who was the first lawyer who won the supreme court case brown v board

by Claire Reynolds 5 min read

Oliver Hill
In 1940, Hill secured his first civil rights victory in Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Va. that mandated equal pay for African American and white teachers.

How did the Supreme Court rule in Brown v Board?

Mar 29, 2022 · Jack Greenberg. 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. Bolling v. Sharpe. U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C.

Who was the first black lawyer in Brown v Board?

Jun 08, 2021 · John Scott was a Topeka, KS, based lawyer who initially began the Brown case on behalf of Oliver Brown and the other litigants. Earl Warren Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was born in 1891, secured a unanimous decision in Brown v.

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

May 19, 2021 · On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued an unanimous verdict in Brown v. Board of Education declaring that the “separate but equal” regime of segregation within public education was unconstitutional under the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment. Working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), up …

What court cases were decided on the basis of Plessy v Brown?

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 ...

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Who was the lawyer in the Brown v Board decision?

As a lawyer and judge, Thurgood Marshall strived to protect the rights of all citizens.

Who was the lawyer counsel that helped to win the case of Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka in 1954?

Thurgood Marshall
In 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.

What lawyer won the Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka?

Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall

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Mar 29, 2022

Who Won the Brown vs Board of Education case?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren
On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.Nov 22, 2021

Who was the first African American Supreme Court justice?

Thurgood Marshall
On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated distinguished civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Who did Oliver Brown sue?

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.Jan 11, 2022

Who were the attorneys for Topeka Board of Education?

At trial, the Scott brothers and Bledsoe were joined by NAACP lawyers Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg. Counsel for the Topeka School Board were also Washburn Law graduates. Lester Goodell '25 served as chief trial counsel with George Brewster '29. Both men were partners in the firm Wheeler, Brewster, Hunt and Goodell.

What were the 5 cases in Brown v. Board of Education?

By the 1950s, the NAACP was beginning to support challenges to segregation at the elementary school level. Five separate cases were filed in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware: Oliver Brown et al.Jun 3, 2021

What happened after Brown v Board?

While this case led to the growth of the modern civil rights movement and the expansion of educational opportunities for children apart from race, such as those with special needs, its complex history also reflects our nation's difficulties in overcoming systemic racism and class discrimination.Feb 9, 2017

How did the Brown v. Board of Education case start?

The underlying case began in 1951 when the public school system in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll local black resident Oliver Brown's daughter at the elementary school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black school farther away.

How did the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education apex?

Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Who was the Chief Justice in the Brown v. Brown case?

John Scott. John Scott was a Topeka, KS, based lawyer who initially began the Brown case on behalf of Oliver Brown and the other litigants. Earl Warren. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was born in 1891, secured a unanimous decision in Brown v.

Who was the dean of Howard University in the Brown v. Board of Education case?

Their case eventually became one of five included in the landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education. Spottswood W. Robinson, III, who was born in 1916, taught law at Howard University, in Washington, DC, and eventually became dean of the school. He made his mark on the history of Brown v.

What was the precedent in Ferguson v. Brown?

Ferguson ruling of the United States Supreme Court as precedent. The plaintiffs claimed that the "separate but equal" ruling violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v.

Who was the plaintiff in the Belton v. Gebhart case?

Ethel Louise Belton#N#Ethel Belton and six other adults filed suit on behalf of eight Black children against Francis B. Gebhart and 12 others (both individuals and state education agencies) in the case Belton v. Gebhart. The plaintiffs sued the state for denying to the children admission to certain public schools because of color or ancestry. The Belton case was joined with another very similar Delaware case, Bulah v. Gebhart, and both would ultimately join four other NAACP cases in the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Belton was born in 1937 and died in 1981.

Why was Brown v. Board of Education important?

This grouping of cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware was significant because it represented school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one. Each case was brought on the behalf of elementary school children, involving all-Black schools that were inferior to white schools.

Who was the Supreme Court Justice in Kansas?

Fatzer served as Kansas Supreme Court Justice from February 1949 to March 1956. Jack Greenberg. Jack Greenberg, who was born in 1924, argued on behalf of the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, and worked on the briefs in Belton v. Gebhart.

Who was the lead defendant in Bolling v. Sharpe?

