who was the lawyer in the brown vs board of education case

by Cletus Kuphal MD 9 min read

As the first white attorney for the NAACP, Jack Greenberg helped to argue Brown v. Board of Education at the U.S. Supreme Court
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Who were lawyers in Brown vs Board of Education?

The 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.

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

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.

Who was the lead lawyer for the NAACP in the Brown case?

Charles Hamilton Houston played an invaluable role in dismantling segregation and mentoring the crop of civil rights lawyers who would ultimately litigate and win Brown v Board of Education. At Howard Law School, he served as Thurgood Marshall's mentor and his eventual employer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

What role did Thurgood Marshall play in Brown vs Board of Education?

Working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), up-and-coming lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall argued harshly against school segregation, and won both the case and respect from many across the nation.

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 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 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 replaced Vinson in Brown v. Board of Education?

But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

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 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 Bolling case?

Although Bolling is historically considered one of the Brown v. Board of Education bundle cases, it was a different case due to the legal arguments.

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.

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.

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.

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, ...

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.

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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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