brown v board of education of topeka 1954 summary

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Brown v. Board of Education

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Separate But Equal Doctrine 

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws —and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown , was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment , which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . 

Thurgood Marshall , the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren , then governor of California .

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II ), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”

Though well intentioned, the Court’s actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the “ Little Rock Nine ”— were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board didn’t achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent  civil rights movement  in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr .), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 .

Runyon v. McCrary Extends Policy to Private Schools

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary , ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation’s public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education , the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation’s school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts . Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press). Cass Sunstein, “Did Brown Matter?” The New Yorker , May 3, 2004. Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org . Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute , April 17, 2014.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE
• Black Power
• The Civil Rights Movement
• In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
• The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”
• The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.

A segregated society

The brown v. board of education case, thurgood marshall, the naacp, and the supreme court, separate is "inherently unequal", brown ii: desegregating with "all deliberate speed”, what do you think.

• James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 387.
• James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25-27.
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 387.
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 32.
• See Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 2004).
• Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 43-45.
• Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
• Patterson, Grand Expectations, 394-395.

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Primary tabs.

Brown v. Board of Education  (1954) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the  “Separate but Equal” doctrine  and outlawed the ongoing segregation in schools. The court ruled that laws mandating and enforcing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools were “separate but equal” in standards. The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous and felt that " separate educational facilities are inherently unequal ," and hence a violation of the  Equal Protection Clause  of the  Fourteenth Amendment  of the  U.S. Constitution . Nonetheless, since the ruling did not list or specify a particular method or way of how to proceed in ending racial segregation in schools, the Court's ruling i n  Brown II (1955)  demanded states to desegregate “ with all deliberate speed .”

Background :

The events relevant to this specific case first occurred in 1951, when a public school district in Topeka, Kansas refused to let Oliver Brown’s daughter enroll at the nearest school to their home and instead required her to enroll at a school further away. Oliver Brown and his daughter were black. The Brown family, along with twelve other local black families in similar circumstances, filed a class action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education in a federal court arguing that the segregation policy of forcing black students to attend separate schools was unconstitutional. However, the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas ruled against the Browns, justifying their decision on judicial precedent of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in   Plessy v. Ferguson , which ruled that racial segregation did not violate the  Fourteenth Amendment 's  Equal Protection Clause  as long as the facilities and situations were equal, hence the doctrine known as " separate but equal ." After this decision from the District Court in Kansas, the Browns, who were represented by the then NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall,  appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Brown overruled  Plessy v. Ferguson  by holding that the  "separate but equal" doctrine  was unconstitutional for American educational facilities and public schools. This decision led to more integration in other areas and was seen as major victory for the Civil Rights Movement. Many  future litigation cases used the similar argumentation methods used by Marshall in this case. While this was seen as a landmark decision, many in the American Deep South were uncomfortable with this decision. Various Southern politicians tried to actively resist or delay attempts to desegregated their schools. These collective efforts were known as the “ Massive Resistance ,” which was started by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd. Thus, in just four years after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed its ruling again in the case of  Cooper v. Aaron , holding that government officials had no power to ignore the ruling or to frustrate and delay desegregation. 

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1954: brown v. board of education.

On May 17, 1954, in a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional. The decision dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public schools and Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of African Americans, particularly in the South.

Segregation in Schools

Naacp challenges segregation in court, separate, but equal has 'no place', brown v board quick facts.

What is it? A landmark Supreme Court case.

Significance: Ended 'Separate, but equal,' desegregated public schools.

Date: May 17, 1954

Associated Sites: Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site; US Supreme Court Building

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Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park , Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

Last updated: July 12, 2023

Legal Dictionary

The Law Dictionary for Everyone

Brown v. Board of Education

Following is the case brief for Brown v. Board of Education, United States Supreme Court, (1954)

Case Summary of Brown v. Board of Education:

• Oliver Brown was denied admission into a white school
• As a representative of a class action suit, Brown filed a claim alleging that laws permitting segregation in public schools were a violation of the 14 th Amendment equal protection clause .
• After the District Court upheld segregation using Plessy v. Ferguson as authority, Brown petitioned the United States Supreme Court.
• The Supreme Court held that segregation had a profound and detrimental effect on education and segregation deprived minority children of equal protection under the law.

Brown v. Board of Education Case Brief

Statement of Facts:

Oliver Brown and other plaintiffs were denied admission into a public school attended by white children. This was permitted under laws which allowed segregation based on race. Brown claimed that the segregation deprived minority children of equal protection under the 14 th Amendment.  Brown filed a class action, consolidating cases from Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware and Kansas against the Board of Education in a federal district court in Kansas.

Procedural History:

Brown filed suit against the Board of Education in District Court. After the District Court held in favor of the Board, Brown appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Issues and Holding:

Does the segregation on the basis of race in public schools deprive minority children of equal educational opportunities, violating the 14 th Amendment? Yes.

The Court Reversed the District Court’s decision.

Rule of Law or Legal Principle Applied:

Separating educational facilities based on racial classifications is unequal in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 th Amendment.

The Court held that looking to historical legislation and prior cases could not yield a true meaning of the 14 th Amendment because each is inconclusive.

At the time the 14 th Amendment was enacted, almost no African American children were receiving an education. As such, trying to determine the historical intentions surrounding the 14 th Amendment is not helpful. In addition, few public schools existed at the time the amendment was adopted.

Analyzing the text of the amendment itself is necessary to determine its true meaning. The Court held the basic language of the Amendment suggests the intent to prohibit all discriminatory legislation against minorities.

Despite the fact each facility is essentially the same, the Court held it was necessary to examine the actual effect of segregation on education. Over the past few years, public education has turned into one of the most valuable public services both state and local governments have to offer. Since education has a heavy bearing on the future success of each child, the opportunity to be educated must be equal to each student.

The Court stated that the opportunity for education available to segregated minorities has a profound and detrimental effect on both their hearts and minds. Studies showed that segregated students felt less motivated, inferior and have a lower standard of performance than non-minority students. The Court explicitly overturned Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896), stating that segregation deprives African-American students of equal protection under the 14 th Amendment.

Concurring/ Dissenting opinion :

Unanimous decision led by Justice Warren.

Significance:

Brown v. Board of Education was the landmark case which desegregated public schools in the United States. It abolished the idea of “ separate but equal .”

Student Resources:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483

How Brown v. Board of Education Changed Public Education for the Better

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One of the most historical court cases, especially in terms of education, was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This case took on segregation within school systems or the separation of White and Black students within public schools. Up until this case, many states had laws establishing separate schools for White students and another for Black students. This landmark case made those laws unconstitutional.

The decision was handed down on May 17, 1954. It overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which had allowed states legalize segregation within schools. The chief justice in the case was Justice Earl Warren . His court’s decision was a unanimous 9-0 decision that said, “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The ruling essentially led the way for the civil rights movement and essentially integration across the United States.

