brown v board of education of topeka court decision

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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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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

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The first amendment, supreme court case, brown v. board of education of topeka (1954).

347 U.S. 483 (1954)

“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Selected by

Caroline Fredrickson

Visiting Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice

Ilan Wurman

Associate Professor, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University

Brown is a consolidated case addressing the constitutionality of school segregation. There, the challengers—African American children and their parents—attacked the “separate but equal” doctrine created in Plessy v. Ferguson . They argued that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving the African American students of equal educational opportunities. In a unanimous decision authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court agreed—overturning Plessy and declaring school segregation unconstitutional. As part of its analysis, the Court cited the negative impact of segregation on children’s mental and emotional development. With this landmark decision, the Court took an important step in desegregating our nation’s schools, opening the door to further legal challenges to Jim Crow laws in other contexts, and reinvigorating the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Read the Full Opinion

Excerpt: Majority Opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren

These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.

In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson . . . . Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. . . .

The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not “equal” and cannot be made “equal,” and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. . . .

In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of “separate but equal” did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, . . . involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education . . . and Gong Lum v. Rice . . . the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. . . . In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter . . . , the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education.

In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here . . . , there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other ‘tangible’ factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education. . . .

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. 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 required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping 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. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. . . .

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs: “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.”

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy , this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of [equal protection of the laws].

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

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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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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).

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70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Thursday, February 1, 2024 – Wednesday, February 28, 2024 East Rotunda Gallery

Equity in Education: 70 Years Later

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court delivered a unanimous ruling in  Brown  v.  Board of Education of Topeka  that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional in public schools. Overturning the 1896 decision in  Plessy  v.  Ferguson  that allowed for school segregation ,  this landmark decision made it clear that racial discrimination in public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” A follow-up judgment delivered in 1955 directed the states to develop desegregation plans “with all deliberate speed.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a major challenge to school desegregation in 1957. Known as the “Little Rock Crisis,” Eisenhower sent federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to uphold school desegregation efforts. Five years later, John F. Kennedy appealed to the public to uphold the law as James Meredith became the first African American to register at the University of Mississippi. Every President since has faced challenges improving equity in education, whether it be Richard Nixon signing the Education Amendments Act of 1972, William J. Clinton’s era of educational reform, George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, or Donald J. Trump’s 2020 executive order expanding school choice.

Research by the Government Accountability Office released in 2019 notes that while student populations have become increasingly more diverse, schools themselves continue to be divided along economic and racial lines. Despite expanded efforts in the fight for social justice and equality, racial equity in education continues to be elusive 70 years later.

Supreme Court Judgment for  Brown et al.  v.  Board of Education of Topeka et al. , May 31, 1955.

This judgment was issued a year after the landmark ruling clarified that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Known as Brown II, the judgment directed the states to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.” Records of the Supreme Court of the United States

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Brown v. Board of Education, 344 U.S. 1 (1952)

U.S. Supreme Court

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Decided October 8, 1952*

In two cases set for argument in October, laws of Kansas and South Carolina providing for racial segregation in public schools were challenged as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. In another case raising the same question with respect to laws of Virginia, appellants had filed a statement of jurisdiction and a motion requesting that all three cases be argued together. There was pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit a case in which segregation in public schools of the District of Columbia was challenged as violative of the Fifth Amendment.

1. The Kansas and South Carolina cases are continued on the docket; probable jurisdiction is noted in the Virginia case; and arguments in all three will be heard in December. Pp. 344 U. S. 2 -3.

2. Judicial notice is taken of the pendency of the District of Columbia case. The Court will entertain a petition for certiorari in that case, which, if presented and granted, will afford opportunity for argument of that case immediately following arguments in the other three cases. P. 344 U. S. 3 .

Page 344 U. S. 2

The following are citations to the reports of the decisions below: No. 8, the Kansas case, 98 F. Supp. 797 ; No. 101, the South Carolina case, 103 F. Supp. 920 ; No.191, the Virginia case, 103 F. Supp. 337 .

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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.

THE SUPREME COURT Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka R. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion. In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case, the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools. The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not "equal" and cannot be made "equal," and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented, the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court. Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment's history with respect to segregated schools is the status of public education at that time. In the South, the movement toward free common schools, supported by general taxation, had not yet taken hold. Education of white children was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences, as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states, and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education. In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of "separate but equal" did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, supra, involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528, and Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337; Sipuel v. Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637. In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter, supra, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education. In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter, there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education. In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the 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. Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. 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 required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping 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. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. In Sweatt v. Painter, supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: ". . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs: 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. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity. On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question -- the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term. The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 15, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954. It is so ordered. * Together with No. 2, Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al., on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, argued December 9-10, 1952, reargued December 7-8, 1953; No. 4, Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al., on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued December 10, 1952, reargued December 7-8, 1953, and No. 10, Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al., on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Delaware, argued December 11, 1952, reargued December 9, 1953. In the Kansas case, Brown v. Board of Education, the plaintiffs are Negro children of elementary school age residing in Topeka. They brought this action in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas to enjoin enforcement of a Kansas statute which permits, but does not require, cities of more than 15,000 population to maintain separate school facilities for Negro and white students. Pursuant to that authority, the Topeka Board of Education elected to establish segregated elementary schools. Other public schools in the community, however, are operated on a nonsegregated basis. The three-judge District Court found that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect upon Negro children, but denied relief on the ground that the Negro and white schools were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers. The case is here on direct appeal. In the South Carolina case, Briggs v. Elliott, the plaintiffs are Negro children of both elementary and high school age residing in Clarendon County. They brought this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina to enjoin enforcement of provisions in the state constitution and statutory code which require the segregation of Negroes and whites in public schools. The three-judge District Court denied the requested relief. 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 plaintiffs admission to the white schools during the equalization program. This Court vacated the District Court's judgment and remanded the case for the purpose of obtaining the court's views on a report filed by the defendants concerning the progress made in the equalization program. On remand, the District Court found that substantial equality had been achieved except for buildings and that the defendants were proceeding to rectify this inequality as well. The case is again here on direct appeal. In the Virginia case, Davis v. County School Board, the plaintiffs are Negro children of high school age residing in Prince Edward County. They brought this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to enjoin enforcement of provisions in the state constitution and statutory code which require the segregation of Negroes and whites in public schools. The three-judge District Court denied the requested relief. 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. But, as in the South Carolina case, the court sustained the validity of the contested provisions and denied the plaintiffs admission to the white schools during the equalization program. In the Delaware case, Gebhart v. Belton, the plaintiffs are Negro children of both elementary and high school age residing in New Castle County. They brought this action in the Delaware Court of Chancery to enjoin enforcement of provisions in the state constitution and statutory code which require the segregation of Negroes and whites in public schools. 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. The Chancellor also found that segregation itself results in an inferior education for Negro children, but did not rest his decision on that ground. The Chancellor's decree was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Delaware, which intimated, however, that the defendants might be able to obtain a modification of the decree after equalization of the Negro and white schools had been accomplished. The defendants, contending only that the Delaware courts had erred in ordering the immediate admission of the Negro plaintiffs to the white schools, applied to this Court for certiorari. The writ was granted. The plaintiffs, who were successful below, did not submit a cross-petition.