C. Melvin Sharpe , acting as President of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia from 1948 to 1957, was named as the lead defendant in the case Bolling v. Sharpe. Earl Warren. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was born in 1891, secured a unanimous decision in Brown v.

Who was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the Brown v. Board of Education case?

Earl Warren was serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Not only did Warren believe that segregation was legally insensible, but he sought to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, a previous case which had upheld the practice of segregating schools, with an unanimous verdict.

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

Board of Education declaring that the “separate but equal” regime of segregation within public education was unconstitutional under ...

What Supreme Court case is Ferguson?

Ferguson stands among cases like Dred Scott v. Sandford and Korematsu v. Unit ed States as Supreme Court decisions that are nearly universally condemned by lawyers, scholars, and citizens across the nation.

Which decision cemented public school segregation in law in 1896?

Ferguson decision that cemented public school segregation in law in 1896: “the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument [is that] the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.

Who was the first black person to serve on the Supreme Court?

Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from August 30, 1967 until his retirement on October 1, 1991 — becoming the first Black American to hold this position. Prior to his career on the Supreme Court however, Marshall served as the Director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and represented the Brown family during the legal battle.

Why did Marshall argue for desegregation?

Painter, but all of these cases were granted victories because separate conditions were successfully argued to be unequal in these individual instances , rather than separation being unequal in principle. All this work made Marshall the natural choice to argue Brown v. Board of Education in front of the Supreme Court, where he compared school segregation to the Black Codes of the post-Confederate south and stated that the argument of the Topeka school board based on a lack of federal responsibility is faulty, as the “duty of enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment is placed upon [the Supreme] Court.”

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Who said the 14th amendment is colorblind?

The lone dissenter, Justice John Marshal Harlan, interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment another way, stated, "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Justice Harlan's dissent would become a rallying cry for those in later generations that wished to declare segregation unconstitutional.

When was Brown v Board of Education argued?

Brown v. Board of Education was argued on December 9, 1952. The attorney for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court (1967–91). The case was reargued on December 8, 1953, to address the question of whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have understood it to be inconsistent with racial segregation in public education. The 1954 decision found that the historical evidence bearing on the issue was inconclusive.

What was the Supreme Court ruling in 1954?

Supreme Court ruling ( Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka) in 1954 that declared racial segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional.

Why was the plaintiff's right to equal protection violated in Gebhart v. Belton?

Belton (1952), however, the Delaware Court of Chancery, also relying on Plessy, found that the plaintiffs’ right to equal protection had been violated because the African American schools were inferior to the white schools in almost all relevant respects.

What did Ferguson's decision mean?

Ferguson (1896), according to which laws mandating separate public facilities for whites and African Americans do not violate the equal-protection clause if the facilities are approximately equal. Although the 1954 decision strictly applied only to public schools, it implied that segregation was not permissible in other public facilities. ...

Who argued the Board of Education of Topeka?

Board of Education of Topeka was argued on December 9, 1952; the attorney who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who later served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court (1967–91). The case was reargued on December 8, 1953, to address the question of whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have understood ...

When did the Board of Education of Topeka decide to integrate public schools?

Board of Education of Topeka (II), argued April 11–14, 1955, and decided on May 31 of that year, Warren ordered the district courts and local school authorities to take appropriate steps to integrate public schools in their jurisdictions “with all deliberate speed.”.

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 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 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 Supreme Court decide to end segregation?

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement. Brown v. Board Does Not Instantly Desegregate Schools. In its landmark ruling, the Supreme Court didn’t specify exactly how to end school segregation, but rather asked to hear further arguments on the issue.

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.

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 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.

When did Thurgood Marshall win Brown v. Board of Education?

Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers celebrating the May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education victory.

Who led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States?

Charles Hamilton Houston led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. He and those he taught and mentored laid the legal groundwork that ultimately led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Houston died four years before full fruition of his work to end "separate but equal" as a valid constitutional principle.

What was Marshall's first case?

Marshall won his first Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940). That same year, he was appointed Chief counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully. His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) in which the Supreme Court eradicated the "separate but equal" doctrine in public education.

Who appointed Marshall to the Second Circuit?

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi's James Eastland and West Virginia's Robert Byrd held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

What law school did Marshall go to?

