Brown V Board of Education

Kaley Kipi

POS 2041 Section 8

Mr. Frank Farcau

06 December 2004

Brown v Board of Education

On the seventeenth day in May 1954 a decision was made which changed things in the United States dramatically. For millions of black Americans, news of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education meant, at last, that they and their children no longer had to attend separate, and almost universally unequal, schools. Brown v. Board of Education was a Supreme Court ruling that changed the life of every American forever.

In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools (NAACP).

The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown's case from June 25-26, 1951. At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were unequal. The Board of Education's defense was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood. The board also argued that segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children; great African Americans had overcome much more than just segregated schools and became very successful.

The request for an injunction pushed the court to make a difficult decision. On one hand, the judges agreed with the Browns; saying that: "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn" (The National Center For Public Research). On the other hand, the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had overturned Plessy yet. Because of the precedent of Plessy, the court felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education (Cozzens).

Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951. Their case was combined with other cases that challenged school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The Supreme Court first heard the cases on December 9, 1952, but failed to reach a decision. The judges had to decide whether or not the writers of the Fourteenth Amendment had desegregated schools in mind. The court ruling eventually came to be unanimous. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court asked this question in the decision read on May 17, 1954: "Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other Ð''tangible' factors may be equal, deprive children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?" (The National Center for Public Research). They struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education saying that it "has no place", ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools across America (The National Center For Public Research).

On that Monday in May, the high court's ruling that outlawed school segregation in the United States generated urgent news flashes on the radio and frenzied black. One swift and unanimous decision by the top judges in the land was going to end segregation in public schools. Southern politicians reacted with such fury and fear that they immediately called the day "Black Monday." South Carolina Gov. James Byrnes, who rose to political power with passionate advocacy of segregation, said the decision was "the end of civilization in the South as we have known it." Georgia Gov. Herman Talmadge struck an angry tone. He said Georgia had no intention of allowing "mixed race" schools as long as he was governor. He touched on Confederate pride from the days when the South went to war with the federal government over slavery by telling supporters that the Supreme Court's ruling was not law in his state; he said it was "the first step toward national suicide." The Brown v Board of Education decision should be regarded, he said, as nothing but a "mere scrap of paper" (Patterson). Southern whites were in strong support of segregated schools.

Newspapers for black readers reacted with satisfaction. "The Supreme Court decision is the greatest victory for the Negro people since the Emancipation Proclamation," said Harlem's Amsterdam News. A writer in the Chicago Defender explained, "neither the atomic bomb nor the hydrogen bomb will ever be as meaningful to our democracy," and Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP lawyer who directed the legal fight that led to Brown v Board of Education, predicted the end of segregation in all American public schools by the fall of 1955 (Patterson). This decision was one of life changing proportions for all Americans but for black people it was also one huge step toward equality and eventually total freedom.

However, ten years after the decision very little school integration had taken place. True to the challenging words of segregationist governors, the Southern states had hunkered down in a massive resistance campaign against school integration. Some Southern counties even closed their schools instead of allowing blacks and whites into the same classrooms. In other towns, segregationist academies opened, and most if not all of the white children left the public schools for the racially exclusive alternatives. Some parents of white children chose to pay for private school tuition in order to maintain segregation. In most places, the governors, mayors, and school boards found it easy enough to just ask for more time before integrating schools (Patterson). Many southerners were so racist they would do anything not to go to a school with black children.

This extremely slow approach worked. In 1957, President Eisenhower had to send troops from the 101st Airborne into Little Rock