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About Brown v. Board

The 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in Oliver L. Brown et al v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) et al. is among the most significant judicial turning points in the development of our country.  Originally led by Charles H. Houston, and later Thurgood Marshall and a formidable legal team, it dismantled the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other public facilities.

By delcaring that the discriminatory nature of racial segregation ... "violates the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws," Brown v. Board of Education laid the foundation for shaping future national and international policies regarding human rights.

Brown v. Board of Education was not simply about children and education.  The laws and policies struck down by this court decision were products of the human tendencies to prejudge, discriminate against, and stereotype other people by their ethnic, religious, physical, or cultural characteristics.  Ending this behavior as a legal practice caused far reaching social and ideological implications which continue to be felt throughout our country.  The Brown decision inspired and galvanized human rights struggles across the county and around the world.

What this legal challenge represents is at the core of United States history and the freedoms we enjoy.  The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown began a critical chapter in the maturation of our democracy.  It reaffirmed the sovereign power of the people of the United States in the protection of their natural rights from arbitrary limits and restrictions imposed by state and local governments.  These rights are recognized in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  Read more about Brown v. Board.

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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:

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Brown V. Board of Education

Brown v. the board of education.

In the fall of 1950, members of the Topeka, Kansas chapter of the agreed to again challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine governing public education.

The road to their decision came by way of 11 school desegregation cases dating from 1881 to 1949 that were argued at the Kansas Supreme Court. Kansas law permitted but did not require racially segregated elementary schools in what they defined as “first class” cities with populations of 15,000 or more. Several of the early cases heard by the State Supreme Court successfully integrated schools in Kansas towns that did not meet the population standard of a “first class” city.

The strategy for legal action was conceived by the NAACP chapter President McKinley Burnett, attorneys Charles Scott, John Scott, Charles Bledsoe, Elisha Scott and NAACP chapter Secretary Lucinda Todd. Their plan involved enlisting the support of fellow NAACP members and personal friends as plaintiffs in what would be a class action suit filed against the Board of Education of Topeka Public Schools. A group of 13 parents agreed to participate on behalf of their children. Each plaintiff was to watch the newspaper for enrollment dates and take their child to the elementary school for white children that was nearest to their home. Once they attempted enrollment and were denied, they were to report back to the NAACP which provided attorneys with the documentation needed to file a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education.

The NAACP, with the assistance of the national organization’s legal team led by attorneys Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg, filed suit against the Board of Education on February 28, 1951. Oliver Brown was named as lead plaintiff — reportedly a strategy to have a male leading the. The case became Oliver L. Brown et. al. vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) .

The district court ruled in favor of the school board, forcing the NAACP to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the Supreme Court, the Topeka case joined four school desegregation cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. already on the docket. The court consolidated the five cases under the heading of Oliver L. Brown et al. vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, et al.

On May 17, 1954 at 12:52 p.m., the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision, ruling that it was a violation of the 14th Amendment to separate children in public schools based on race.

One year later, in December of 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decree that desegregation of public schools should occur “with all deliberate speed.” That pronouncement is known as Brown II .

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National Museum of African American History and Culture To Recognize 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) recognizes the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court with a daylong public event Friday, May 17. Held in collaboration with the NAACP, the day will include several panel discussions, such as one featuring participants of the Little Rock Nine, the first African American students to enter Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School in 1957.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court delivered its unanimous 9-0 decision overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling as it applied to public education, stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In a watershed moment for equality and democracy, racial segregation laws were declared in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, paving the way for integration and winning a major victory for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. For more information, visit this page .

“The National Museum of African American History and Culture was founded to ensure that this story and other important chapters in the African American experience are never forgotten,” said Kevin Young, NMAAHC’s Andrew W. Mellon Director. “The road to desegregation in the United States was long and arduous. This anniversary stands as a testament to the tenacity and moral clarity of African American trailblazers who insisted on the power of education and refused to settle for the inherent injustice of ‘separate but equal.’”

“Separate but equal” remained the standard doctrine in U.S. law until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. The case began in 1951 as a class action suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas that called on the city’s Board of Education to reverse its policy of racial segregation. It was initiated by the Topeka chapter of the NAACP, and the plaintiffs were 13 African American parents on behalf of their children. The named plaintiff was Oliver L. Brown, a welder and an assistant pastor at his local church, whose daughter had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to her segregated Black school one mile away, while a white school was located just seven blocks from her house.