Fast Facts: Brown v. Board of Education

• Case Argued: December 9–11, 1952; December 7–9, 1953
• Decision Issued:  May 17, 1954
• Petitioners:  Oliver Brown, Mrs. Richard Lawton, Mrs. Sadie Emmanuel, et al
• Respondent:  Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al
• Key Questions: Does the segregation of public education based solely on race violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
• Unanimous Decision: Justices Warren, Black, Reed, Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, Burton, Clark, and Minton
• Ruling: "Separate but equal" educational facilities, segregated on the basis of race, are inherently unequal and in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

A class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the city of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in 1951. The plaintiffs consisted of 13 parents of 20 children who attended the Topeka School District. They filed the suit hoping that the school district would change its policy of racial segregation .

Each of the plaintiffs was recruited by the Topeka NAACP , led by McKinley Burnett, Charles Scott, and Lucinda Scott. Oliver L. Brown was the named plaintiff in the case. He was an African American welder, father, and assistant pastor at a local church. His team chose to use his name as part of a legal tactic to have a man’s name on the front of the suit. He was also a strategic choice because he, unlike some of the other parents, was not a single parent and, the thinking went, would appeal more strongly to a jury. 

In the fall of 1951, 21 parents attempted to enroll their children in the closest school to their homes, but each was denied enrollment and told that they must enroll in the segregated school. This prompted the class action suit to be filed. At the district level, the court ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education saying that both schools were equal in regards to transportation, buildings, curriculum, and highly qualified teachers. The case then went on to the Supreme Court and was combined with four other similar suits from across the country.

Significance

Brown v. Board  entitled students to receive a quality education regardless of their racial status. It also allowed for African American teachers to teach in any public school they chose, a privilege that was not granted before the Supreme Court ruling in 1954. The ruling set the foundation for the civil rights movement and gave African American’s hope that “separate, but equal” on all fronts would be changed. Unfortunately, however, desegregation was not that easy and is a project that has not been finished, even today. 

• Brown v. Board of Education
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• Bolling v. Sharpe: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact
• Browder v. Gayle: Court Case, Arguments, Impact
• Lau v. Nichols: Are Schools Required to Provide Bilingual Instruction?
• Cooper v. Aaron: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact
• Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1951 to 1959
• How Segregation Was Ruled Illegal in U.S.
• The Black Struggle for Freedom
• Federalism and How It Works
• Biography of Thurgood Marshall, First Black Supreme Court Justice
• The Warren Court: Its Impact and Importance
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Did Not End the Movement for Equality
• Supreme Court Decisions - Everson v. Board of Education
• 5 Key Events in Affirmative Action History

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits states from segregating public school students on the basis of race. This marked a reversal of the "separate but equal" doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson that had permitted separate schools for white and colored children provided that the facilities were equal.

Based on an 1879 law, the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas operated separate elementary schools for white and African-American students in communities with more than 15,000 residents. The NAACP in Topeka sought to challenge this policy of segregation and recruited 13 Topeka parents to challenge the law on behalf of 20 children. In 1951, each of the families attempted to enroll the children in the school closest to them, which were schools designated for whites. Each child was refused admission and directed to the African-American schools, which were much further from where they lived. For example, Linda Brown, the daughter of the named plaintiff, could have attended a white school several blocks from her house but instead was required to walk some distance to a bus stop and then take the bus for a mile to an African-American school. Once the children had been refused admission to the schools designated for whites, the NAACP brought the lawsuit. They were unsuccessful at the trial court level, where the 1896 Supreme Court precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson was found to be decisive. Even though the trial court agreed that educational segregation had a negative effect on African-American children, it applied the standard of Plessy in finding that the white and African-American schools offered sufficiently equal quality of teachers, curricula, facilities, and transportation. Since the NAACP did not challenge the details of those findings, it essentially cast the appeal as a direct challenge to the system imposed by Plessy. When the Supreme Court heard the appeal, it combined Brown with four other cases addressing parallel issues in South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. The NAACP was responsible for bringing each of these lawsuits, and it had lost on each of them at the trial court level except the Delaware case of Gebhart v. Belton. Brown stood apart from the others in the group as the only case that challenged the separate but equal doctrine on its face. The others were based on assertions of gross inequality, which would have violated the standard in Plessy as well.

• Earl Warren (Author)
• Hugo Lafayette Black
• Stanley Forman Reed
• Felix Frankfurter
• William Orville Douglas
• Robert Houghwout Jackson
• Harold Hitz Burton
• Tom C. Clark
• Sherman Minton

Supreme Court opinions are rarely unanimous, and it appears that Justice Frankfurter deliberately argued for a re-hearing to stall the case while the Court built a consensus behind its decision. This was designed to prevent proponents of segregation from using dissents to build future challenges to Brown. Despite the eventual unanimity, the judges had a wide range of views. Reed and Clark were not opposed to segregation per se, while Frankfurter and Jackson were hesitant to issue a bold decision that might be difficult to enforce. (Jackson and Reed initially planned to write a dissent together.) Douglas, Black, Burton, and Minton were relatively ready to overturn Plessy from the outset, however, as was Chief Justice Warren. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's appointment of Warren to replace former Chief Justice Frederick Moore Vinson, who died in September 1953, thus may have played a crucial role in how events unfolded. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American children into California schools. Warren based much of his opinion on information from social science studies rather than court precedent. This was understandable because few decisions existed on which the Court could rely, yet it would draw criticism for its non-traditional approach. The decision also used language that was relatively accessible to non-lawyers because Warren felt that it was necessary for all Americans to understand its logic.

This decision ranks among the most dramatic issued by the Supreme Court, in part due to Warren's insistence that the Fourteenth Amendment gave the Court the power to end segregation even without Congressional authority. Like the use of non-legal sources to justify his reasoning, Warren's "activist" view of the Court's role remains controversial to the current day. The illegality of segregation does not, however, and a series of later decisions were implemented to try to force states to comply with Brown. Unfortunately, the reality is that this decision's vision of complete desegregation has not been achieved in many areas of the U.S., and the problems of enforcement that Jackson identified have proven difficult to solve.

U.S. Supreme Court

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Argued December 9, 1952

Reargued December 8, 1953

Decided May 17, 1954*

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal. Pp. 486-496.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education. Pp. 489-490.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Pp. 492-493.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. P. 493.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal. Pp. 493-494.

(e) The "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson,   163 U.S. 537 , has no place in the field of public education. P. 495.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees. Pp. 495-496.

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Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.

Prologue Magazine

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

A landmark case unresolved fifty years later.

Spring 2004, Vol. 36, No. 1

By Jean Van Delinder

"Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments." —Chief Justice Earl Warren, Opinion on Segregated Laws Delivered May 1954

First page of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. (Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, RG 267)

View in National Archives Catalog

When the United States Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case fifty years ago this spring, it thrust the issue of school desegregation into the national spotlight.

The ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" brought racial issues into the forefront of the national consciousness as never before and forced all Americans to confront a racially divided society and undemocratic social practices. At the same time, the decision opened the floodgates of decades of school desegregation suits in both the North and the South.

But the ruling did much more than that. It gave impetus to a young civil rights movement that would write much of American history during the next few decades.

