who was the lead lawyer of the brown v. board of education supreme court case

by Moises McLaughlin 9 min read

Thurgood Marshall

Who was the lawyer for the Brown vs Board of Education case?

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.

Who was the judge for Brown vs Board of Education?

Chief Justice Earl WarrenBrown v. Board of EducationCourt membershipChief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Robert H. Jackson · Harold H. Burton Tom C. Clark · Sherman MintonCase opinionMajorityWarren, joined by unanimous14 more rows

What was Thurgood Marshall role in Brown v Board?

Marshall argued in court for desegregation in local cases such as Murray v. Maryland and Sweat v. 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.

Was Thurgood Marshall a lawyer?

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991.

Who were the key players in Brown vs Board of Education?

Robert L. CarterJulian R. DugasJack Greenberg AUDIO: Jack Greenberg -- on Tavis Smiley ShowWilliam H. HastieGeorge E. C. HayesA. Leon HigginbothamOliver W. HillWilliam Robert Ming, Jr.Constance Baker MotleyJames M. Nabrit, Jr.Spottswood W. Robinson, III

Who replaced Thurgood Marshall?

Clarence ThomasGeorge H.W. Bush replaced him with Clarence Thomas, a conservative Black justice. Marshall died in 1993 at age 84. Today, Marshall is remembered as one of the United States' greatest legal minds and an unwavering force for equality under the law.

Description

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.

Source-Dependent Questions

The phrase "equal justice under law" is featured in this photograph. It was proposed by the architects planning the U.S. Supreme Court building and then approved by the justices in 1932. What does “equal justice under law” mean?

Citation Information

"George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit congratulating each other on the Brown decision," Associated Press, 17 May 1954. Courtesy of Library of Congress

Thurgood Marshall

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...

Louis Redding

The first African American admitted to the Delaware bar, Louis Redding was part of the NAACP legal team that challenged school segregation.

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.

Thurgood Marshall

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...

George E.C. Hayes

George E.C. Hayes was responsible for starting the oral argument of Bolling v. Sharpe, the case which originated in the District of Columbia

Charles Hamilton Houston

Houston developed a "Top-Down" integration strategy, and became known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow" for his desegregation work.

James Nabrit, Jr

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Thurgood Marshall?

Born in 1908, Thurgood Marshall served as lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Briggs v. Elliott. From 1930 to 1933, Marshall attended Howard University Law School and came under the immediate influence of the school’s new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall, who also served as lead counsel in the Brown v.

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 name in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education?

Linda Brown. Linda Brown was the child associated with the lead name in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the outlawing of U.S. school segregation in 1954.

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

Board of Education, disavowing the notion of "separate but equal" and concluding that segregated facilities deprived African American children of a richer, fairer educational experience.

Where was Linda Brown born?

Who Was Linda Brown? Linda Brown was born in February 1942, in Topeka, Kansas. Because she was forced to travel a significant distance to elementary school due to racial segregation, her father was one of the plaintiffs in the case of Brown v.

Who is the Kansas governor who paid tribute to the woman who sparked one of the landmark cases in American history?

Although her family wouldn't comment, Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer paid tribute to the woman who sparked one of the landmark cases in American history: "Sixty-four years ago a young girl from Topeka brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America," he tweeted.

Where did the Brown family move to?

By the time of the ruling, Brown was in junior high, a grade level that had been integrated before the 1954 court ruling. The family moved to Springfield, Missouri, in 1959. Oliver died two years later, and his widow moved the girls back to Topeka.

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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

For much of the 60 years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation. Such state policies had been endorsed by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which held that as long as the separate facilities for separate races were equal, state segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment ("no State shall ... …

District court case

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 due to a 1879 Kansas law, which permitted …

Supreme Court arguments

The case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington, D.C.).
All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case, the only case of the five ori…

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 tried to determine whether the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to abolish segregation in public education…

Reaction and aftermath

Although Americans generally cheered the court's decision in Brown, most white Southerners decried it. 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. The American political historian Robert G. McCloskey described:

Legal criticism and praise

William Rehnquist wrote a memo titled "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases" when he was a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1952, during early deliberations that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In his memo, Rehnquist argued: "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think Ples…

Brown II

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".