Legal Fund. The NAACP focused on five areas; anti- lynching legislation, voter participation, employment, due process under the law, and education.
After he graduated Northwestern University Law School, he became a faculty to help establish school’s coursework in civil rights law at Howard University. Later, he became president of Howard University. He also became a deputy ambassador of the UN. Robert Carter helped argue in the Kansas case.
He also became a deputy ambassador of the UN. Robert Carter helped argue in the Kansas case. He attended Howard University School of Law and went to Columbia University to finish his studies. He decided to join the NAACP Legal team after facing racism during his service in World War II in 1944.
About. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was found in 1909. They are an organization that is against racial segregation and they fight for equality. Their goal was to allow laws to pass that defends African Americans from execution by convincing the Congress and other legislative bodies.
Thurgood Marshall was the director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He organized and planned all of the plaintiff attorneys. He was in charge of the cases in South Carolina and other civil rights cases against the Supreme Court. Thurgood graduated from Howard University of Law. From 1961-1965, he served for the Second Circuit as judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals. After, he became a solicitor general for two years.#N#Jack Greenberg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. Greenberg became the leading counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund after the Brown case, replacing Thurgood. He also helped find the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and helped establish other organizations that help global humanitarian. He contributed to one of the arguments in a Delaware case.#N#Charles Houston made a big contribution in American history as a civil rights attorney. He was known for the works he had done in the NAACP. He was an agent for social change and a lawyer.#N#James Nabrit, Jr. was in charge of the second part of the Washington D.C. case. After he graduated Northwestern University Law School, he became a faculty to help establish school’s coursework in civil rights law at Howard University. Later, he became president of Howard University. He also became a deputy ambassador of the UN.#N#Robert Carter helped argue in the Kansas case. He attended Howard University School of Law and went to Columbia University to finish his studies. He decided to join the NAACP Legal team after facing racism during his service in World War II in 1944. He later became Marshall’s assistant. Afterwards, he became the general counsel of the NAACP in 1956 and fought for civil rights. In 1972, he was appointed for the Southern District of New York as a U.S. District Court judge.#N#George E. C. Hayes was in charge for the first part of the Washington D.C. case. He also argued for civil rights and civil liberties cases after Bolling v. Sharpe. He graduated Howard University’s law school and became a faculty member and a chief legal counsel. He also served the school board in District of Columbia. He assisted Annie Lee Moss to clear her name for being accused as a black woman Communist in 1954.#N#Louis L. Redding partially argued for the cases in Delaware. He became Delaware’s first African American attorney after graduating at Harvard Law School. He was known as Delaware’s leading civil rights attorney. After Brown’s case, he continued legal practice to defend civil right cases in Wilmington.#N#Spottswood W. Robinson III argued for the Virginia case. He graduated Howard University School of Law. He entered a private practice with Oliver W. Hill and had lawsuits with 75 school districts. In 1960, he was appointed dean of Howard’s law school and became Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals till retirement.#N#McKinley Burnett later became the president of the Topeka NAACP. He spoke for racial injustice and fought against the Topeka Board of Education and grew angry after with the continuation of segregation.
In 1960, he was appointed dean of Howard’s law school and became Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals till retirement. McKinley Burnett later became the president of the Topeka NAACP.
In 1951, LDF represented Reverend Oliver L. Brown, on behalf of his third-grade daughter Linda, in a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education. Reverend Brown had attempted to enroll his young daughter in the all-white Sumner Elementary School. When the school refused to enroll Linda, she was instructed to attend the under-resourced all-Black Monroe School, two miles away from her home. Reverend Brown promised Linda that he would challenge the school’s decision.
After working with LDF founder Thurgood Marshall, Motley became LDF’s first female attorney and wrote the original complaint in Brown v.Board . In addition, Motley played an important role in representing Black students seeking admission to the Universities of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as well as Clemson College in South Carolina. She claimed her greatest professional achievement was the reinstatement of 1,100 Black children in Birmingham who had been expelled for taking part in street demonstrations in the spring of 1963. Motley also directed the legal campaign that resulted in the admission of James H. Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962.