Celebrating the Past, Shaping the Future: 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education  
Friday, May 17; 10 a.m.–5 p.m.  NMAAHC’s Oprah Winfrey Theater  This commemorative event explores the legacy of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision to end the segregation of America’s schools and educational institutions in collaboration with the NAACP through multiple panel discussions throughout the day. The program features Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of Oliver L. Brown in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas; John Stokes of Prince Edward County, Virginia, where schools remained closed for five years rather than comply with the 1954 ruling; and the surviving members of the Little Rock Nine. Admission to this special program is free but requires registration. Registration is required and available online here.

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Celebrating the 70th anniversary of brown v. board of education.

NAACP attorneys in the 1930s and 1940s, led by Charles Hamilton Houston, worked hard to develop and support court cases around the country that pushed back against segregation. They celebrated some success in higher education, particularly in challenges to admissions at several medical and law schools.

However, it became clear that K-12 public schools were going to be the more difficult fight, and the most crucial, so they shifted course. The early goal of equalizing the facilities in segregated K-12 schools evolved, over time, to a more precarious focus — challenging the inherent constitutionality of racial segregation per se — and arguing that 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson should be overturned.

The principle of that infamous case . — which related specifically to the practice of racial segregation in public transportation — was routinely used as justification for allowing the same in public schools.

Then NAACP Director Counsel Thurgood Marshall, whose approach to their legal strategies had thus far been cautious, understood the risk involved: if a case involving public school segregation was lost at the Supreme Court level it would have far reaching consequences and set dangerous precedents for any court cases that followed.

But it was clear — this was the keystone civil rights issue that must be relentlessly pursued.

Marshall and the team of attorneys knew the cases they chose for this targeted assault on the constitutionality of segregation would have to fit in with a carefully coordinated strategy.

Multiple cases would need to be pursued simultaneously. They would have to come from a variety of regions and districts — not only the South . — and each should include multiple plaintiffs. This approach was intended to legitimize the legal effort by providing a significant scope of location and breadth of argument.

The strategy was put into motion, cases were developed, and the movement gained momentum.

Five Cases: Taking It to the States

South Carolina The 1949 class action lawsuit Briggs v. Elliott hailed from Clarendon County, South Carolina. The complaint originated from a lack of access to school transportation. Black children in the community walked as far as eight miles to and from school, and local officials refused to provide the same bus service afforded to White students.

The NAACP saw this as their first opportunity to test the legal arguments for public school desegregation.

Attorney Harold Boulware, along with Marshall, filed the case on behalf of 20 parents, many of whom faced swift and striking retribution from the community. One family’s home was burned to the ground, and other plaintiffs lost their jobs.

The U.S. District Court denied the request to abolish school segregation, and this case was the first of those appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, then later consolidated under what became known as Brown v. Board of Education.

Delaware The state’s first Black civil rights attorney, Louis Redding, represented plaintiffs in two separate 1951 cases in Delaware, with the assistance of Jack Greenberg.

Belton v. Gebhart stemmed from parents in Claymont who were frustrated with the 20 mile round trip they had to make to send their children to the poorly-appointed Howard High School in Wilmington, which was the only high school in the state open to Black students.

Though the Claymont parents had won admittance for their students to the all- White high school, Judge Collins J. Seitz’s groundbreaking ruling did not apply to the state of Delaware as a whole, so the cases were combined into Belton (Bulah) v. Gephart, and eventually also became part of Brown v. Board of Education.

Virginia For young Black students in 1951 in the commonwealth of Virginia, the only path to a high school diploma was through one of the state’s private Christian academies.

Community fundraising efforts in Prince Edward County resulted in the construction of Moton High School, where enrollment quickly surpassed the 180 students it was built to hold. To accommodate the increased number of students the school district had constructed tar paper outbuildings for use as additional classroom space.

The area school board refused to fund permanent expansion of the school. After more than 400 students staged a two-week protest against the building’s conditions they connected with the NAACP, who agreed to file suit for desegregation of the school system.

In 1951, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was argued by attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill. The U.S. District Court judges unanimously rejected the request.

It was this blatant refusal that prompted Burnett to persuade NAACP member families and friends — 13 parents in total — to participate in a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka Public Schools.

For decades a false narrative has persisted that Oliver Brown initiated the case on behalf of his daughter Linda. In truth, he was the last to sign on, and did so reluctantly. Ironically his name was used to head the plaintiff roster, not based on alphabet, but perhaps as a legal strategy because he was a man and the other 12 plaintiffs were women.

Marshall’s team of attorneys filed, argued, and lost the case in District Court. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was combined with the three other cases.

He reached out to Houston, who worked on the case independent of the NAACP. The goal was to request equal facilities for the Black students. While preparing the case that would then be filed as Bolling et al. v. C. Melvin Sharpe, et al., Houston suffered a heart attack and passed the case on to his friend James Nabritt.

Nabritt reconceived it as a challenge to segregation per se, and filed it in 1951. The U.S. District Court heard, and then dismissed, the case. While this case was not combined with those that made up Brown v. Board of Education, it was decided on the same day in 1954, and is considered part of that historic effort.

The 1952 U.S. Supreme Court docket was heavy with civil rights cases from Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Each case, with its own specific circumstances and based on unique evidence, was a challenge to the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools.

The keystone argument rested on expert testimony by psychologists and social scientists along with the disparity in resources for facilities and per pupil expenditure. One theory presented was the possible harm segregation posed for Black children who lived in communities and attended schools where they experienced unequal treatment based solely on race.

June Shagaloff, social science researcher, played a critical role in preparing the arguments, alongside psychologists Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark.

The Clarks had developed a unique method used to measure the impact of racial segregation on children, colloquially known as the “doll test.” Children age three to seven were asked a series of questions about their perceptions of a Black doll and an identical White doll. Their responses made it clear that they overwhelmingly understood the nature of racial segregation.

It is believed that this insight, along with Kenneth Clark’s expert analysis of the most modern psychology research of the time, was central to the success of the case. But the decision did not come quickly.

The court heard initial arguments in December 1952, then scheduled a second session for the case in December 1953, before which Chief Justice Fred Vinson died suddenly. Newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower was tasked to choose a new leader for the high court, and appointed former California Governor Earl Warren. It wasn’t until the following spring, after unyielding behind-the-scenes lobbying by the new chief justice, that a unanimous decision was handed down in favor of the plaintiffs on May 17, 1954.

