Handout 2.1
The Road to Brown v. Board of Education
In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that segregated schools were “inherently
unequal” and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. But while Brown v. Board of
Education is a well-known case in American history, people do not always realize that this ruling was part of
a campaign that began 25 years before Brown made it to the Supreme Court. In addition, Brown v. Board
of Education was heard in conjunction with four other cases in which parents sought equal educational
opportunities for their children. All lawyers, parents, and community members who joined this fight against
racial injustice did so at their own personal risk and many lost jobs, friends, and even had their homes
burned and safety threatened.
Legal Campaign
Two institutions were vital in the effort to use the courts to challenge legal segregation in the United
States. One was Howard University School of Law, the prestigious Black University in Washington, DC.
The other was the NAACP, an organization that had been fighting racial injustice since 1909.
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was founded in 1909,
making it the oldest civil rights organization in the nation. In the 1920s and 1930s the NAACP led
awareness campaigns to end lynching and other racial violence, the denial of voting rights, and the
segregation of public facilities. One of the NAACP’s major goals since its inception has been a fully
integrated society with equal rights for all people. Headquartered in New York City, the NAACP
established branch offices in cities throughout the country (with over 300 of them established by 1920). The
NAACP employed (and still employs) lawyers, lobbyists, writers, and community organizers to help reach
its goals of equality for all people.
Charles Hamilton Houston became the vice-dean of Howard University’s Law School in 1929. His
goal was to produce excellent lawyers who would use their skill to become Civil Rights advocates. Houston
believed that by attacking the laws and legal processes that discriminated against African American citizens,
lawyers could fight racism and cause positive social change. One of Houston’s star students was Thurgood
Marshall, who would later become the most famous civil rights lawyer in the country and eventually go on to
become the first African American justice on the Supreme Court.
While Houston was training Marshall, the NAACP was investigating possible legal strategies to end
racial segregation. In 1930, the NAACP commissioned attorney Nathan Margold to come up with a plan for
challenging segregation laws. His suggestion? Challenge the inherent inequality of segregated primary and
secondary schools.
In 1934 Charles Houston left Howard to become the head of the NAACP legal team. He invited his
former student Thurgood Marshall to join the team as well. At this time, Houston thought that the strategy
for ending segregation in schools laid out in the Margold Report was too much to attempt all at once.
Instead, the lawyers at the NAACP would try to set legal precedent for desegregation by seeking equal
graduate and professional schools for African American students. By 1938, Houston had stepped down as
head of the NAACP’s legal department and left Marshall in charge. Houston would continue to practice law
and assist the NAACP with cases at times.
Between 1938 and 1950 the NAACP won four cases involving equal access to graduate schools. In
each case, the NAACP lawyers would seek out a qualified African American student to apply to a graduate
program (mostly law schools) at an all White university and then take the school to court when they did not
admit them. In Missouri ex. rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), Lloyd Gaines applied to the University of
Missouri Law School. Since there was no law school in the state of Missouri that admitted African American
students, the University offered him a scholarship to an out-of-state law school. This case reached the
Supreme Court where Charles Houston convinced the justices that the state had to establish an equal facility
for African American students or admit Gaines to a state school. In Sipuel v. Oklahoma State Regents
(1949), Ada Sipuel applied to the University of Oklahoma Law School and was denied admission. With
the NAACP’s help, Sipuel sued the school. The University chose to admit her rather than endure a lengthy
court battle. In Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950), the Supreme
Court ruled that part of the educational experience of graduate school was having the opportunity to interact
with other students. Thus, separating students by race did not create equal educational opportunities for the
students. With these legal precedents in place, the NAACP felt it had a chance at successfully ending
segregation in all schools in the United States.
Summarized from the Smithsonian’s Separate is Not Equal website:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/index.html
Handout 2.2
Case Study Files
Clarendon County, South Carolina
Summary:
In Briggs v. Elliot, 20 African American parents in Clarendon County in rural South Carolina
demanded that their children be allowed to attend white schools rather than the starkly inferior schools they
were attending. Many of these parents lost their jobs as a result of their stand against segregation. Others
were threatened harshly enough that they moved away from the area fearing for their lives. The local
NAACP lawyer knew that the national office was looking for school cases challenging segregation and
invited Thurgood Marshall to participate in the case when it reached the state level. Marshall and the other
lawyers argued that attending segregated schools harmed African American children psychologically and
violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Of the three-judge
panel of the South Carolina federal court, two ruled against the parents, stating that separate but equal
facilities were legal and one judge wrote a dissenting opinion stating that South Carolina’s segregated school
system was a system of inequality and did not provide African American children equal protection under
the law. The NAACP lawyers appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
Other Resources:
Other accounts of the story:
http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/briggs.html
http://www.nps.gov/archive/brvb/pages/briggs.htm
http://www.bdpfoundation.org/history.html
Photographs relating to the case are on the next page.
