Essay: The Brown v. Board of Education case

In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States was confronted with the controversial Brown v. Board of Education case which challenged segregation in public education. Before the decision of Brown v. Board of Education, many people accepted school segregation and, in most of the southern states, required segregation. Brown v. Board of Education was a historic landmark Supreme Court case because it questioned the morality and legality of allowing segregated schools in the Jim Crow South. The case also threatened to have immense  implications for blacks and whites in America.
The Brown v. Board of Education case is often well known for kickstarting racial integration and help launching the mid 1900 civil rights movement. The title of the case was shortened from Oliver Brown ET. Al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. In 1951, Oliver L. Brown, his wife Darlene, and eleven other African American parents filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education of Topeka, and sued for denying their children the right to attend segregated white schools. They sought major change in their school district’s policy of racial segregation. The parents worked together with their local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in order to overturn segregation in public schools.
In the fall of 1951, the parents attempted to enroll their children into the neighborhood schools, but were denied enrollment in the white schools and instead told to attend segregated black schools. The District Court noted that segregation in public education had a harmful effect on black children, but denied the need to desegregate schools because “the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors” in Topeka, Kansas were all equal. The District Court confirmed the precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson by the Supreme Court in 1896 and upheld state laws permitting, or requiring, segregation in public education.
The battle for civil rights has deep roots in American history, and African Americans have been fighting for their equal rights ever since the birth of our nation. This issue was so divisive that it even tore our country apart during the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 granted African Americans citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote. These amendments were passed in an effort to combat racism and reshape public perception of blacks, however, these laws were hard to enforce and Southern states developed their own laws like the Black Codes to control the newly freed slaves. Jim Crow-era laws in the South like the poll tax and literacy tests prevented many blacks in the South from voting. Anyone who tried to break Southern traditions was subject to violence and intimidation from the Ku Klux Klan.
The Great Migration was the mass movement of millions of African Americans to the Northeast, Midwest, and West around 1910 to 1930. African Americans moved away from the South to escape segregation and violence in search of better opportunities. With the U.S. entering into World War I and troops being sent overseas, more job opportunities opened up for African Americans. Blacks enjoyed the unsegregated cities and the benefits that came along with it like better jobs, schools, and homes. African Americans also got more involved in politics and became an important constituency in the North because they were not prevented from voting and some even ran for political offices.
During World War I and World War II, African American soldiers fought valiantly to defend their country and spread democracy to other parts of the world, however, they still were treated as second-class citizens and had to deal with the struggles of segregation in the armed forces and back at home. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his famous “Four Freedoms” speech that “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them” but his statements contradicted how African Americans were really being treated in the U.S. After hearing complaints from African American veterans about segregation, FDR signed Executive Order 8802 in 1941 which created the Fair Employment Practices Committee to ensure that equal opportunity was given to people of color in federal jobs, yet it still did not desegregate the armed forces. The armed forces would not become desegregated until President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 in 1948. Later that year in December, the United Nations issued their Universal Declaration of Human Rights which decreed that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political, or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status…” which was important because the international community had expressed their disapproval discrimination based on race. These statements and promises made by the United States and the United Nations to protect and provide human rights and democracy to people all over the world gave African Americans the courage to stand up against segregation and for equality under the law.
The Supreme Court combined five cases together into the Brown v. Board of Education decision because all of the cases attempted to end racial segregation in public schools. The cases were NAACP-sponsored and the NAACP’s chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall argued the case pro bono for the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court reviewed the case in the spring of 1953, but they asked to review the case again in the fall of that same year, with particular consideration given to whether segregation of public education violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause which requires states to provide equal protection under the law. When Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died in September 1953, Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In a time when race relations were sensitive and segregation was widely disputed, the justices had to contemplate and debate what the implications of segregation would be on the right to education. A key influence was psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark’s doll experiments and their testimony in Briggs v. Elliot which demonstrated how significantly segregation affected the psychology and self-esteem of children. In the study, the Clarks presented two dolls to black and white children who either attended segregated schools in Washington D.C. or integrated schools in New York. The dolls were identical with the exception of their skin and hair color, one doll was white with blonde hair and the other doll was darker skinned with black hair. Their study concluded that all children preferred the white doll with blonde hair over the brown doll with black hair when asked which doll they would rather play with, or which one was nicer or prettier. Their results revealed that racial segregation had dangerous repercussions and that African American children had internalized racism and truly felt inferior to their white counterparts. Their shocking results persuaded the Supreme Court and eventually led Chief Justice Warren to write “… to separate them from other 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…” in which he referred to the diminished self-esteem that occurs in children of color when racial segregation is allowed to persist. The Supreme Court used Clarks’ research as evidence that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” because “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education” and equal access of school facilities.
Chief Justice Warren was known for his leadership skills and his ability to manipulate the other justices to achieve a majority. When Warren took his seat as Chief Justice, all the other justices in the Supreme Court had been appointed by President Roosevelt or President Truman. Chief Justice Warren assembled a meeting with the justices, and he reasoned that the only explanation for upholding the practice of segregation was the belief that blacks were inferior to whites. All of the justices disagreed with segregation, except for Justice Stanley F. Reed who felt that segregation could benefit the African American community. Despite their opposition to segregation, not all of the justices were instantly persuaded to end the practice of it. Some were hesitant and unwilling to overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, or were unsure whether the Constitution gave the Supreme Court the authority to end segregation and felt that segregation was a problem that states should resolve themselves. Some justices, on the other hand, agreed with Chief Justice Warren and felt that they had to intervene on issues of human rights and individual liberties.
Chief Justice Warren understood the necessity of a unanimous decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case. In order to declare state segregation laws unconstitutional, the Supreme Court would have to overturn precedent set in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which stated that racial segregation in railroad railway cars and public facilities did not violate the Constitution as long as the facilities were “separate but equal.” Warren demanded a unanimous decision because he did not want the decision to be appealed by the states and wanted to send a definitive message to the Southern whites that segregation was unconstitutional. Warren rallied the other justices to agree with his opinion, and Justices Jackson and Reed finally agreed to drop their dissenting opinions and side with the majority. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court finally established in a unanimous (9-0) decision that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” because it perpetuated a sense of inferiority in African Americans, and that segregation in public education violated the Fourteenth Amendment and was thus unconstitutional.
Brown v. Board of Education is a landmark Supreme Court case not because it ended segregation, but because the decision forever changed the landscape of race relations in the United States. Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in public schools, it did not mean that segregation and racism disappeared over night, desegregation was a long and gradual process. It granted African American children the right to an equal education, and helped to slowly undo generations of segregation and discrimination. This case set an example for future civil rights battles to come, and gave people of color hope that they would be free from discrimination and given equal opportunity in all aspects of their lives. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right…” and the Brown v. Board of Education reminded Americans of that revolutionary spirit and inspired people of color to stand up for their equal rights.