Marshall graduated from Lincoln University, PA in 1930. Afterward, Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school at the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean told him that he shouldn't bother because he would not be accepted due to the school's segregation policy. Later, as a civil rights litigator, he successfully sued the school for this policy in the case Murray v. Pearson. Instead, Marshall sought admission and was accepted at Howard University. He was influenced by its dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans.

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Overview

  • United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court of the United States Argued December 9, 1952 Reargued December 8, 1953 Decided May 17, 1954 Full case nameOliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al. Citations347 U.S. 483 74 S. Ct. 686; 98 L. Ed. 873; 1954 U.S. LEXIS 2094; 53 Ohio Op. 326; 38 A.L.R.2d 1180 DecisionOpinion Ca…
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Case

  • 1. Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) 2. Brown v. Board of Education II (1955) 3. Cooper v. Aaron (1958) 4. Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964) 5. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) 6. Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969) 7. Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) 8. Milliken v. Bradley (1974) 9. Parents Involv…
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  • In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children.The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools unde…
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Background

  • For much of the sixty years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation. This policy had been endorsed in 1896 by the United States Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that as long as the separate facilities for the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The plain…
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  • With the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, \"separate, but equal\" public and private facilities were allowed throughout the United States. This lead to widespread segregation of schools as well.Oliver Brown was an African American parent whose child was denied enrollment in a Topeka, Kansas, white school. Brown argued that the schools for the black children were not, an…
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  • Prior to Brown v Board of Education in 1954, racial segregation in the United States was legally permitted by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. In the infamous “separate but equal” decision of Plessy v Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that as long as separate facilities for separate races were equal, they did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendm…
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The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents of African-American schoolchildren who were denied access to white schools on the basis of their race. The Court decided that Kansas laws allowing for the segregation of school enrollment based on race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by de…
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Decision

  • On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Brown family and the other plaintiffs. The decision consists of a single opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which all the justices joined. The Court's opinion began by noting that it had attempted to find an answer to the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment was meant t…
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  • The Court ruled “no” and “yes” in a 9-0 decision in favor of the plaintiffs, that segregated schools were neither equal nor constitutional. The court ruled unanimously that the racial segregation of public schools which was previously considered equal by the “separate but equal” doctrine set by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was unconstitutional as such segregation violated the Equal Protecti…
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  • In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court ordered the states to start trying to obey the Brown decision and de-segregate their schools. It ordered the states to start making plans about how they were going to integrate their schools.However, the Court refused to order the schools to integrate right away, like the NAACP had wanted. It also did not set any clear deadline for when schools neede…
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Significance

  • On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the \"separate but equal\" precedent s…
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Facts

  • The plaintiff parents in this case attempted to enroll their children in the nearest public elementary schools to their homeswhite schools which were blocks awayrather than the African-American schools which were far away. The schools denied the plaintiffs children access to the schools based on their race. The schools were acting in accordance with Kansas laws which either man…
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Reaction And Aftermath

  • Although Americans generally cheered the Court's decision in Brown, most white citizens in the American South decried it, and progress on integrating American schools moved slowly. Many Southern white Americans viewed Brown v. Board of Education as "a day of catastrophe—a Black Monday—a day something like Pearl Harbor." The American political historian Robert G. McClos…
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  • Arguments were to be heard during the next term to determine just how the ruling would be imposed. Just over one year later, on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, now referred to as Brown II, instructing the states to begin desegregation plans \"with all deliberate speed.\"
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  • Even after the 14th Amendment took effect, the same conclusion was reached in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, when the concept of \"separate but equal\" was sanctioned by the court. It took more than half a century for the court to declare school segregation to be unconstitutional. Jones said the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice Frederick Vinson in 1953 and the March 1, …
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Brown Ii

  • In 1978, Topeka attorneys Richard Jones, Joseph Johnson and Charles Scott, Jr., 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 segregat…
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  • 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 …
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Results

  • However, minority groups and members of the civil rights movement were buoyed by the Brown decision even without specific directions for implementation. Proponents of judicial activism believed the Supreme Court had appropriately used its position to adapt the basis of the Constitution to address new problems in new times. The Warren Court stayed this course for th…
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Example

  • By way of example, he discussed the case of Roberts v. the City of Boston, filed in 1848 by the Rev. Benjamin Roberts, a black printer, who wanted his daughter to attend the local school. The case for the plaintiff was argued by Charles Sumner, a white lawyer and future U.S. senator who later played a role in the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment, which, with its equal protectio…
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