Background
Summary and Questions
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•
In Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s, schools were segregated
by race. Each day, Linda Brown and her sister, Terry
Lynn, had to walk through a dangerous railroad switchyard
to get to the bus stop for the ride to their all-black
elementary school. There was a school closer to the
Brown's house, but it was only for white students. |
Topeka was not the only town to experience segregation.
Segregation in schools and other public places was common
throughout the South and elsewhere. This segregation
based on race was legal because of a landmark Supreme
Court case called Plessy v. Ferguson,
which was decided in 1896. In that case, the Court said
that as long as segregated facilities were equal in
quality segregation did not violate the Constitution. |
However,
the Brown's disagreed. Linda Brown and her family believed
that the segregated school system did violate the Constitution.
In particular, they believed that the system violated the
Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing that people will be treated
equally under the law.
No
State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.
—Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution |
|
 The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) helped the Browns. Thurgood Marshall
was the attorney who argued the case for the Browns.
He would later become a Supreme Court justice. |
| The
case was first heard in a federal district court,
the lowest court in the federal system. The federal
district court decided that segregation in public
education was harmful to black children. However,
the court said that the all-black schools were
equal to the all-white schools because the buildings,
transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications
of the teachers were similar; therefore the segregation
was legal. |
The
Browns, however, believed that even if the facilities were
similar, segregated schools could never be equal to one
another. They appealed their case to the Supreme Court of
the United States. The Court combined the Brown's case with
other cases from South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware.
The ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education
case came in 1954.
Questions to Consider:
- What
does it mean to have segregated schools?
- What
right does the Fourteenth Amendment give citizens?
- How
did the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) affect
segregation?
- It
is important for this case to determine what "equal"
means. What do you think equality means to the Browns?
What do you think equality means to the Board of Education
of Topeka?
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