Brown v Board of Education
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Brown v Board of Education
Fannie Richards v Detroit School
"The Problem We All Live With"
Many people understand the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education to represent the beginning of the end of decades of segregation in public education in Topeka, Kansas. However, the decision actually consolidates five cases from Delaware, South Carolina Virginia, and Washington, DC, as well as Kansas. The Supreme Court docketed these five cases for decision together because each lawsuit was seeking the same relief-an end to segregation in public schools.
Oliver Brown was a railroad welder. He wanted his daughter Linda, then seven years old, to attend her neighborhood school, which was restricted to white children, rather than be bused across town to an elementary school designated for black children. He and twelve other parents filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Kansas Board of Education to change the laws that segregated public schools by race.
Linda Brown commented years later as an adult, "We lived in an integrated community...I had playmates of all nationalities. But when school started I would go one way and they would go another...Being that young, I didn't comprehend skin color."
As a result of the decision in Brown, not only did segregation end in public education as a matter of law, but it also destroyed the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" that had been entrenched in most of American society since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v Ferguson. Plessy encouraged the creation of laws in many states (informally called "Jim Crow" laws) that resulted in total racial segregation - not only in schools but also in housing, employment, and public places such as restaurants, libraries, parks, and theaters.
Thurgood Marshall, one of the lead attorneys representing Linda Brown, was appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson as the first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment, he had successfully argued more cases to the U.S. Supreme Court than any other American, a record that remains unbroken. Due to declining health, he retired from the Court in 1991, and died in 1993 at age 84.
In May of 2004, the National Park Service will open the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site in Linda Brown's formerly segregated elementary school in Topeka. This museum will showcase photos, video, and oral history interviews with first hand participants in the Brown case. Linda Brown is currently 61 years old. Her father Oliver died in 1961 at the age of 42.
For more information:
PBS.org
Ebony, May 2004
Simple Justice, by Richard Kluger
For younger readers:
Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone: The Brown v Board of Education Decision, by Joyce C. Thomas
Thurgood Marshall & The Supreme Court, by Deborah Kent
Other links of interest: the National Park Services website of historic places of the U.S. civil rights movement
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Last modified: 4/30/2004