The school segregation issue was ripe for being brought to the first tier of social concerns. Elsewhere in American society, segregation was breaking down.

Important steps were taken in 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 , forbidding racial discrimination by any defense contractor and establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee as a regulatory agency to investigate charges of racial discrimination.

In 1947, Major League Baseball saw its first black player in Jackie Robinson . In 1948, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces, which had already seen black and white Americans fighting side by side in World War II. That same year, under the guise of states' rights, racial issues split the Democratic Party.

School segregation came at a high cost even outside of the human costs. For example, school districts had to maintain two school systems within one geographical area. Prior to 1954, Topeka, Kansas, maintained half-empty classrooms in segregated schools in order to keep the races separate. After Brown, this pattern continued with racism disguised as "freedom of choice"—justifying building new schools in outlying areas as merely a response to the population shift to new subdivisions rapidly being built in the western areas of the city (which turned out to be predominantly white and upper class). Left behind were the less affluent, primarily black, residents who had little choice but to send their children to outdated and increasingly inferior schools.

Brown also caused Americans to revisit the role of the national government in regulating local issues. Century-old arguments, reminiscent of the debates over slavery, were revived to defend the primacy of states' rights over federal jurisdiction. The same language used to defend slavery was now being used to defend segregation. Words like "interposition" and "nullification"—which hadn't been heard for more than a century—were used to defend school segregation. 1

Just as the Civil War caused Americans to confront the ugly reality of slavery, so too did Brown inspire Americans to confront its undemocratic system of education.

In recognizing the importance of education as the foundation of a democratic society, the Brown decision expressed the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson that publicly funded education was to be the primary mechanism to develop a natural elite and to ensure that the new republic had a literate citizenry regardless of social class. Jefferson's beliefs were reflected in the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who justified the significance of education in the Brown decision as being "the very foundation of good citizenship." 2

The Topeka Brown case is important because it helped convince the Court that even when physical facilities and other "tangible" factors were equal, segregation still deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities.

Over the years, numerous scholars have traced the history of the Brown case and analyzed its impact as federal legislation. Yet most of these studies have been written from a national perspective, distant from the day-to-day life of the local people most affected by school desegregation.

The Topeka Brown records provide a glimpse of what people were doing in their local communities, where the struggle for racial justice was a continuing reality, year in and year out. The records help us to understand the reality of school segregation in places like Topeka, where it was only legal in the elementary schools. What was the effect of "separate-but-equal"?

Overview of the National Case before the Supreme Court

In October 1952, the Supreme Court announced it would hear five pending school desegregation cases collectively. In chronological order, the five consolidated cases were 1949: Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. (South Carolina); 1950: Bolling v. Sharpe (District of Columbia); 3 May 1951: Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al. (Virginia); June 1951: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas); October 1951: Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al. (Delaware).

These cases all document inadequate funding for segregated schools—meaning that many black children lacked playgrounds, ball fields, cafeterias, libraries, auditoriums, and other amenities provided for white children in newer schools. In Summerton, South Carolina, and Hockessin, Delaware, school buses were only provided for whites, while black children had to walk. In Claymont, Delaware, and Farmville, Virginia, there was no senior high school for black pupils.

The Brown case of Topeka, Kansas, itself included twelve other plaintiffs besides Oliver Brown, whose daughter Linda was being bused twenty-one blocks from her home to a segregated school. The nearest school in her neighborhood was only a few blocks away, but it was for whites only.

All of these cases were appealed to the Supreme Court, and the first round of arguments were held December 9–11, 1952. The following June, the Supreme Court ordered that a second round of arguments be heard in October 1953. When Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Jr., died unexpectedly of a heart attack in September, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated California Governor Earl Warren to replace Vinson. The Court rescheduled Brown v. Board arguments for December. On May 17, 1954, the Court declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, effectively overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision mandating "separate but equal."

The Brown ruling directly affected legally segregated schools in twenty-one states. In 1954, seventeen states had laws requiring segregated schools (Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware), and four other states had laws permitting rather than requiring segregated schools (Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming). Kansas's state statutes restricted segregated elementary schools only to cities, such as Topeka, that had populations of more than fifteen thousand.

Page 11 of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which states that the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place in public education. (Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, RG 267)

Though the 1954 ruling declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, it did not specify how this was to be remedied. Originally the Court scheduled arguments on this subject for later in the year, but it did not hear what would become the third round of arguments in Brown until April 1955. 4 On the last day of its term, the Supreme Court ordered desegregation to begin with "all deliberate speed."

In the intervening year, the District of Columbia and some school districts in other states had voluntarily begun to desegregate their schools. However, state-sanctioned opposition to desegregation was already well under way in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia, where the Court's decision had been declared "null, void, and no effect." Across the South, schools were closed and public education was suspended. Public funds were disbursed to parents to subsidize the education of their children in private schools. Some states even went so far as to impose sanctions on anyone who implemented desegregation.

Effects of the Supreme Court Decision in Kansas

In Topeka, resistance to desegregation was more indirect, subtle, and covert. Historically, the color line in Kansas was more permeable than it was South Carolina or Virginia. Its "border state" ideology was directed more toward racial collegiality and inclusion than animosity and exclusion. Kansas had relatively permissive segregation statutes (compared to some southern states).

For example, segregation was permitted in elementary schools where the population exceeded fifteen thousand (cities of the first class). The one segregated high school—Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kansas—had been established in 1905 after a special act of the legislature allowed segregation of a secondary school in this one instance. However, Kansas's permissive racial statutes served to disguise the underlying reality of an unwritten code of racial separation that rivaled locales where total de jure public segregation was practiced. Topeka's continued segregation of its public school system after Brown illustrates how the dismantling of a de jure system of segregation does not necessarily include the end of racist social practices.

Over the several decades following Brown, covert opposition to desegregation was carried out under cover of school redistricting and convoluted attendance boundaries. It was also aided by real estate developers riding the postwar housing boom, who urged white Topekans to buy new houses and move to the newer—and racially homogenous—western suburbs. The City of Topeka obliged this migration by annexing western territory several times between 1950 and 1979. There was a corresponding rise in demand for more schools from the Topeka Board of Education and its successor, Unified School District #501. Between 1957 and 1966, Topeka witnessed the creation of an "alternative predominantly white, school sub-system generally around the peripheral boundary but specifically concentrated in the southern and western portions of the Topeka school system." New schools built after 1959 would have pupil racial ratios that would be all or disproportionately white. Additionally, classroom additions and portable classrooms would be primarily placed at disproportionately white schools.

Though the official end of segregation in 1954 met with far less hostility in Kansas than in Mississippi or South Carolina, African Americans still encountered obstacles. News correspondent Carl T. Rowan had found Topeka to be a "pretty segregated city" when he lived there as a navy trainee during World War II. Returning to Kansas in 1953, he described his earlier experiences by observing, "Topeka was a paradox. There was no Jim Crow in some areas where you had expected it; segregation had deep roots where it was not expected."

