The Supreme Court unanimously held that de jure (legally mandated) segregation of the public schools was prohibited by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Following the Civil War (1861-1865), racial segregation in public accommodations and education through so-called “Jim Crow” laws was one of the major tools of the southern states for maintaining a social system of white supremacy. In Plessy v. Ferguson
In the 1930’s the Legal Defense Fund
Linda Carol Brown, an eight-year-old black girl, was not allowed to attend the all-white school in her neighborhood of Topeka, Kansas. Her parents did not want her to be bused to the all-black school, which was far from home, and they filed a suit charging a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, it was consolidated with similar cases from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. The cases were listed in alphabetical order, so that the name Brown v. Board of Education appeared first. The cases were first argued in December, 1952. Marshall and other NAACP lawyers emphasized the psychological and sociological evidence of negative effects from mandated segregation. In defense of segregation, the school districts invoked Plessy and claimed that their all-black schools either had or would soon have equal funding for facilities and teachers’ salaries.
Because of the great opposition to school integration in the South, the justices recognized the desirability of presenting a united front in both the decision and the opinion. At least six of the justices agreed that Plessy should be reversed, but they strongly disagreed about how rapidly to proceed. One justice, Stanley F. Reed, argued on behalf of the continuation of Plessy, and another justice, Robert H. Jackson, wanted to move very cautiously and appeared determined to write a concurring opinion if the majority opinion were too critical of the Court’s past approval of segregation. Deciding that it needed more information about the original intention of the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court scheduled a second argumentation of the cases for December, 1953. That summer, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson,
Warren’s opinion for the Court, written in thirteen paragraphs of nontechnical language, declared that segregation in public education was “inherently unequal” and therefore unconstitutional. The public interpreted racial segregation of students “as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group,” generating among African Americans “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.” Warren found that the historical evidence about the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment
The following year, in a decision commonly called Brown II,
Brown is probably the most momentous and influential civil rights case of the twentieth century. In effect, the decision meant the eventual elimination of all state-sanctioned segregation. When Brown was announced, its implications were unclear in regard to the constitutionality of freedom of choice plans and de facto segregated schools based on housing patterns. The Court began to move beyond the issue of de jure segregation in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
Bell, Derrick. Silent Covenants: “Brown v. Board of Education” and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Clotfelter, Charles T. After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Friedman, Leon, ed. Brown v. Board: The Landmark Oral Argument Before the Supreme Court. New York: New Press, 2004. Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of “Brown v. Board of Education” and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Martin, Waldo. “Brown v. Board of Education”: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998. Ogletree, Charles J., Jr. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of “Brown v. Board of Education.” New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004. Patterson, James T. “Brown v. Board of Education”: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Sarat, Austin, ed. Race, Law, and Culture: Reflections on “Brown v. Board of Education.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Webb, Clive, ed. Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Whitman, Mark. Removing a Badge of Slavery: The Record of “Brown v. Board of Education.” Princeton, N.J.: Wiener, 1992.
Bolling v. Sharpe
Desegregation
Fourteenth Amendment
Legal Defense Fund, NAACP
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Plessy v. Ferguson
Property rights
Race and discrimination
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
Segregation, de jure
Separate but equal doctrine
Warren, Earl