Handout 2.2a
Handout 2.2b
Handout 2.3
Case Study Files
Claymont and Hockessin, Delaware
Summary:
In Bulah v. Gebhart and Belton v. Gebhart, mothers Sarah Bulah and Ethel Belton along with seven
other parents in the community, complained that the schools their children were allowed to attend were far
away from where the homes and neighborhoods where African American children lived. In this case, the
Delaware Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling that stated that the African American children
were receiving an inferior education in their segregated schools and should be admitted to White schools.
They did not, however, strike down the separate but equal doctrine, citing the Supreme Court of the United
States as the only institution with the authority to reverse its own ruling. The lawyers representing the
schools appealed to the Supreme Court.
Other Resources:
Other accounts of the story:
http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/belton.html
http://brownvboard.org/media/delaware.php
http://www.nps.gov/archive/brvb/pages/belton.htm
Handout 2.4
Case Study Files
Prince Edward County, Virginia
Summary:
In Davis v. School Board of Prince Edward County, sixteen-year-old high school student Barbara
Johns organized a student strike during which students demanded a new school building for African
American students that was equal to the one for White students. When NAACP lawyers got involved in the
Farmville, Virginia case, they convinced the students to demand integration. The federal court in
Richmond, Virginia, upheld Prince Edward County’s right to maintain segregated schools. The NAACP
lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court.
Online Resources:
A more detailed version of the story:
http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/davis.html
A more detailed explanation with photographs of the school facilities in Prince Edward County:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/davis-case/
The decision from the district court:
http://brownvboard.org/research/opinions/davis.htm
Information about Barbara Johns:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_johns.html
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/4-five/detail/barbara-johns.html
http://www.biography.com/articles/Barbara-Johns-206527
Handout 2.5
Case Study Files
Topeka, Kansas
Summary:
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
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Other resources:
Summaries of what happened:
http://www.nps.gov/brvb/historyculture/kansas.htm
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/4-five/topeka-kansas-1.html
Information about Topeka’s race relations in 1954:
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-25-spring-2004/brown-v-board-united-states-circa-1954
Handout 2.6
Case Study Files
Washington DC
Summary:
In Bolling v. Sharpe, twelve-year-old- Spottswood Bolling and four other students from Washington, DC,
sought admission to the new, well-equipped white schools. The segregated schools for African American
students were overcrowded and badly equipped. The US District Court dismissed the case saying that
separate but equal was still the law of the land. The Supreme Court asked to review the case in conjunction
with Brown v. Board of Education and the other school segregation cases that were already under review.
Other Resources:
Other accounts of the story:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/brvb/pages/bolling.htm
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/4-five/washington-dc-1.html
Note Taking Chart
Handout 2.7
Case
Location
Brown v. Board of
Education
Topeka,
Kansas
Bolling v. Sharpe
Washington,
DC
Bulah v. Gebhart and
Belton v. Gebhart
Delaware
Davis v. School Board of Prince
Prince Edward County
Edward
County,
Virginia
Briggs v. Elliott
Clarendon
County, South
Carolina
Complaint
Issues
Ruling
Handout 2.8
Key Excerpts from the Majority Opinion, Brown I
The decision was unanimous.
Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the Court.
. . . Here . . . there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been
equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications, and
salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on
merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in
each of these cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public
education. . . .
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.
Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both
demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. . . .
Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing
him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his
environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to
succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where
the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on
equal terms. . . .
To separate them [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and
qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status
in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be
undone. . . . Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of
Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. . . .
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has
no place.
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs
and other similarly situated . . . are . . . deprived of the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Fourteenth
Amendment.
After the decision in Brown was reached, the Court decided a companion case Bolling v.
Sharpe regarding the same issue of segregation in the District of Columbia. The Court
notes first that although the Fourteenth Amendment is only applicable to states, the Fifth
Amendment is applicable to the District of Columbia. The Court then held that while the
Fifth Amendment does not contain an equal protection clause it does contain a due
process clause, the concepts both stemming from the American ideal of fairness, and
discrimination can be so unjustifiable it can be deemed violative of due process.
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Handout 2.9
Key Excerpts from the Majority Opinion, Brown II
The decision was unanimous.
Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases [Brown and others] were decided on May 17, 1954. The opinions of that date,
declaring the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is
unconstitutional, are incorporated herein by reference. All provisions of federal state, or
local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle. There
remains for consideration the manner in which relief is to be accorded. .
..
Full implementation of these constitutional principles may require solution of varied local
school problems.
School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving
these problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities
constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles. . . .
While giving weight to . . . public and private considerations, the courts will require that the
defendants make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance with our May 17,
1954, ruling. Once such a start has been made, the courts may find that additional time is
necessary to carry out the ruling in an effective manner. The burden rests upon the
defendants to establish that such time is necessary in the public interest and is consistent
with good faith compliance at the earliest practicable date. To that end, the courts may
consider problems related to administration, arising from the physical condition of the
school plant, the school transportation system, personnel, revision of school districts and
attendance areas into compact units to achieve a system of determining admission to the
public schools on a nonracial basis, and revision of local laws and regulations which may be
necessary in solving the foregoing problems.
. . . [T]he cases are remanded to the District Courts to take such proceedings and enter
such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit
to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties
to these cases.
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