The state's permissive segregation laws meant that overt segregation was strictly limited, while covert segregationist practices arose unrestrained. "There was no segregation on city buses, or in any public transportation," Rowan recalled. "But I was unable to go to a movie or into a restaurant with white navy buddies. Hotels, bowling alleys and other public recreation facilities were closed to Negroes."

A decade later and just a few months before the first Brown decision, Rowan still found it difficult to find a restaurant willing to serve him and his companion, attorney Charles Scott, the original lawyer involved in the Brown case. Despite the legal demise of segregation, informal segregation was still intact. Rowan and Scott were asked by one restaurant owner to eat in the kitchen not because of any law requiring racial separation, but simply because it was his "policy." As an attorney, Scott understood that it was much easier to remove segregation laws than to confront and change the informal racial practices that permeated the embarrassing day-to-day reality of racial segregation. "And it stems from Jim Crow schools," Scott declared to Rowan as they left one restaurant without being served, "because when segregation is part of the pattern of learning it permeates every area of life."

Early Challenges to School Segregation in Topeka: 1900–1950

In Kansas, the antecedents of the Brown case can be traced back through eleven previous lawsuits challenging segregation. Beginning in 1880, these suits all challenged the legality of school segregation as it was practiced in Kansas. 5 Of the three cases that involved Topeka's schools, two are especially relevant to the Brown case. The earliest case, dating from 1901, involved the introduction of segregation in recently annexed areas (the Reynolds case), and the other case (the Graham case in 1940) involved the decision of whether or not junior high schools fell under the state's segregation statutes.

Similar patterns of racial upheaval and containment, begun with the annexation issues related to the Reynolds case and the limitation of segregation to elementary schools as illustrated by the Graham case, continued throughout the Brown litigation.

The issues involved in both of these cases were the effect of segregation itself on public education, the system of social practices that had arisen around it, and whether segregation as it existed was a violation of the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, the same issues involved in the Brown decision.

"In approaching this problem," Chief Justice Warren wrote in 1954, "we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the [Fourteenth] Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws."

In Kansas, both the Reynolds and Graham cases illustrate the development of the issues that came to fruition nationally in the Brown case.

The Reynolds Case

The Topeka State Journal reported the historic May 17, 1954, decision that segregation in public schools must end. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21, NARA–Central Plains Region [Kansas City])

On February 1, 1901, William Reynolds tried to enroll his eight-year-old son Raul in the new school that was reserved for whites. When he was refused, Reynolds filed suit on behalf of his son. In the complaint, the court record stated that

Because of race and color, and for no other reason whatever, his child has been and is excluded from attending school in said new building by the express order and direction of said board . . . thus putting publicly upon the plaintiff and his child the badge of a servile race, and holds them up to public gaze as unfit to associate, even in a public institution of the state, with other races and nationalities, in violation of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the constitution of the United States, and, in violation of said fourteenth amendment, denies to the plaintiff and his child the equal protection of the laws.

The context behind the Reynolds suit was related to the geographical circumstances of Topeka. The westward growth of Topeka was caused in part by its being geographically constrained by the Kansas River to its north and southeast. Due to the contours of its flood plain, the least desirable land was north and east of the city, an area that came to be predominately African American. The more desirable land—which rarely flooded—was toward the west and south, and was predominately white. This pattern of settlement would continue throughout the twentieth century.

In the 1890s, the city of Topeka annexed part of a rural district, No. 91, south and west of the town's center, locally known as the "Lowman Hill District." Being a rural district, No. 91 did not have segregated schools. After annexation it continued to be integrated because "it did not become convenient or expedient to make provision for separate schools . . . until the said school building was destroyed by fire." After a fire occurred on July 20, 1900, the district implemented segregation by ordering that the fifty African American children living in the area be forced to attend classes in an old building that had been moved to the original site of the burnt-out school and outfitted with second-hand furniture. The district then built a new school for the 130 white children living in the area, which brought about the Reynolds suit.

Reynolds ultimately lost his case, and his son had to attend a segregated school. The school board argued that the new school building was larger and more centrally located in order to accommodate the white children, who outnumbered the African American children living in the area.

We see that as early as 1901, the parents of white children were able to enjoy the benefits of sending their children to newer, neighborhood schools while the parents of African American children had to send their children to segregated schools, many of which were not located close to where they lived.

The Graham Case

Just as land annexation resulted in a challenge to segregation, so too did the shift toward junior high curriculum bring another challenge to Topeka's segregated schools with the Graham case. When the segregation statutes were first written in 1861 and later modified in 1879, junior high schools did not exist, and very few people of any race went on to high school. The subsequent redefinition of state segregation statutes after 1940 was in response to an innovation in the institutional structure of public education accompanied by rapidly increasing enrollments in secondary and post-secondary institutions.

When Topeka adopted the junior high system, it implemented a different educational curriculum for seventh and eighth grade students based on race. White students were provided with a 6-3-3 system, consisting of six years of elementary or grade school, three years of junior high school, and three years of senior high school. Black children were under an 8-1-3 plan.

The 8-1-3 plan meant that African American children in Topeka remained in segregated schools through the eighth grade, choosing either to enter an integrated ninth grade at Boswell Junior High or remain in a segregated class by electing to attend Roosevelt Junior High. White children who left elementary school after sixth grade and attended junior high school were consequently introduced to a much more specialized curriculum.

A 1953 letter from the superintendent of schools advises a black teacher that she won't be retained if segregation is ruled unconstitutional. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21, NARA–Central Plains Region [Kansas City])

The court transcript of the Graham case illustrates the differences between the segregated elementary schools and the junior high schools. When the plaintiff, who had just finished sixth grade, tried to enroll in Boswell Junior High School, he was refused admittance on the basis of his race. He filed suit, claiming the course of instruction offered at Buchanan Elementary was not equal to that available at Boswell Junior High.Boswell was a new facility and built for the express purpose of being a junior high. It contained many more classrooms than the elementary schools, allowing for students to change classes for specialized teaching. In the segregated schools, one instructor taught most of the subjects.

At segregated Buchanan School, one teacher taught most of the math and English courses, while at Boswell Junior High School different instructors taught all these subjects. In the testimony provided by witnesses in the Graham case, the home economics teacher at Buchanan, Miss Ruth Ridley, reported that though her students were well prepared when they graduated from the eighth grade, they did not have facilities comparable to the better equipped and more up-to-date sewing and cooking rooms at Boswell.

Graham won his case: The junior highs in Topeka were legally desegregated. However, the effect was uncertain—desegregation did not include the teaching and administrative staff. For example, after the Graham case, eight African American teachers lost their jobs due to the integration of the junior highs. The assumption that the curriculum was not equal to the white schools reflected poorly on the high dedication and exemplary training of the black teachers, which many of them rightly resented. At two of the four segregated schools in Topeka, more of the teachers held master's degrees than at any of the white grade schools.