A year later, the court issued an order enforcing the ruling and requiring that U.S. schools desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” Many public schools did no such thing, and the NAACP and others continued to pursue lawsuits in hundreds of school districts across the country, often met with fierce opposition.

Southern White leaders vehemently opposed and vowed to defy the ruling. Senators James Eastland, Harry Byrd, and Strom Thurmond condemned the decision. The men authored a document called the “Southern Manifesto,” which outlined their refusal to abide by the court’s ruling.

Resulting Massive Resistance laws served to penalize integrated schools and, in some areas, simply closed them altogether. White communities across the South established segregated private academies and targeted Black families with unceasing intimidation.

The fight for equality continues. While the Brown decision was a meaningful and inspiring victory for civil rights — and served as a powerful motivating force for the modern civil rights movement — it shed light on the unreliable political will to enshrine and enforce equality for all citizens regardless of race, religion, gender, age, disability, etc., or other disenfranchising circumstances.

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Brown v. Board of Education

Correlating Judicial Records

Federal records pertaining to brown v. board of education of topeka, kansas (1954), part iii: records correlating to the brown decision, 1955-1977  .

• Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21  
• Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, RG 267  
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Records of district courts of the united states, rg 21.

National Archives-Southeast Region (Atlanta) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Mississippi, 1823-1969 Records of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Southern Division (Biloxi)

Case File: CV-2643 (1963) - United States of America v. Biloxi Municipal Separate School District et al. (First Claim-Biloxi) This case was brought by the United States seeking to enjoin the defendants from segregating or discriminating against, on the basis of their race or color, any dependents of military personnel or civilian employees of the plaintiff in the operation of public schools, together with such additional relief as may be appropriate. The United States Government maintained Keesler Air Force Base as a part of its national defense establishment and a Veterans Administration hospital, both in Harrison County, Mississippi, for the treatment of veterans of its Armed Services. The court ordered the dismissal of the case. The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed the lower court's judgment. Case File: CV-2678 (1963) - United States of America v. Gulfport Municipal Separate School District et al. (Second Claim-Gulfport) This case was brought by the United States of America seeking to enjoin the defendants from separating upon the basis of race or color any dependents of military personnel or civilian employees of the plaintiff in the operation of the public schools of the Gulfport Municipal Separate School District in Harrison County, Mississippi. The United States Government maintained Keesler Air Force Base, a large military installation, and a Veterans Administration hospital in Harrison County, Mississippi. The court ordered the dismissal of the case. The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed the lower court's judgment.

Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Alabama, 1813-1976 Records of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Northeastern Division (Huntsville)

Case File: CV-63-23 (1963) - United States of America v. Madison County Board of Education et al. (First Claim-Madison County) (Second Claim-City of Huntsville Board of Education) This case was brought by the United States of America seeking to enjoin the defendants from separating or discriminating against, among, or between, upon the basis of their race or color, any dependents of the members or employees of the Armed Services of the plaintiff in the operation of public schools under their jurisdiction, together with such additional relief as may be appropriate. The plaintiff maintained Redstone Arsenal (including NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center) in Madison County, AL, as a part of its national defense establishment. The court ordered the dismissal of the case. The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed the lower court's judgment.

Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Alabama, 1813-1976 Records of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, Southern Division (Mobile)

Case File: CV-2964 (1963) - United States of America v. Mobile County Board of School Commissioners et al. This case was brought by the United States of America seeking to enjoin defendants from segregating or discriminating against, on the basis of their race or color, any dependents of military personnel or civilian employees of the plaintiff, in the operation of public schools of Mobile County, AL. The plaintiff maintained Brookley Air Force Base as a part of its national defense establishment; a United States Coast Guard station; the Dauphin Island Air Force Station; Bates Field; a court and customs house; and an office of the Corps of Engineers in Mobile County, AL. The case was eventually dismissed.

National Archives-Northeast Region (New York City) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in New York, 1685-1976 Records of the United States District Court for the Southern District

Case File: CV-4098 (1960) - Leslie Taylor v. Board of Education of New Rochelle This case was the first northern school desegregation case to go to the Supreme Court since the Brown (1954) decision. It is filled with conflicting interpretations of the Brown case. The judge was Irving R. Kaufman. In the appeal to the Second Circuit, Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley were attorneys for the plaintiffs.

National Archives-Great Lakes Region (Chicago) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Illinois, 1819-1982 Records of the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division at Chicago

Case File: CV-65 C 942 (1965) - Board of Education of the City of Chicago v. Chicago Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Chicago Branch, Congress of Racial Equality; Chicago Friends of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; Coordinating Council of Community Organizations; ACT; Albert A. Raby; Lawrence Landry; et al. This case involved an injunction filed on June 8, 1965, by the Chicago Board of Education against numerous civil rights groups in Chicago to prohibit a boycott by African American school students protesting segregated, overcrowded schools, the use of trailers as classrooms and other inferior facilities, and the policies of the white school superintendent. The day after the Cook County circuit court granted an injunction against Chicago's civil rights organizations, civil rights activists filed a petition for removal to bring the controversy before the United States District Court, away from the politically charged county court system. Nevertheless, more than 100,000 African American students violated the injunction by staying home June 10-11, 1965, to protest the renewal of a four-year contract for Dr. Benjamin Willis, the white school superintendent. The school boycott marked the beginning of a sustained protest movement, the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1965-66, which culminated in the arrival of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Chicago to lead the struggle for equal opportunities in education and housing.

