LAD #30.

AP American History
5 April 2007
LAD: Brown VS Board of Education
The famed United States Supreme Court Case of Brown VS the Board of Education marked the beginnings of an era of civil rights movements and the ultimate goal of equality among the races ad citizens of the nation. As the doctrine ‘separate but equal’ at the time ruled constitutional, public organizations were all segregated by race, including the public schooling system. The schools across America, however, were held to far from equal standards, with the example that little third-grader Linda Brown gave in Topeka Arkansas. Because Linda was made to walk over a mile to the elementary school for blacks after being turned away from the closer and more superior school for white children, in 1951 her father Oliver Brown appealed with the support of other black parents McKinley Burnett and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.) The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown's case from June 25-26, 1951 while the NAACP argued that the separate schools truly were unequal and that the colored children were being robbed of any experience dealing with the white community. The most serious proclamation was that upon being segregated, the black children were taught to believe that they themselves were inferior to their white neighbors. In turn the Board of Education argued that the separation within school districts simply prepared all participants of the segregation experienced throughout adult life as well. Due to the strong preceding case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled in favor of the Board of Education.
After the initial setback, Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951 and their case was combined with other cases that challenged school segregation in various states. Finally, after a period of careful thoughtfulness, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous Court, in favor of Brown and the NAACP, due to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Although the case did not abolish segregation in all public areas in general, it did wipe out the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education. This was a major step forward in the realm of racial equality ion the Untied States.