Though no formal policy existed to not hire black teachers, it soon became obvious in Topeka that the number of African American teachers slowly dwindled after April 1953. Before the Brown decision, Topeka had 27 African American teachers who taught 779 students. By 1956, the number of African American pupils had increased to 898, but the number of full-time teachers had declined to 21. After the desegregation of the elementary schools in 1954, for most black teachers in Topeka and elsewhere, Brown did not result in integration; it still meant segregation or even worse, unemployment. This decline in employment of black teachers after integration is a largely unacknowledged fact of desegregation.

Contemporary Challenges to School Segregation in Topeka: 1950–1985

By 1950, the Topeka school system had twenty-two elementary schools (9.6 percent black), six junior high schools (9.9 percent black), and one senior high school (7.6 percent black). As permitted by state law, racial segregation of students at the elementary level was strictly adhered to. The four schools that were maintained for black students were Buchanan, McKinley, Monroe, and Washington. Each of these four schools was geographically located in predominately black areas, although students were brought in from throughout the system. Five of the eighteen white elementary schools were located in predominately white areas, while the remaining thirteen schools, though reserved exclusively for whites, were located in racially mixed neighborhoods.

Segregation was maintained at a considerable cost as the four segregated elementary schools had much smaller student enrollments than their white counterparts. In 1950, all four of the segregated schools had an average of 143 pupil spaces underutilized, while the all-white schools were much more crowded, averaging only 28 spaces underutilized. The average black school had an enrollment of 165 students, while the white schools had an average enrollment of 342. Topeka did not use the available classroom space in the black schools to relieve overcrowding in the white schools. Given that thirteen of the eighteen schools reserved for whites were in racially mixed neighborhoods, it would have been relatively simple to reassign pupils without the additional expense of providing transportation.

Racial segregation was sustained over the next thirty years as the Topeka School Board constantly changed boundary lines ensuring that some its elementary schools remained segregated, and its high schools became more segregated than they were before 1954. In 1955, three former all-black elementary schools were still 100 percent black with only 1 percent of its black children attending elementary schools that were formerly for whites.

From 1931 to 1958, Topeka had one, integrated, senior high school: Topeka Senior High School. Five years after the original Brown decision, when faced with the opportunity to continue the racial parity at the senior high school level that had already existed for more tan twenty years, the Topeka Board of Education made a series of decisions that ensured that racial segregation would be compounded by class. As city boundaries expanded to the south and west, two more high schools were added: Highland Park Senior High School, acquired through annexation in 1959, and Topeka West Senior High School, opened in 1961. The aging Topeka Senior High now had 83.2 percent of the black students in the Topeka school system assigned to it while was approximately 11 percent black, and Highland Park was 5.1 percent black. One year later, were now being Topeka High, while Highland Park had 6.5 percent and Topeka West had 0.3 percent.

The 1960 U.S. Census data indicates that the largest concentration of Topeka's black population with school-age children resided midway between Topeka High and Highland Park. A simple change in the attendance boundary when Highland Park was annexed would have brought its minority enrollment to 50 percent. It would have also alleviated overcrowding at Topeka High, since Highland Park had 497 empty seats. Instead, the Topeka School Board elected to build a third high school (Topeka West) at the western fringe of the growing city, assigning to it 2 black children and 702 white children.

Twenty years after Brown, in 1974, the Topeka school system (U.S.D #501) still underutilized predominately black schools while white schools remained overcrowded. For example, there was a 15.1 percent black enrollment at the elementary level, but more than half of them (56.7 percent) were assigned to seven schools, while the nine of the remaining eleven had an average of 4.5 black children assigned to each of them.

Two of those schools, McClure and Potwin, were all-white in 1974. On September 10, 1973, Johnson v. Whittier was filed as a class action brought on behalf of "all Black children who were then or had during the past ten years been students of elementary and junior high schools in East Topeka and North Topeka." The complaint concentrated more on "equality of facilities than distribution of students, alleging that the children in West Topeka and South Topeka received vastly superior educational facilities and opportunities, including buildings, equipment, libraries and faculties, than could be obtained by students in the areas of East Topeka and North Topeka, which contained higher percentages of minority students."

Though Johnson failed to qualify as a class action suit, it did set off an investigation by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) into "the practices of the Topeka public schools regarding race discrimination." This investigation led HEW to prepare to cut off federal aid to Topeka schools for desegregation noncompliance and to schedule an administrative hearing. This action also resulted in the filing of U.S.D. #501 v. Weinberger, No. 74-160-C5. Though on August 27, 1974, Johnson moved to consolidate with Weinberger, this motion was never decided. The Weinberger case was later dismissed after the Topeka school district's motion for a preliminary injunction was granted by a U.S. district court judge, who found that the district court, and not HEW, had jurisdiction over Topeka's school desegregation.

The school board argued that it was in compliance with the original desegregation plan that was approved by the district court on October 28, 1955, and fully implemented by September 1, 1961. Since the junior high schools were desegregated before Brown in the early 1940s, and the high school was never segregated, they were not considered to be part of the original court order. Additionally, the school board argued that the district court has "exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether or not the Topeka school system is in violation of the Final Order of Judgment and the Court approved plan for desegregation." The HEW attorney disagreed, stressing, "that while the original plaintiffs in our case were attacking segregation at only the elementary school level, HEW was charged with investigating discrimination in all its aspects at all levels of the public school system." Meanwhile, two other class action suits related to illegal segregation were filed on August 8, 1979 (Miller v. Board of Education), and September 7, 1979 (Chapman v. Board of Education).

The original Brown case had targeted legal, or de jure, segregation. But it could not address de facto segregation, or the type of segregation that was the "natural" outgrowth of an individual's choice and their financial resources allowing them to live in any given neighborhood. In 1979 the Brown case was reactivated.

The original lead plaintiff, Linda Brown, now an adult, and other African American parents and their children argued that the Topeka School Board and its successor, U.S.D. #501, had failed to desegregate within the mandates of Brown and Brown II, in which the court in May 1955 ordered that desegregation proceed with "all deliberate speed." Between September 10, 1973, and September 7, 1979, four separate cases were filed in the federal district court of Kansas raising questions as to whether the Topeka Board of Education and its successor had complied with the mandates of the high court. Though these cases resulted in minor judgments, they did prompt an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights of the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). HEW found that Topeka was not in compliance and brought further attention to the ways in which the Topeka Board of Education sought to circumvent desegregation.

The reopening of Brown in 1979 tried to prove that the resegregation of Topeka's schools was not the "natural" consequence of individual choice, but rather the result of the deliberate actions of U.S.D. #501 to segregate its more affluent citizens (primarily white), who had fled to its western suburbs, from the less affluent (primarily black), concentrated in East Topeka. Because the school board had designed and built schools with the effect of limiting access to its newer facilities to only those residing in Topeka's western suburbs, most African Americans in Topeka were relegated to East Topeka's rapidly aging and increasingly inferior schools.

Not only were African Americans geographically bound to attend inferior schools, they were also now economically limited by not having the financial resources to purchase homes that automatically provided them access to newer and better schools. By the 1970s, Topeka was more spatially and economically segregated than it had been before Brown.