National Archives-Southwest Region (Fort Worth) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Louisiana, 1806-1987 Records of the United States District Court for the Eastern District, New Orleans Division

Case File: CV-3630 (1956) - Oliver Bush, Jr., et al. v. New Orleans Parish School Board et al. (364 US 500) (1960) In this case, the United States District Court enjoined the New Orleans Parish School Board "from requiring and permitting segregation of the races in any school under their supervision, from and after such time as may be necessary to make arrangements for admission of children to such schools on a racially non-discriminatory basis with all deliberate speed as required by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, et al. (349 US 294)." Case File: CV-16173 (1965) - Wilfred Banks et al. v. St James Parish School Board et al. In this case, a preliminary and permanent injunction was issued enjoining the defendants from continuing to operate a compulsory biracial school system on the basis of its violation of due process under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and Sections 41m and 43 of Title VIII, United States Code.

Records of U.S. District and Other Courts in Arkansas, 1838-1986 Records for the United States District Court for the Eastern District, Little Rock Division

Case File: CV-3113 (1957) - John Aaron et al. v. William Cooper et al. (156 Fed. Supp. 220) This case involved a request for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief to enjoin defendants from making distinction on the basis of race or color. On August 27, 1956, the United States District Court approved the Little Rock School Board's gradual integration plan. The decision was affirmed in April 1957. The United States District Court for the Eastern District ordered immediate integration September 3, 1957, after the defendants petitioned for instruction regarding a proposed delay.

Records of U.S. District and Other Courts in Texas, 1846-1989 Records for the United States District Court for the Northern District, Ft. Worth Division

Case File: CV-3152 (1955) - Nathaniel Jackson et al. v. O. C. Rawdon et al. This case involved a request for judgment declaring plaintiffs' rights under the Constitution and declaring Article 2900 of Vernon's Civil Statutes of the State of Texas unconstitutional. In August 1956, on remand from C.A. 5, after prior dismissal of suit, the United States District Court for the Northern District enjoined school officials from refusing the plaintiffs admission to the high school and retained jurisdiction of the case to supervise the execution of the decree.

National Archives-Mid Atlantic Region (Center City Philadelphia) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Delaware, 1790-1961 Records of the United States District Court of Delaware

Case File: CV-1816 (1956) - Coalition et al. v. State Board et al. This May 1956 case involved the parents of Brenda Evans and 18 other African American children who filed a suit in the Delaware district court against the members of the State Board of Education of Delaware, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Board of Trustees of the Clayton School District in Kent County, Delaware, claiming that the defendants' policy denying admission of the plaintiffs (based on their color) to all-white schools in the district violated their 14th-Amendment rights. The case had been appealed several times when in 1974 a three-judge panel of the United States District Court of Delaware ruled that the provision of the school reorganization act that exempted Wilmington from being reorganized and run on a racially non-discriminatory basis was unconstitutional and ordered the Wilmington School District to submit a new plan that was racially non-discriminatory. The defendants appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme Court, which, in 1975 and 1978, upheld the district court's ruling.

Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Virginia, 1793-1965 Records of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Newport News Division

Case File: CV-489 (1956) - Jerome Atkins et al. v. School Board of the City of Newport News, VA, et al. This case concerned the parents of Jerome Atkins and 53 other African American children who filed a suit in the United States District Court in April 1956 claiming that the school board of Newport News, VA, was denying the plaintiffs their civil rights under the 14th Amendment by continuing to enforce racial segregation in the city schools. The plaintiffs petitioned the court to restrain the school board from barring admission to any student on the grounds of race. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs was future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Trial proceedings were held in November 1956, and in February 1957, the district court ruled that racial segregation in the Newport News school system must end and that the schools must be opened on an integrated basis by the start of the 1957-58 school year. The defendants appealed the ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In July 1957, the circuit court upheld the district court's decision ending racial segregation in the Newport News school system.

Records of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Lynchburg Division

Case File: CV-534 (1961) - Jackson et al. v. School Board of Lynchburg In this September 1961 case, the parents of Cecelia Jackson, Linda Woodruff, Owen Cardwell, and Brenda Hughes filed a suit against the school board of Lynchburg and the Pupil Placement Board of the Commonwealth of Virginia in United States District Court. The plaintiffs petitioned the court to have their African American children admitted to the all-white E. C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, alleging that the school board was not complying with the Brown (1954 and 1955) Supreme Court rulings that called for school desegregation. For the next 10 years the case continued to be adjudicated on the question of how and when the Lynchburg School system would be desegregated. In 1971 a final plan was put into effect that created a racially balanced school population in Lynchburg.

Records of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division

Case File: CV-4266 (1965) - Charles C. Green et al. v. School Board of New Kent County, VA This case concerned the parents of Charles C. Green and 35 other African American plaintiffs, who filed a suit in the United States District Court on March 15, 1965, alleging that the county school board of New Kent County, VA, had failed to properly desegregate the student population and faculty of the New Kent County school system. The plaintiffs petitioned the court to order the New Kent County school board to comply with the Brown (1954 and 1955) rulings and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case had been appealed several times when in August 1968 the district court ordered that the New Kent County school board adopt a plan for school integration that would achieve a minimum of 25 percent minority representation in each school. The Green case is important because it set a judicial precedent used by other Federal district courts in the 1970s in mandating busing and other desegregation actions in order to achieve a truly integrated system of public education in America.

Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Pennsylvania, 1787-1990 Records of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)

Case File: CV-39404 (1965) - Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al. v. Revelle W. Brown et al. Stephen Girard, a noted Philadelphia philanthropist, died in 1831, leaving behind a will that provided for the establishment of a college for white male orphans aged 6-18 who resided in Philadelphia. The college was opened in 1848 and was administered by the city of Philadelphia from 1848 to 1959. In December 1965, seven African American male orphans were denied admission to Girard College, whereupon the parents of the said children petitioned the United States District Court for an injunction against the trustees of Girard College, arguing that the racially restrictive clauses violated the plaintiffs' 14th-Amendment rights and the terms of the Pennsylvania Public Accomodations Act, which forbade segregation of public facilities. In July 1967, Judge Lord of the district court reaffirmed his judgment in favor of the plaintiffs but also stayed his injunction against the Girard College trustees until the Third Circuit Court of Appeals could affirm or deny the district court's decision. The stay of the plaintiffs' injunction remained in effect until July 16, 1969, when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's decision and granted the plaintiffs an injunction against the trustees of Girard College.

Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in Virginia, 1793-1965 Records of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Lynchburg Division

Case File: CV-66-C-10-L (1966) - Sweet Briar Institute v. Button et al. This case involved the Sweet Briar Institute, a women's college founded in 1901 in Amherst, VA, when the college matriculated its first African American student in 1966. The attorney general of Virginia and the commonwealth attorney for Amherst County filed an injunction against Sweet Briar Institute, claiming that the institute was in violation of the will of Indiana Fletcher Williams, which, probated in 1901, bequeathed the land for the establishment of Sweet Briar Institute on the condition that only white females be admitted as students. This case was eventually appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which, in May 1967 overturned the decision of the three-judge panel and ordered that the district court's restraining order against Virginia and Amherst County be enforced, which was done by the district court in July 1967.

National Archives-Pacific Region (San Francisco) Records of the U.S. District and Other Courts in California, 1851-1977 Records of the United States District Court of San Francisco

Case File: CV-70-627 (1974) - Kinney Kinmon Lau et al. v. Alan H. Nichols, President et al. This was a landmark case in the bilingual education field; a class action suit brought on behalf of Chinese American students in the United States District Court-San Francisco, which ruled in favor of the defendant, San Francisco Unified School District. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, affirmed the ruling of the trial court that lack of bilingual instruction for the plaintiffs was not discriminatory. However, plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court, which in 1974 established that the failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English-language instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program and thus violates 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based "on the ground of race, color, or national origin," in "any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance," and the implementing regulations of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Pp. 565-569. The Supreme Court declared that the placement of non-English-speaking students in mainstream classrooms was a violation of their civil rights. The circuit court's decision (affirming that of the trial court) was reversed and remanded. Case File: CV-70-1331 (1977) - School Desegregation Case This was a major school desegregation action filed for the San Francisco Unified School District, resulting in a court-decreed citywide desegregation plan. The "Report to Federal District Court Regarding Elementary School Desegregation" from the San Francisco Unified School District, dated June 24, 1977, includes brief narrative sections and statistical breakdowns of the demographic composition of elementary schools in the district. The report was required for the school district to "Comply with Section IV paragraph (J) of the 1971 Federal Court Order to desegregate the elementary schools of the . . . District," which was directed "to file with the Court within twenty days after the end of each school year, until the Court may otherwise order, a report showing the reasonable detail all actions taken to comply with this Judgement and Decree."

Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, RG 267

National Archives Building, Washington, DC Appellate Case Files, 1792-2000

Case File: 1 October Term 1955 - Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, et al. II, (349 U.S. 294) Following its decision in Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, et al. I (1 October Term 1954), which declared racial discrimination in public education unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of the United States convened to issue directives that would help implement its newly announced Constitutional principle. Given the embedded nature of racial discrimination in public schools and the diverse circumstances, under which it had been practiced, the Supreme Court requested further argument on the issue of relief. The Court held that the problems identified in Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, et al. I (1 October Term 1954) required varied local solutions. Chief Justice Earl Warren conferred much responsibility on local school authorities and the courts, which originally heard school segregation cases. They were to implement the principles that the Court embraced in its first Brown decision. Warren urged localities to act on the new principles promptly and to move toward full compliance with them "with all deliberate speed." Brown et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, et al II (349 U.S. 294) included the following cases: 1 October Term 1954, Oliver Brown et al., Appellants v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al. ; 2 October Term 1954, Harry Briggs, Jr., et al., Appellants v. R. W. Elliott et al. ; 3 October Term 1954, Dorothy E. Davis et al., Appellants v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al. ; 4 October Term 1954, Spottswood Thomas Bolling et al. v. C. Melvin Sharpe et al. , Spottswood Thomas Bolling et al., Petitioner v. C. Melvin Sharpe et al. (347 US 497); 5 October Term 1954, Francis B. Gebhart et al., Petitioners v. Ethel Louise Belton et al. , on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Delaware. Case File: 1 October Term 1958, Special August Term - John Aaron et al. v. William Cooper et al. (358 U.S. 1) The Governor and the legislature of Arkansas openly resisted the Supreme Court's decision in Brown (1954). They refused to obey court orders designed to implement school desegregation. Local officials delayed plans to do away with segregated public facilities. In a signed, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court held that Arkansas officials were bound by Federal court orders that rested on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown (1954). The Court noted that its interpretation of the 14th Amendment in Brown was the supreme law of the land and that it had a "binding effect" on the states. The Supreme Court reaffirmed its commitment to desegregation and reiterated that legislatures are not at liberty to annul judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Records of the United States Court of Appeals, RG 276

National Archives-Pacific Region (San Francisco) Records of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Case File: 71-1877 - David Johnson et al. v. San Francisco Unified School District Case File: 71-1878 - David Johnson et al. v. San Francisco Unified School District, with Robert G. Nelson, et al. -Appellants Case File: 71-2105 - David Johnson et al. v. San Francisco Unified School District et al. and Natl. Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, with Guey Heung Lee et al. Plaintiffs in Intervention-Appellants Case File: 71-2163 - David Johnson et al. v. San Francisco Unified School District Case File: 71-2189 - David Johnson et al. v. San Francisco Unified School District, with Robert G. Nelson et al. , Intervenors-Appellants. These cases date from 1971 and represent appeal actions in a school desegregation case originally brought on behalf of African American elementary school children in the San Francisco Unified School District. All briefs in the cases are filed in one place. At least one of the Ninth Circuit appeals evidently went on to the Supreme Court. In at least one instance ( Guey Heung Lee v. Johnson , 404 U.S. 1215 1971), Americans of Chinese a ncestry sought a stay of a Federal district court's order reassigning pupils of Chinese ancestry to elementary public schools in San Francisco. The order was made in a school desegregation case, the San Francisco Unified School District having submitted a comprehensive plan for desegregation that the United States District Court approved. The Chinese applicants' application for a stay was denied. Case File: 26, 155 (1974) - Kinney Kinmon Lau et al. v. Alan H. Nichols, President et al. This was a landmark case in the bilingual education field: a class action suit brought on behalf of Chinese American students in the United States District Court-San Francisco, which ruled in favor of the defendant, San Francisco Unified School District. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, affirmed the ruling of the trial court that lack of bilingual instruction for the plaintiffs was not discriminatory. However, plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court, which in 1974 established that, The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English-language instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program and thus violates 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based "on the ground of race, color, or national origin," in "any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance," and the implementing regulations of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Pp. 565-569. The Supreme Court declared that the placement of non-English-speaking students in mainstream classrooms was a violation of their civil rights. The circuit court's decision (affirming that of the trial court) was reversed and remanded.

