Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark lawsuit in the American Civil Rights Movement. It was the culmination of a plan by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to integrate public schools in the United States as part of their larger mission to achieve equity, political rights and social inclusion for all people of color.
The case resulted in a decision on May 17, 1954, by the U.S. Supreme Court to eliminate segregation in public schools, as highlighted by this excerpt from the opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren:
“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
However, this decision faced intense resistance and lack of enforcement. After a year of deliberating, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the resolution to the Brown decision, often referred to as Brown II, on May 31, 1955, which instructed segregated states to begin integrating their schools “with all deliberate speed.”
The Background
Racial discrimination in the Americas is much older than the United States. Institutionalized racial slavery began in 1619 in Old Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia with the arrival of the first documented ship carrying human beings as cargo for sale. Slavery persisted in the United States until December 6, 1865, with the ratification of the 13th amendment, although even this allowed for slavery as punishment for a crime.
Immediately after the Civil War, white supremacists in the United States who had supported slavery began to put “Black Codes” in place, which set different and discriminatory laws for people of color. The Black Codes lasted until July 9, 1868, with the passage of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing “equal protection of the law.”
Instead of being removed, however, the Black Codes evolved into Jim Crow—laws which passed as fair and equal on paper, but in practice were discriminatory. Laws such as literacy tests to vote were meant to make it more difficult for formerly enslaved people to vote, as it had been illegal to teach them to read during enslavement.
New segregation laws began to emerge across the country. As early as 1879, Kansas, despite being a free state, allowed for segregation of elementary schools in cities with populations of 15,000 or more. Parents began to challenge these laws almost immediately. The 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson delivered the “separate but equal” doctrine, and this further enabled the lawful racial segregation of American schoolchildren. By 1950, 11 court challenges to segregated schools had reached the Kansas State Supreme Court. Unfortunately, none of them was successful.
The NAACP initially hoped to “equalize” Black and white schools, and it brought court cases that aimed to secure equal facilities and teacher pay at Black schools. But even when seemingly successful, the NAACP’s equalization efforts often did not have the desired result, and white-dominated school boards and governments continued to avoid providing equal educational opportunities.
The Case
The NAACP then altered its strategy and decided to build a case to challenge segregation. If it could prove segregation itself was unconstitutional, it would be a huge step forward. It set its sights on Kansas, where schools were built with the idea of “Equal but Separate.” Topeka was somewhat unusual because not all of its schools were segregated. In addition, it provided relatively equal facilities to its segregated schools, although Black children often had to travel long distances instead of attending nearby all-white schools.
The local NAACP chapter in Topeka began recruiting families to try to enroll their children in white schools. Every Black child was refused admission. The Topeka NAACP then filed suit on their behalf in February of 1951, but the U.S. District Court ruled that, although segregation might be detrimental, it was not illegal. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy, the judges denied relief on the grounds that the Black and white schools in Topeka were equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curriculum and educational qualifications of teachers.
The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 and were joined by four similar NAACP-sponsored cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The court combined these five cases under the heading now known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Chief legal counsel for the NAACP Thurgood Marshall argued before the court that separate school systems for Blacks and whites were inherently unequal and thus violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Marshall also argued that segregated school systems tended to make Black children feel inferior to white children, and thus such a system should not be legally permissible.
The Decision
The Supreme Court justices paid special attention to whether the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools based on race. During the proceedings, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who had been a key stumbling block to a unanimous decision, died, and he was replaced by Governor Earl Warren of California. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican American students in California school systems in 1947, and he was able to bring the justices to a unanimous decision. On May 14, 1954, Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Court:
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. . . .
. . . 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.
The decision in Brown v. Board of Education forced the desegregation of public schools and also resulted in intensified resistance in the South, particularly among white supremacist groups and government officials sympathetic to the segregationist cause. In Virginia, U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. started the Massive Resistance movement, which sought to pass new state laws and policies as a means of keeping public schools from being desegregated. In one of the most notorious instances of resistance to the decision, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard in 1957 to keep Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School.
The Result
For Black Americans, the Supreme Court’s decision was encouraging and empowering. The strategy of education, lobbying and litigation to secure their civil rights was broadened to include an emphasis on “direct action.” This would soon include boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches and other tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, all of which would come to define the modern Civil Rights Movement.