There was one important difference: segregation was no longer based on race so much as it was on class, even though being "black" and being "poor" were fast becoming synonymous, not only in Topeka, but in many other American cities as well. The 1970 census showed that in Topeka, Kansas, the mean family income in the wealthy, predominately white West Hills area was triple that of the predominately black southeast area: $19,909 to $6,886. This statistic is also reflected in the 1970 median value of housing, $28,800 in West Hills to $9,550 in East Topeka.

In October 1986 the reactivated Brown was tried in the District Court of the District of Kansas. Six months later the plaintiffs appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit when the district court decided that there was not enough evidence of purposeful discrimination.

On December 11, 1989, the court of appeals voted to reverse the findings of the lower court. The school district appealed to the Supreme Court, but on April 20, 1992, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the court of appeals for further consideration. The appellate court reaffirmed its earlier decision and denied rehearing on January 28, 1993.

A few months later on June 21, 1994, the Supreme Court declined to consider the matter further. Finally, on July 25, 1994, the district court approved the school district's third desegregation proposal, but the school district continued to be subject to the court's jurisdiction.

As the Brown case files demonstrate, by choosing not to distribute the responsibility of desegregation over the entire school system, the Topeka Board of Education, and its successor U.S.D. #501, used its administrative tools in an ongoing manner to actively separate black from white.

What is even more disturbing is that after 1954, not only was there continued segregation at the elementary level, but it had also crept into the middle, junior, and senior high grades as well. Segregation after 1954 was perpetuated not on racial lines but class lines. That class incorporated the race most affected by segregation made it even more pernicious than before Brown.

The issues involved in this case are far from resolved. Unlike segregation laws, the social practices that arose to circumvent Brown fifty years ago are much more difficult to overcome.

Jean Van Delinder teaches sociology and American studies at Oklahoma State University. Her book on the early civil rights movement, Border Campaigns: A Genealogy of Civil Rights Protest, will be published later this year.

Note on Sources

Researching the Brown case is complicated because there are really two cases: the famous Supreme Court case called Brown (which was in fact a consolidation of five school desegregation cases including the Topeka, Kansas, case), and the original Topeka case Brown. In this essay, I focus on the specifics of the Topeka school case and its aftermath using the files housed at the National Archives and Records Administration–Central Plains (Kansas City).

The Topeka Brown case files first arrived in Kansas City on September 1, 1967, as part of records center accession 021-68A367. According to Tim Rives, an archives specialist at NARA–Central Plains, Brown (T-316) had "been removed and placed in the archival depository, not as an actual transfer of custody, but more for safekeeping, to store it in archival quality space." The Brown files left NARA in the late 1970s and were returned almost twenty years later as an archives accession (meaning permanently transferred from the courts to NARA) on September 27, 1994. On that date, the court files became available to researchers; however, not all the files were completely returned until the last exhibits were transferred to NARA on August 29, 2000. These records contain a wealth of information about school segregation, desegregation, and resegregation in Topeka, which is a microcosm of what happened nationally in the fifty years since the original Brown decision.

Selected primary sources: William D. Lamson, "Race and Schools in Topeka, Kansas," March 1, 1985, p. 164, Plaintiff's Exhibit 219, T-316; William Reynolds v. The Board of Education of Topeka of the State of Kansas, Vol. 66, p. 674, Supreme Court of Kansas, Plaintiff's Exhibit 23, T-316; "Lowman Hill School: Fight to be brought to a Final Test, Case has been Filed," Topeka Capital Journal, Friday, February 7, 1902, Box 12, Folder 297, Plaintiff's Exhibit 297, T-316; Anna Mary Murphy, "Negro Problem in Kansas—Negro Teachers Hit by Desegregation," Topeka Capital, January 29, 1956, Box 16, #293, Plaintiff's Exhibit 293, T-316; Johnson v. Whittier, T-5430, Plaintiffs Exhibit 78, Brown v. Board, T-316; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1970 Census of Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics, PC (1)-C, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1971.

Selected secondary sources: Carl T. Rowan, "Jim Crow's Last Stand: December 1953," in Reporting Civil Rights, Part One: American Journalism 1941–1963 (New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2003). Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).

1 "Interposition" was a doctrine declared unconstitutional before the Civil War, supposedly allowing states to "interpose" their own authority in order "to protect their citizens from unjust actions of the federal government." It was resurrected to justify continuing school segregation as early as November 1955 in an editorial by James Kilpatrick that appeared in the Richmond News Leader. W. D. Workman, Jr., "The Deep South," in Don Shoemaker, ed., "With All Deliberate Speed" (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), p. 97.

2 Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al. 347 U.S. 483 (691).

3 The U.S. Supreme Court filed a separate opinion on Bolling because the Fourteenth Amendment was not applicable in Washington, D.C. In this case, the Court held that racial segregation in the District of Columbia public schools violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

4 This delay was related to the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. To fill the vacancy, President Eisenhower nominated John Marshall Harlan in October 1954. Ironically, Harlan was the grandson of Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy. In 1896, Harlan wrote the prophetic words in his dissent that "separate but equal" would forever stamp blacks with a badge of inferiority. This same type of argument would prove a decisive factor fifty years later in Brown.

5 The following eleven cases reached the Kansas Supreme Court: Board of the City of Ottawa et al. v. Leslie Tinnon (1881); Knox v. Board of Education, Independence (1893); Reynolds v. Board of Education, Topeka (1903); Cartwright v. Board of Education, Coffeyville (1906); Rowles v. Board of Education, Wichita (1907); Williams v. Parsons (1908); Woolridge v. Board of Education of Galena (1916); Thurman-Watts v. Board of Education of Coffeyville (1924); Wright v. Board of Education, Topeka (1929); Graham v. Board of Education, Topeka (1941); Webb v. School District No. 90, South Park Johnson County, Kansas (1949).

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

In many states African American students were placed in schools that were inferior to those attended by white children. The plaintiffs in Topeka did not charge that the schools' facilities their children attended were inferior, but that segregation itself did psychological and educational damage to black children forced to attend schools isolated from the other children in the community. 

They began to develop their challenge in 1950 with Topeka attorneys Charles Scott , John Scott, and Charles Bledsoe.  A petition to the school board was drafted and a number of African American citizens began the difficult but successful effort to collect necessary signatures. They were assisted in this effort by volunteers from the Menninger Foundation. When the Board of Education failed to terminate segregation as requested, black Topekans, joined by the NAACP, and several other cases: Briggs v. Elliott from South Carolina; Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County , Virginia; Bolling v. Sharpe from the District of Columbia; and Gebhart v. Belton from Delaware, to take their fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the time of the Brown oral argument, 17 states in the Union provided for separate schools for white and black children. Four others permitted school boards to segregate. Those four were Wyoming, Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

The Brown case was the first case to be argued to the court. Robert Carter, representing the Brown family and the other plaintiffs, began his argument on December 9, 1952.

Listen to this interview with Judge Robert Lee Carter in 1992.