National Archives-Northeast Region (New York City) Records of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Case File: 26901 (1961) - Leslie Taylor et al v. Board of Education of New Rochelle In this case, appellant school officials challenged the power of the court to hear the appeal of an order finding they violated appellee Negro children's constitutional rights and ordered the submission of a desegregation plan. The court found it lacked jurisdiction until the lower court finished its work by directing appellant to take or refrain from action. Case File: 427 (1961) - Leslie Taylor et al v. Board of Education of New Rochelle In this case, the parents brought a class action suit, seeking to enjoin defendants from requiring that children in the city school district register in a racially segregated elementary school. The district court found unlawful racial segregation, directed defendants to submit a plan to correct the violation, and subsequently rejected the defendants' proposed plan.

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• Brown v. Board of Education at 70

American history is replete with paradigm-shifting, landscape-altering, game-changing moments. Brown v. Board of Education is one of them. Little of what we knew or understood before May 17, 1954 — 70 years ago next month — resembles what came after. Good thing.

Dismantling America’s system of educational apartheid was long overdue. The stigmatization of Black children as inferior to, or lesser than, white children was more than enough to call into question the moral currency of segregation. The Supreme Court would finally call that question in the Brown case. Separating schoolchildren based on race, Chief Justice Earl Warren argued, “affects the hearts and minds [of Black children] in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” We cannot abandon an entire race, he said. State-authorized and legally sanctioned stigmatization can no longer endure.

The court’s simple and profound declaration that the Constitution “neither knows nor tolerates” racial separation was as manifest as it was magnificent. It has been reverberating ever since.

It is certainly true that desegregation was slow in coming on the heels of the Brown decision. It is equally true that de facto school segregation persists . Still, Brown managed to accomplish something essential to a free society. It gave legitimacy and force to an ideal — an Enlightenment ideal that “all men are created equal.”

America needed that. It needed a reminder that a first principle of the republic — equality — was rotting. There was no equivocation on the part of the unanimous court. In unison, all nine justices drifted to the correct corner of the moral universe. To come from the most respected of governmental branches helped — it had the feel, for progressives at least, of a commandment. The court’s unassailable voice made a difference.

Brown emphasized the benefits of classroom diversity. “We must look to the effect of segregation itself on public education,” Warren proclaimed. Segregation has a devastating effect on Black children, he insisted, but it also robs white children of the “intangible” ability “to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views” with students from other races and dissimilar backgrounds. We can draw a direct line from Brown to the affirmative action cases, which (until Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ) insisted that classroom diversity was a “compelling state interest.” We can draw a direct line from Brown to the noble efforts around race-integration busing. We can draw a direct line from Brown to the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEI/DEIB) initiatives at most of America’s secondary and postsecondary schools.

Brown forced a fundamental realignment of the judicial appointment process. Before Brown, presidents nominated judges for their intellect, wisdom and judiciousness. Enter Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter. Afterward, presidents saw that they could advance their partisan agendas through judicial channels. If the NAACP can bypass the traditional democratic branches and win stunning victories in the courts, it is no longer sensible to nominate the most respected legal minds.

Exit Holmes, Brandeis and Frankfurter. Now the goal is to nominate the most politically ideological thinker we can get through the system, the jurist who can best deliver on a particular political platform. Gone are the Robert Borks from the right and the Laurence Tribes from the left. But gone also are the judicial giants — men like William Brennan and Harry Blackmun — who were nominated by presidents of the opposing political party. Impartiality has been replaced by politics, neutrality by partisanship.

Brown’s economic impact is incalculable. The principle of “separate but equal” was always morally dubious, but it was also pragmatically foolish. Studies have exposed the negative economic impact of a segregated America. Prosperity, especially for people of color, is tied to America’s ongoing struggle with de facto segregation. So is mobility. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth says so explicitly: “School integration powers economic growth by boosting human capital, innovation, and productivity, while strengthening the social trust and interpersonal relationships necessary for smoothly functioning markets.”

The enormity of the court’s decision in Brown can never be overstated. Put simply, it is the most important and most consequential Supreme Court decision of the 20th century. It didn’t solve every ailment. Seven decades have passed since the landmark ruling and America still has a race problem. Even so, I suspect almost all of us would prefer to live on this temporal side of the desegregation case. It’s taken a long time — 70 years to reach consensus! But that’s something, and it is most definitely worth celebrating.

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The Power of the Supreme Court

A look at some of the Supreme Court decisions that have shaped policy in the United States.

The common understanding of our Separation of Powers system of government is that the Congress writes and passes laws, the President signs and executes the laws and the Courts, particularly the Supreme Court, interprets and applies the laws according to constitutional principles. While this is an accurate definition of our system, it does not fully appreciate the enormous policymaking power of the federal courts to move beyond their established role in government to revise and “re-invent” the meaning of constitutional principles based on the social conditions and political circumstances of the times.

Over the course of the history of this nation, the Supreme Court has delivered numerous significant decisions that have shaped our country in areas such as civil rights, criminal rights, reproductive rights, and gender rights. These decisions have had a major impact on the way we live and work and think as a people and as a country. Many of these decisions have created deep-seated disagreements and even conflicts in our society, but all of them are remembered as part of our national narrative as the Courts seek to determine the character and course of our nation.

