Kans Brown v Board of Education of Topeka

Kans. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black. When, combined with several other cases, her suit reached the Supreme Court, that body, in an opinion by recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren , broke with long tradition and unanimously overruled the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson , holding for the first time that de jure segregation in the public schools violated the principle of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Responding to legal and sociological arguments presented by NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall , the court stressed that the "badge of inferiority" stamped on minority children by segregation hindered their full development no matter how "equal" physical facilities might be. After hearing further arguments on implementation, the court declared in 1955 that schools must be desegregated "with all deliberate speed."

Restricted in application to de jure (legally imposed) segregation, the Brown rule was applied mainly to Southern school systems. After strong resistance, which led to such incidents as the 1957 Little Rock , Ark., school crisis, integration spread slowly across the South, under court orders and the threat of loss of federal funds for noncompliance. The Brown decision gave tremendous impetus to the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and hastened integration in public facilities and accommodations. Segregation maintained by more subtle and intractable forces, however, has remained an important element in American society. De facto school segregation, caused by residential housing patterns and various other conditions rather than by law, has been attacked by the busing of students and other mechanisms. The landmark decision is commemorated by the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka (see National Parks and Monuments , table).

Bibliography: See study by J. T. Pattterson (2001).

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (USA, 1954–5) One of five cases and two decisions in which the US Supreme Court under Justice Warren revealed its liberal inclinations by unanimously reversing precedents dating from the case of Plessey v. Ferguson. On 17 May 1954, the Court ruled that racial segregation in the provision of publicly funded schooling was contrary to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and therefore illegal and inherently unequal. The ruling marked the beginning of a comprehensive legal attack, culminating in the end of racial segregation in the Southern states. The case was also a milestone in the history of the NAACP, whose activism in promoting the ruling's enforcement was critical in the way it was applied. The case was argued by J. T. Marshall, and in the second ruling on 13 May 1955 produced the phrase ‘desegregation with all due speed’ on the part of the Justices. The case was a civil rights landmark, and marked the beginning of the second reconstruction period in American race relations that would project full social integration of African Americans into the centre of the American political agenda.