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Brown V

Bob greene: Supreme court's 1954 decision in BROWN V. Board of Education ended racial segregation. He says ruling declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" greene: naacp challenged school segregation in a series of court cases. Greene: court ruled that intangible aspects of segregated schools were equivalent.

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49 views

Brown V

Bob greene: Supreme court's 1954 decision in BROWN V. Board of Education ended racial segregation. He says ruling declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" greene: naacp challenged school segregation in a series of court cases. Greene: court ruled that intangible aspects of segregated schools were equivalent.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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BROWN V.

BOARD OF
EDUCATION
On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the
landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Courts
unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision,
which had allowed for separate but equal public facilities, including public schools in
the United States. Declaring that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,
the Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsored segregation, and
provided a spark to the American civil rights movement.

This unanimous decision handed down by the Supreme Court on May 17, 1954, ended
federal tolerance of racial segregation. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Court had ruled
that separate but equal accommodations on railroad cars conformed to the Fourteenth
Amendments guarantee of equal protection. That decision was used to justify
segregating all public facilities, including schools. In addition, most school districts,
ignoring Plessys equal requirement, neglected their black schools.
DID YOU KNOW?
NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall argued the case of Brown v. Board of
Education before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Marshall was himself named to
the Court in 1967.

In the mid-1930s, however, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (naacp) challenged school segregation in a series of court cases. In these the
Court required tangible aspects of segregated schools to be equivalent. The rulings
prompted several school districts to improve their black students schools. Then the
naacp contested the constitutionality of segregation in four regions. Each of the school
districts involved had improved the tangible aspects of its black schools, but Brown

brought segregation, per se, squarely before the Court. In the unanimous decision Chief
Justice Earl Warren rejected the Plessy doctrine, declaring that separate educational
facilities were inherently unequal because the intangible inequalities of segregation
deprived black students of equal protection under the law. A year later, the Court
published implementation guidelines requiring federal district courts to supervise school
desegregation on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed.
The Readers Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors.
Copyright 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights
reserved.
Article Details:

Brown v. Board of Education

Author
History.com Staff
Website Name
History.com
Year Published
2009
Title
Brown v. Board of Education
URL
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka
Access Date
April 22, 2015
Publisher
A+E Networks
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
2015, A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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