To show the policymaking impact of Supreme Court decisions over time, the following are some of the most important and controversial cases that have come before the Justices for their decisions:

Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857

Written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the Dred Scott decision established that the Constitution does not consider slaves to be U.S. citizens but rather protected property of their slave masters. Despite the fact that Scott traveled with his master to a free state, Illinois, and then back to a slave state, Missouri, Justice Taney stated that Scott never was free and accented the importance of state’s rights as the basis for his decision. Dred Scott v. Sanford is often considered one of the factors instrumental in pushing this country into the Civil War.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

A continuation of Supreme Court decisions upholding slavery, as police arrested a “colored man,” Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black, for refusing to leave a whites only railroad car. The Court upheld such racial restrictions, often called Jim Crow laws, stating that such laws did not violate the Constitution as long as states supported “separate but equal” treatment. As history shows, states did not provide separate but equal accommodations, transportation, bathroom facilities and even water fountains.

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

The decision in a case out of Topeka, Kansas ended the “separate but equal” standard of treatment for blacks and supported a desegregated public school system. Public schools in black neighborhoods were clearly unequal in terms of funding for books, buildings, and teacher-student ratios. Although there was extensive resentment among whites for the desegregation policy of the Court, the Brown decision along with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the era of integration in all aspects of race relations began in earnest.

Engle v. Vitale, 1962

The state of New York Board of Regents wrote and authorized a voluntary, non-denominational prayer that was to be read at the beginning of each school day. Some parents objected to the prayer and brought suit. The school board stated that because the prayer was voluntary, it was protected by the First Amendment freedom of speech. The Court decided 6-1 that the prayer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and was in violation of the long-standing principle of separation of church and state. In recent years, the Court in a case out of Bremerton, Washington upheld the right of a public high school football coach to pray with his players at the end of the game as protected by his right of free speech and religious liberty. The decision was viewed by many as a breakdown of the walls of separation standard.

Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963

A significant decision in advancing the rights of criminals by the Supreme Court involved the state of Florida’s conviction of Clarence Gideon for breaking into a pool hall, a felony. But since he was poor and could not afford a lawyer to defend him, Gideon was sent to prison. Gideon appealed and the Court stated that the government must provide legal counsel to defendants in felony cases, therefore establishing the legal standard of the right of citizens charged with a crime to counsel by a public defender.

Miranda v. Arizona, 1966

The Supreme Court held that Ernesto Miranda’s confession to kidnapping and rape was unconstitutional on the basis that the confession was gained without Miranda being informed of his right to remain silent and his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This decision led to the now famous Miranda rights practice that police must follow when arresting an alleged criminal.

Roe v. Wade, 1973

Norma McCorvey, a woman in Texas, sought an abortion but was not permitted to have the procedure. The Court decided that the Texas policy violated McCorvey’s right to choose based on a right to privacy. Although there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, the Court majority found that such privacy is understood by the wording of the Fifth and 14th Amendments. The ruling, one of the most controversial in the history of the Court, established standards for abortion permitting the procedure usually up until the third month of the pregnancy. Subsequent decisions addressed abortion rights for minors and sites where abortions can be carried out, but the right to an abortion as stated in the Roe decision remained in place until 2022.

Obergefell v Hodges, 2015

The Court in a divided decision held that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment provides and guarantees the right to marry as an essential liberty that must be protected, and that the protection applies to same-sex couples just like opposite-sex couples. The decision opened the doors for gay couples to be married as a state-sanctioned right. Just like the Roe decision, Obergefell was heavily criticized by conservatives but eventually received widespread support.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 2022

In a decision with momentous constitutional and political implications, the Supreme Court with Justice Samuel Alito writing for the majority stated the Constitution did not confer a right to an abortion and that the right to regulate abortion is “returned to the people and their elected representatives.” To date, 28 states have passed legislation denying access to abortion with varying time limits and circumstances.

At the present time, the Dobbs case is at center stage of national electoral politics, not only because the decision removed what was a precedent-setting right that many women viewed as encased in the law, but because both President Biden and former President Trump have made abortion rights an integral part of their campaign strategy. Just like the Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education decisions were instrumental in the civil rights movement, the decisions of the Supreme Court of today play a large role in how this nation views its values, beliefs and rights with respect to women and reproduction. It is important to remember that the justices of federal judiciary are political appointees of the President and in the case of the Dobbs decision, the three conservative justices appointed by President Trump made not just a constitutional statement but a political one as well. As many pundits have said often, “elections matter,” and thus a nearly 50 years right to have an abortion has now been negated by over half of the states as a conservative dominated Supreme Court exercised its policymaking role.

Take the next step

Jonesboro students attend matinee performance of 'Courageous Steps'

Students attend courageous steps play.

A special matinee performance of the new play titled Courageous Steps took place on Wednesday. The play takes visitors back to 1954 as Thurgood Marshall prepares to argue Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court.

JONESBORO, Ga. - A new stage play titled "Courageous Steps: Bridging the Divide for Equality" is honoring the 70th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The play offers a unique perspective on the historic case, which played a pivotal role in desegregating American schools.

Wednesday morning, a special matinee performance was held for students, providing them with an educational and thought-provoking experience. Among the cast were chorus and dance students from Martha Allen Stillwell High School.

Set in 1954, the play transports visitors back to the era when Thurgood Marshall prepared to argue the case before the Supreme Court. It offers a glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the civil rights movement during that time.

Performance honors Brown v Board anniversary

It's been almost 70 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education overturned segregation in public schools. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights is honoring the anniversary with a one-night-only theatrical performance that will include activist and Hosea Helps President Elizabeth Omilami.

In addition to revisiting history, "Courageous Steps" also explores the contemporary relevance of Brown v. Board of Education. Present-day students engage in debates about the case's impact on society today, highlighting ongoing struggles for equality and justice.

The premiere of the stage play serves as the centerpiece of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights' "Power to Inspire Event," which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.