The state of Kansas was represented by 36-year-old Assistant Attorney General Paul Wilson. By the fall of 1952, the school board of Topeka had been transformed by elections to a group whose majority did not want segregation and did not want to defend it. Kansas Attorney General Harold Fatzer, who would later become chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, was not enthusiastic about the state's side of the case. However, he could not concede that Kansas' law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court essentially ordered the attorney general's office to file a brief and present oral arguments. Wilson, who would later become a much beloved law professor at the University of Kansas, wrote extensively about his experience in Brown. He had a feeling that he would lose the case because, as he said later, "history and social conscience had simply overtaken the law."

Following the 1952 oral argument, the Supreme Court justices remained deeply divided over the question of whether to uphold racial segregation in education. At the conclusion of the Court's session, the justices delayed their decision by asking the parties to present additional arguments. Five questions were issued to the parties, focusing on the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment and on judicial power to abolish segregation even if such abolition had not been contemplated by the writers of the Amendment and those who ratified it. The Court scheduled reargument on October 12, 1953. But those plans changed on September 9, 1953, when Chief Justice Fred Vinson died of a heart attack at the age of 63.

Less than one month after Chief Justice Vinson's death, Earl Warren took the oath of office to become the new Chief Justice of the United States. New arguments in Brown were rescheduled to begin on December 7, 1953.

During those arguments, the parties focused on whether, at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Congress and others understood the Amendment would outlaw segregation in public schools. The parties also addressed whether future members of Congresses or the court had the power to interpret the Amendment to abolish segregation, it there was no such understanding at the time the Amendment was adopted.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that segregated public education violated the Fourteenth Amendment, a conclusion that rested not necessarily on the understanding or conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but on the later full development of public education and its current status in American life throughout the nation.

Because its decision applied to all public schools in a variety of local conditions, the Supreme Court was concerned about how to design a remedy. It directed the parties to submit additional briefs and return for another argument in 1955, this time concerning the relief that should be ordered. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that school boards must make a "prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance" and that the courts would monitor school boards to make sure they were putting compliance plans in place and following them.

In 1999, the U.S. District Court finally closed the Brown case in Topeka, after monitoring compliance for 40 years. Today some U.S. school districts are still under monitoring and supervision of federal courts.

The Brown decision altered the daily lives of black and white Americans. It laid a foundation of equal rights and opportunities for all. It demonstrated that educational opportunity and achievement are core values and recognized that education can be a great equalizer among people of different races, classes, and backgrounds. It shines as a beacon to all Americans and to the rest of the world, demonstrating that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the tenets of the United States Constitution will be universally applied to all citizens.

The landmark case Brown v. Board of Education was the result of the hard work of many people, including the following Topeka plaintiffs, who began their challenge in the U.S. District Court in 1951:

Entry: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Author: Kansas Historical Society

Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.

Date Created: June 2003

Date Modified: January 2019

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court in which the doctrine of “separate but equal,” specifically in regard to public education, was deemed unconstitutional. The Court decided unanimously (9-0) for the plaintiffs, overturning the Plessy v Ferguson (1896) decision in the context of education. The decision, based upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, deemed separate educational facilities to be “inherently unequal”. Not only was this case a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, it also paved the way for future supreme court rulings which declared all forms of segregation to be unconstitutional.

Prior to Brown v Board of Education in 1954, racial segregation in the United States was legally permitted by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896.  In the infamous “separate but equal” decision of Plessy v Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that as long as separate facilities for separate races were equal, they did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment .  In the early 1900s, several cases received minor victories in the struggle for racial equality such as Murray v. Maryland (1936), Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938), Sweat v. Painter (1950), and  McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education (1950) . In these cases, while the supreme court recognized the inequality in segregated education, they stopped short of endorsing mass desegregation to achieve said educational equality.

The case of Brown v Board of Education is actually five separate cases that were heard together by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the issue of segregation in public schools. The individual cases were Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.) , Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Belton . While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools. The decision in  Brown v. Board of Education  only applied to four of those cases, with  Bolling v. Sharpe being decided on independently of the other four, as it argued segregation of public education violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, as opposed to the 14th’s Equal Protection Clause.

Procedural History

Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

United States District Court for the District of Kansas – 98 F.Supp. 797 (D. Kan. 1951)

Ruled in favor of the School Board. Plaintiffs (Brown et al.) claimed that the segregated schools in Topeka were not equal. The district court found “ segregation in public education has a detrimental effect upon Negro children, but… the Negro and white schools were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers.” The plaintiffs appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.

Decision Text: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/98/797/1899646/

United States Supreme Court – Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

SCOTUS ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, stating that “ Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Briggs et al. v Elliot et al.

United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina – 98 F.Supp. 529 (E.D.S.C. 1951)

Ruled that the black schools were “inferior” to the white schools, and mandated that the black school’s facilities be “equalized.” However, they sustained the idea of separate but equal, the ruling only finding the schools violated the “equal” aspect of that doctrine. “ The court found that the Negro schools were inferior to the white schools, and ordered the defendants to begin immediately to equalize the facilities. But the court sustained the validity of the contested provisions and denied the plaintiff’s admission to the white schools during the equalization program.” The plaintiffs appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.

Decision text: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/98/529/1899720/

Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al.

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia – 103 F.Supp. 337 (E.D. Va. 1952)

Similar to Briggs et al., court ruled that black and white schools were not equal, but that segregated schools were not unconstitutional. “ The court found the Negro school inferior in physical plant, curricula, and transportation, and ordered the defendants forthwith to provide substantially equal curricula and transportation and to “proceed with all reasonable diligence and dispatch to remove” the inequality in physical plant.” The plaintiffs appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.

Decision Text: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/103/337/1469032/

Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al.

Delaware Court of Chancery – 87 A.2d 862 (Del. Ch. 1952)

Ruled that the schools in question should be immediately desegregated. “The Chancellor gave judgment for the plaintiffs and ordered their immediate admission to schools previously attended only by white children, on the ground that the Negro schools were inferior with respect to teacher training, pupil-teacher ratio, extracurricular activities, physical plant, and time and distance involved in travel.”

Decision Text: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2351087/belton-v-gebhart/

Supreme Court of Delaware – 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 1952)

Held the ruling of the Chancery Court, but added the defendants “might be able to obtain a modification of the decree (decision of the Chancery) after equalization of the Negro and white schools had been accomplished.” The defendants appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Text: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2158543/gebhart-v-belton/

• Are “separate but equal” school systems actually equal as the lower courts had found?
• If “separate but equal” school systems are in fact not equal, does this violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment?

The Court ruled “no” and “yes” in a 9-0 decision in favor of the plaintiffs, that segregated schools were neither equal nor constitutional. The court ruled unanimously that the racial segregation of public schools which was previously considered equal by the “separate but equal” doctrine set by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was unconstitutional as such segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment.

Majority Opinion (Warren)

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the only opinion for the unanimous decision. The determination of the court held that “separate but equal” schools were in fact “inherently unequal,” and should therefore desegregate. Warren argued that regardless of whether or not white and black schools were similarly equal in tangible qualities, having separate facilities in and of itself creates intangible inequalities. Warren then argued that, given the importance education had in the modern day (of 1954) on childrens outcomes in life, education amounted to a right of all citizens, and thus to deprive some citizens of that right did not afford them equal protection of the laws, i.e. violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. 

