Brown v. Board of Education Ruling, 1954
Table of Contents: Further Readings | Source Citation |
Topeka, Kansas, Two Sets of Rights
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1866, guarantees that no state
may "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" nor "deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." These words give all Americans,
regardless of race, equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws. Yet at the
beginning of the 1950s society was still separated into black and white. Hotels, trains, parks,
restaurants, apartment houses, and even state voting precincts were segregated by race through
state statutes, called "Jim Crow" laws. African-Americans were criminally prosecuted and jailed
for attempting to ride the same trains or eat in the same restaurants as whites.
Separate but Equal
The constitutionality of these state laws was first considered by the Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896). Homer Plessy was an African-American who attempted to ride in a whites-only
railroad car in Louisiana. Plessy was charged with violating Louisiana's Jim Crow law, and he
argued all the way to the Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional. In a seven-to-one
vote, the 1896 Court declared that the amendment did not prohibit state laws from treating people
differently according to the color of their skins as long as that treatment was "equal." The
"separate but equal" doctrine created by the Plessy decision lasted for nearly sixty years, until the
1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
The Long Journey Begins
The Brown case began in Topeka, Kansas, at the beginning of the 1950 school year, when Oliver
Brown was told that his eight-year-old daughter Linda could not attend the neighborhood
elementary school four blocks from their home. The principal of the school explained to Brown
that Kansas law required African-Americans to attend segregated schools. Brown joined with
other African-American families to protest the law and engaged the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People to argue their cause. They started a lawsuit against the board of
education of Topeka, claiming that segregation violated their children's constitutional rights under
the Fourteenth Amendment. For four years they lost their case, appealing it to progressively
higher courts. In 1954 Brown v. Board of Education reached the U.S. Supreme Court along with
three other similar cases.
Separate Is Not Equal
The plaintiffs' attorney, Thurgood Marshall, later a Supreme Court justice, argued that racially
segregated public schools were not "equal" and could not be made "equal"; therefore the laws
were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. He claimed that the only way for the Court to
uphold segregation in 1954 was "to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other
human beings." The Supreme Court agreed and unanimously rejected the "separate but equal"
doctrine of Plessy v, Ferguson
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing the opinion of the Court, highlighted the fundamental
importance of education to American children. He then stated unequivocally that segregation of
public schools based solely on race deprives minority children of the values of education. In
conclusion the opinion read, "in the field of public education the doctrine of `separate but equal'
has no place."
"All Deliberate Speed"
The Brown decision hit the country like a bombshell. Reversing segregation was not going to
come easily, and the Court realized the tremendous resistance local politicians and school boards
would have to its decision. Therefore the Brown decision called for a reargument on the issue of
how to bring about the constitutional mandate of desegregation. The following year, in Brown II,
the Warren Court charged local federal district courts with the task of assessing local obstacles to
integration and deciding whether local school boards were implementing good-faith attempts at
desegregation. The nation's public schools were ordered to desegregate "with all deliberate
speed."
Stiff Resistance
The judicial branch of the government, however, can only pronounce the law. It is up to the
executive branch, led by the president, to enforce it. Federal district courts did their best to make
local school boards conform to the "all deliberate speed" mandate, but their orders and
injunctions had little effect. Desegregation was extremely unpopular, and many states threatened
to close their public schools rather than allow them to become integrated. Attempts by AfricanAmerican students to follow court-ordered integration resulted in riots in cities such as Milford,
Delaware; Mansfield, Texas; Clinton, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana. President Dwight
D. Eisenhower, who believed that the Court had attempted to force the nation to integrate too
quickly, offered no help. For several years after the Brown decision, very little was done on local
levels to proceed toward desegregation. Nevertheless, African-Americans continued to push for
their rights.
Amid Three Armies
The situation came to a head in Little Rock, Arkansas. In a halfhearted attempt to follow the
federal court order, in 1957 the Little Rock school board initiated a plan to integrate the public
schools one grade at a time, starting with the twelfth grade in 1959. African-American families
and the NAACP saw this move as much too slow. They took their case back to federal court and
won an order allowing nine African-American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School
for the fall semester. Under the direction of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, however, armed
troops from the Arkansas National Guard blocked the entrance of the school from the nine
students. This situation continued for three weeks until newspapers across the country showed a
picture of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford turned away from the school, with guardsmen and
white students screaming insults at her. President Eisenhower could not delay enforcing citizen's
rights any longer. He sent one thousand air force paratroopers to Little Rock, where they
surrounded the school. Amid three small armies--federal, state, and the news media--nine
African-American students began their first day of high school at Little Rock Central.
Cooper vAaron
Lawyers for the school board argued that after the Little Rock incident public hostility was so
extreme and severe that it was impossible to run a sound educational program. The board's case,
Cooper v. Aaron, quickly reached the Supreme Court. On 12 September 1958 the Court
denounced Arkansas's position in a unanimous and resounding decision. Writing for the Court,
Justice William Brennan dismissed an anti-integration amendment Arkansas had added to its
constitution, stating that "the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the
Constitution and that principle [is] a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional
system." He reaffirmed the Court's reversal of the "separate but equal" doctrine of 1896. The
principles of the Brown case, Brennan wrote, "are indispensable for the protection of the
freedoms guaranteed by the fundamental charter for all of us. Our constitutional idea of equal
justice under law is thus made a living truth." After the Cooper decision no state could again
argue that segregation was constitutional.
FURTHER READINGS
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Elizabeth Huckaby, Crisis at Central High: Little Rock, 1957-58 (Baton Rouge & London:
Louisiana State University Press, 1980);
Arnold S. Rice, The Warren Court, 1953-1969 (Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press,
1987).
Source Citation: "Brown v. Board of Education Ruling, 1954." DISCovering U.S. History. Online
Edition. Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale. 28 January 2005
<http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC>
Document Number: CD2104240331