Versus Board of Education The landmark case of Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka. Kansas, in which a father was fighting for an equal education for his black daughter, was so important because it was the beginning of the civil rights movement that ended segregation In the public schools. “In these days, It Is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if they are denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state NAS undertaken to provide it. Is a right that must be made available on equal terms.
These important words were spoken by Chief Justice Earl Warren as an explanation of the Court’s reasons for unanimously ruling on May 17, 1954, that schools could not be separate but equal. The decision made by the United States Supreme Court meant that black Americans would not have to attend separate and unequal schools (Call Rights). The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ended slavery In 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 and gave freed slaves more rights by stating that no state could deny anyone of “due process of law” or of the “equal protection of the law.
In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment stated that freed slaves would have the right to vote. Even though these Amendments were passed, Attract- Americans were still not treated fairly, and the racial discrimination was even worse In the South. Many state governments passed laws that still segregated the races, and these laws were called “Jim Crow laws. ” These laws made blacks and whites use different bathrooms, ride different buses, and go to different schools (US Courts). The first court case against segregation came In 1892 when an African-American man named Homer Please was arrested because he would not give his seat on a train to a white man.
He sued the state of Louisiana because he said that the state could not separate blacks and whites on trains because his rights were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment His case made it to the united State Supreme Court in 1896, but they ruled against Please In the case of Please v. Ferguson because “If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the united States cannot put them upon the same plane (US Courts),” The ruling meant that separate disabilities had to be of equal quality, but that they could be separate. Many other cases came before the court in the early part of the twentieth century, but the U.
S. Supreme Court and the lower courts used the case of Please v. Ferguson as their basis for their rulings in Tabor AT segregation even tong most AT tense cases 010 not nave anything to ah with segregation on public transportation (Cochins). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began in 1909 as they started fighting for racial equality for black Americans. There were four cases that were heard and won as Charles Hamilton Houston and Thorough Marshall headed the Legal Defense and Education Fund and fought for equality in education.
These cases were: Murray v. Maryland in 1936 where Donald Gaines Murray won the right to attend Law School at Maryland; Missouri ex reel Gaines v. Canada in 1938 where Lloyd Gaines won the right to attend the University of Missouri Law School; Sweat v. Painter in 1950 where Herman Sweat won the right to attend the University of Texas Law School; and McLain v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education in 1950 where George McLain won against the University of Oklahoma to sit with the rest of his class and eat at the same tables as white students (US Courts).
In the sass’s, most schools in America were still racially segregated, and they were tot equal because the black schools were not as high in quality of the facility or in quality of the education they were receiving. The Brown case started because a black, third-grade girl named Linda Brown had to walk by the local white elementary school to get to the black school over a mile away. Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter at the white school and was not allowed to do so. He took his case to the NAACP in Topeka, and Marshall took the Brown’s case to the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in June 1951.
The NAACP fought for Land’s rights based on the hero that “black children felt they were inferior to white children; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal. ” The Board of Education won the case based on Please v. Ferguson once again, even though the Judges did agree that the feeling of being inferior to white children did affect the black children’s desire to learn and succeed (Cozens). The NAACP, Marshall, and Brown appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951, and the case was first heard in December 1952.
The Brown case was combined with four other similar cases about segregation in education from South Carolina (Briggs v. Elliott), Virginia (Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County), Delaware (Gephardt v. Belton), and the District of Columbia (Boiling v. Sharpe). The Supreme Court did not reach a decision at that time because they could not agree. Before they heard the argument again on October 12, 1953, the Court wanted both sides to look at “the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1686. The dates for arguing the case had to be changed because Chief Justice Fred Vinson had a heart attack and died. Earl Warren became the Chief Justice and the Brown case started again on December 7, 1953. The Court had to decide this case based on the argument of Brown and Marshall that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” even if the school buildings themselves were equal. The argument was that even if the buildings, teachers, and supplies were equal, “the separation itself was a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court heard evidence about research where educational psychologists showed white and brown dolls to white children and to black children. When both races of children were asked to pick a doll to play with, they almost always chose the white doll. This research showed how the hillier felt about the importance of each race, and that they all thought that blacks were Interior to winless (Kelly). I née court “ruled anomalously Tanat segregated puddle education violated the Fourteenth Amendment. ” Separating students in schools based on race was declared to be unconstitutional on May 17, 1954 (Snapped).
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case because the decision started desegregation of the public schools which allowed black children and white children to have the same opportunity to learn in equal environments, which also gave black children a stronger motivation to learn and succeed. The Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” statement from the Please case that had been used to determine so many other cases. This decision helped start the Civil Rights Movement of the sass’s where black Americans fought for equal rights and opportunities.