In the Majority Opinion, Warren first sought to establish whether or not inequality in education, if it existed in the manner the plaintiffs of the case contended, would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. Warren concludes that education in the present day is likely the “most important function of state and local governments.” The arguments and reasoning he provides for the basis to this claim in the Opinion are:

“Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society… It is the very foundation of good citizenship… (it awakens a) child to cultural values, (prepares) him for later professional training, and (helps) 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.”

Warren at this point states that since education is of such fundamental importance, if a state decides that education is something they are going to provide and have jurisdiction over, must therefore be provided equally, i.e. subject to the Equal Protection Clause.

In determining the equality of so called “separate but equal” facilities, Warren cited evidence presented before the court from the Kansas case which showed that, regardless of seemingly equal tangible characteristics of these schools, attending segregated schools has intangible detriments to students. The wording Warren cited to this point from the Kansas case was:

“ Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.”

Given these incredibly significant “detrimental effects” segregated schools had on black children, Warren drew the conclusion that “(s)eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Full Text Of Opinions

Significance/ impact.

The most significant result of Brown v. Board was that the decision overturned the doctrine of separate but equal with regards to education, which had at the time been the law of the land since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896. The opinion of the court, written by Chief Justice Warren stated very plainly the court’s position: “ We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”  Brown v. Board lead to the rejection of the “Separate but Equal” doctrine in areas outside of education; it set a precedent against separate but equal. The most direct instance of this can in the  Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) decision, rendered the same day as the Brown decision, in which the court decided there is an implied extension of the Equal Protection Clause to the federal government.

Second Timeline

Constitutional provisions.

The 14th Amendment states “for providing or ensuring the rights of citizens due process of law and equal protection of law, prior to property or liberty of property is deprived by a US State.” Although, slavery was abolished in the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including black men and women. This included due process of law and the Equal Protection Clause. In Brown v Board of Education, the segregation of public schools was deemed unconstitutional and a violation of the 14th Amendment.

Government Law or Action Under Review

• The practice of maintaining segregated public schools (having separate white and black schools).
• The Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) , and the subsequent doctrine of “separate but equal” as it applies to education.

Important Precedents

• Plessy vs Ferguson (1896)
• Missouri ex rel Gaines vs. Canada (1938)
• Sweat vs. Painter (1950)

Important Subsequent Cases

• Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)
• Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)
• Cooper v. Aaron (1958)
• Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964)
• Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968)
• Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969)
• Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)
• Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
• Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)

Web Resources

“Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 347 U.S. 483 (1954)” Justia law. Accessed April 17th, 2017 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/case.html

“BROWN V. BOARD: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S.” Teaching Tolerance . The Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007. Web. Apr.-May 2017.

Available at:  http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-25-spring-2004/feature/brown-v-board-timeline-school-integration-us

Epps-Robertson, Candace. “The Race to Erase Brown vs. Board of Education: The Virginia Way and the Rhetoric of Massive Resistance”. Rhetoric Review 35 (2016): 108-120.

“History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment” uscourts.gov

Available at: http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/history-brown-v-board-education-re-enactment

“Landmark Cases: Brown v. Board of Education (1954)” Public Broadcasting Service.

Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html

Middleton, Stephen. “With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education”.  The Alabama Review . July, 2009, Vol. 62(3), pg. 217-219.

Academic Book, Articles and Law Reviews

Contributors.

Spring 2017: Noor-ul-ain Chaudhry, Dennette Everett, Tichina Lawal, Cecil Pharr and Ryan Savage.

Tasks for Future Contributors

Brown v. Board: How its impacts are still felt 70 years later

TOPEKA ( KSNT ) – A landmark case that changed the way public schools operate in America will celebrate 70 years next week.

Topeka, Kansas is known to some as the birthplace of desegregation. For those with personal connections to the case, like Victoria Benson, who is the daughter of one of the plaintiffs, it can be eye-opening to see the progress inspired by the people involved.

“It is breathtaking to think you’re a part of history,” Benson said. “I finished at Buchanon, which was an all-black elementary school. My brother Marvin Lawton was the first of us to go to Lowman Hill, an integrated elementary school.”

This progress has continued to present day, especially for Tiffany Anderson. In 2016, she became the first female, African American superintendent of Topeka Public Schools (TPS).

“Schools today in Topeka have students and teachers of color because of the Brown v. Board case,” Anderson said. “It is critical to what we do and who we are. Our community continues to uplift many of these legacy leaders that are still right here in the community.”

In celebration of this local history, organizations are planning multiple events. Below are a list of everything still to come:

• 5/1-8/11 @ Kansas Children’s Discovery Center
• 5/8 @ Brown v. Board site
• 5/9 @ Topeka and Shawnee Co. Public Library – Marvin Auditorium
• 5/11 @ Topeka
• 5/14 @ Washburn University
• 5/17 @ Washburn University
• 5/61-5/17 @ Washburn University
• 5/17 @ Brown v. Board site
• 5/18 @ Brown v. Board site
• 5/19 @ Sabatini Gallery
• 5/24 @ White Concert Hall

For more information on the upcoming 70th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education case, click here .

For more Kansas news,  click here . Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our  mobile app  and by signing up for our  news email alerts . Sign up for our Storm Track Weather app by  clicking here .

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KSNT 27 News.

Kansas African American Legislative Caucus commemorates 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Topeka is the birthplace of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. the Board of Education and on Monday, state leaders took time to celebrate 70 years of equality among public schools.

Co-chair for the 70th Anniversary Brown Coalition, Beryl New, attended Topeka’s Monroe Elementary — the former all-black school is now the Brown vs. Board National Historic Site.

“To me, it’s an inspiration and a validation in many ways just to know that in Topeka there is a wealth of experiences that have gone on to shape our world,” said New.

The Kansas African American Legislative Caucus (KAALC) hosted the event, inviting New and others who were students when the ruling came down.

Sen. David Haley said it was the foundation for schools being united and equal.

“No longer would we have black, white, or brown schools,” said Haley. “Moving forward, that precept that education was something that every Kansan, every American child should have.”

Governor Laura Kelly said the anniversary is a chance to reflect on the impact the decision had on our community, state, and nation.

Kelly stated, “We also need to remember and recognize the courageous action taken by Black American parents on behalf of their children back then — especially the 13 parents right here in Topeka, Kansas.”

“Because of parents who persevered and were brave — we were able to provide equal choices to every family,” said New.

New said Brown v. Board will continue to be important for generations to come.

“I hope that as America grows that we learn to recognize the value of each and every human being and that there are no individuals who are better than or less than. We’re all just part of the human family and as such, we have to take care of one another,” said New.

Upcoming events are listed below.

• 2024 Academy of African Business and Development Conference, hosted by Washburn School of Business (May 14-18, 2024)
• The play “Now Let Me Fly” which tells the story of the unsung heroes and heroines in the battle for civil rights (May 17-18, 2024)

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