Brown v. Board of Education : History

BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Commemorating 50 Years

The Supreme Court -- source: AP Photo Archive

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A Historical Overview

Source: N. Samuel Murrell. "Brown v. Board of Education." The African American Encyclopedia. 1st ed. 1993.

Possibly the most important governmental action since the Emancipation Proclamation and perhaps the most celebrated ruling in the history of American jurisprudence is Brown v. Board of Education. This historic Supreme Court decision ruled that segregated education in the United States is unequal and thus illegal. The Court struck a blow against racial segregation, which had been legalized by the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The decisions were based on interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Historical Background

Following emancipation, two amendments promising equal political status to African Americans were added to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, extended the fundamental guarantees of the Bill of Rights to certain aspects of state and local government and thus guaranteed equality under the law for all Americans. It prohibited any state from enforcing laws that abridged the privileges, or immunities, of American citizens; deprived persons of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; or denied a person living or working within its jurisdiction equal protection of United States law. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed all American men the right to vote irrespective of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. That right was denied to African Americans with the introduction of a series of regulations called Jim Crow Laws in the 1870's. Such laws made it virtually impossible for most black people to exercise their franchise. They also legalized segregated public schools, hospitals, and other public facilities. This segregated system was upheld by the decision of the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, a man who was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, appeared before the Court on charges of refusing to ride in the "colored" section of a train, as required by Louisiana law. The Court ruled against Plessy and concluded that segregated facilities could exist if they were equal. This gave birth to the doctrine of "separate but equal."

(l-r) George Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit on the steps of the Supreme Court
(from the AP Photo Archive) For almost sixty years after Plessy, black Americans were forced to accept separate but often unequal treatment in many areas of their lives. In 1896, for example, the school board of Richmond County in Georgia voted on July 10 to terminate the prestigious Ware High School in Augusta, the only public high school for African Americans in the state. It had been established in 1880 after a long battle fought by the black community. Concluding that Ware High School was dispensable, the school board reallocated its annual budget of $845 to the hiring of four new teachers for the black elementary schools. The umbrage from the black community resulted in another Supreme Court decision, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, in 1899. Attorneys for the black plaintiffs contended that the school board violated the law, even on the basis of Plessy, since high school education for blacks in the state was now nonexistent. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan circumvented the question of equality and ruled against forcing more equal allocation of education funds. He argued that the board would respond to a negative ruling from the Court by closing down white high schools, and that this would damage white students without helping blacks. This prejudicial ruling successfully nullified the Fourteenth Amendment and perpetuated the doctrine of "separate but equal" as a pretext for government-sponsored racism.

The Brown Ruling

The battle against discrimination in education heated up in Oliver Brown et al. v Board of Education of Topeka et al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). An elementary school student named Linda Brown of Topeka, Kans., had to cross a railroad track and ride a bus twenty-one blocks to a black school, even though a white one was only five blocks away. Her plight became the basis for a new ruling on the "separate but equal" doctrine. At the trial, the defense--on the grounds of Plessy--argued that under the Fourteenth Amendment, the state had provided separate but equal facilities, as required by law Thurgood Marshall and other legal experts representing Linda Brown challenged the Court's 1896 ruling that the Constitution permitted "separate but equal" facilities for blacks but not for other minority groups. The attorneys forced the Court to address the question of why African Americans were singled out for different treatment.

Thurgood Marshall (from the AP Photo Archive) Arguing on the basis of social scientific findings, Brown's lawyers demonstrated convincingly that separate facilities worked to the detriment of African Americans and therefore were unequal. Even if the physical facilities, equipment, and staffing were equal at two racially segregated schools, education would still be unequal because racial segregation deprives students of important interaction with others that enhances learning On May 17, 1954, the Court gave the landmark ruling in favor of desegregation on the grounds that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal since they deprive minority students equal educational opportunities essential to their success in life.

By ruling in favor of Linda Brown, the Court affirmed that education is a fundamental right that must be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that separate public schools for blacks violate the provision in the Constitution for equal protection of rights. It contended that education is necessary for the performance of one's basic civic duties and that it was doubtful whether Brown could be expected to succeed as a good citizen if she were denied access to the necessary education. The Court also ruled that when a state undertakes to provide such opportunities as education, those opportunities must be made available to all on equal terms. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who guided the Court in this decision, argued that segregating black pupils from whites of similar age and qualifications solely on the basis of their race perpetuates a feeling of black inferiority and a slave mentality, in relation to their status in the community, which could ruin black students' psyches in ways that are unlikely to be corrected.

The Result

This watershed ruling dealt a decisive blow to segregation in public schools and led to the ultimate destruction of the legal basis for racial discrimination in many other areas of American life. It helped desegregate restaurants, parks, city buses, trains, and places of employment, and it became a platform for the 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, which ruled that the federal courts could reverse inequitable distributions of state legislative seats that historically have favored whites. The Brown decision also influenced Congress in its passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Although Brown ended segregation de jure (by law), desegregation in actuality did not always follow. Even with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which threatened to deny government funding to noncompliant states, desegregation came slowly. It had to be enforced by the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Swann v Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, which affirmed the appropriateness of busing to achieve integration. It took parents in Tampa, Fla., eleven years after Brown to win a desegregation lawsuit against local school districts that forced black students to walk past many all-white schools to get to a black one. In New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and elsewhere, angry crowds violently resisted desegregation well into the late 1970's. Although progress toward desegregation was slow in many cases, it did occur.

Significance of Brown

This momentous ruling drastically altered social and political life in both black and white America. By undoing the rules of exclusion, Brown told America that freedom from segregation is as much a right as freedom from slavery. It also gave African Americans hope, by opening doors that historically were closed to them. Equal education promised broadened employment possibilities. Even with the white backlash that occurred in the 1980's, qualified blacks now are less likely to be denied a job on racial grounds than they were in 1954. Under the leadership of Chief Justices Earl Warren and Warren Burger, the Court signaled that it was tough enough to challenge segregationist governors such as Orval Faubus of Arkansas, George Wallace of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi. - N. Samuel Murrell

The Historical Background

The Brown Ruling

The Result

Significance of Brown

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