When was Brown v. Board of Education?
Vivian Burey Marshall
In the 1950s, Burey was diagnosed with flu or pleurisy, but was sick for months. She eventually learned that she had lung cancer. She hid her sickness from Marshall for months, as he was leading the case of "Brown v. Board of Education" at the US Supreme Court. After it ruled on May 17, 1954, she told Marshall about her illness. Richard Kluger credits Burey with being one of two people who had been indirectly active but important influencers of the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, in his book, "Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality" (2011). Burey died of lung cancer on February 11, 1955, her 44th birthday, after 25 years of marriage.
John W. Eggleston
Although Eggleston firmly believed in states' rights, he became best known for the opinions he wrote overturning attempts by Virginia legislators to avoid complying with the United States Supreme Court's decisions in "Brown v. Board of Education" (which had a companion case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County). The Massive Resistance crisis had embroiled Virginia, with U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd vowing to make his state a bastion against enforcement of "Brown". Justice Eggleston wrote the 1955 decision which interpreted a state constitutional provision such that Virginia could not pay private school tuitions for students who left public schools because they integrated racially. In response, legislators proposed a state constitutional amendment, which voters approved the following January, then the special legislative session of August and September 1956 adopted the Stanley plan which included such tuition grants. The school voucher issue then came before the Court again as Harrison v. Day, a declaratory judgment action brought by the Virginia attorney general against the state's comptroller. Chief Justice Eggleston's opinion of January 19, 1959 (birthday of Robert E. Lee and a state holiday in Virginia), while criticizing the federal decision, also declared the new Virginia laws unconstitutional. Only the two justices from Richmond refused to make the decision unanimous, Harold Fleming Snead joining in the dissent of Willis D. Miller, although a three-judge federal panel on the same day also overturned the Stanley Plan as unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution in James v. Almond. School desegregation came before the Virginia Supreme Court again in 1963, and Chief Justice Eggleston strongly dissented from the six-justice majority in December 1963, correctly predicting that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn their approval of funds for Prince Edward County's segregation academies while its public schools remained closed, Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County. Another important opinion was "United States Construction Workers" v. "Laburnum Construction Corp." (1953), which established the authority of state courts to adjudicate suits by corporations against labor unions over unfair business practices. In one of his last of more than 500 opinions, Eggleston wrote a unanimous decision about a prisoner (Robert Lee Clark) being improperly denied his right to appeal.
Cleveland School District
In the post-Brown v. Board of Education era, the district received its desegregation lawsuit in 1965, filed by black parents, on behalf of 131 children protesting racial segregation in the district. The case took over 62 years to resolve, and unlike many Southern school districts, the Cleveland School District never consolidated its white and black schools, which until then were actually segregated by law. In 1969 Cleveland High School, historically a White school, opened admission to black students. About 1,000 white people protested at the time Black students were legally allowed to enroll in White schools.
Mobile, Alabama
In 1963, three African-American students brought a case against the Mobile County School Board for being denied admission to Murphy High School. This was nearly a decade after the United States Supreme Court had ruled in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. The federal district court ordered that the three students be admitted to Murphy for the 1964 school year, leading to the desegregation of Mobile County's school system.
Brown v. Board of Education
The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in "Plessy v. Ferguson", , which had upheld a state law requiring "separate but equal" segregated facilities for blacks and whites in railway cars. The three-judge District Court panel found that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on negro children, but denied relief on the ground that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers.
Nullification (U.S. Constitution)
Nullification and interposition resurfaced in the 1950s as southern states attempted to preserve racial segregation in their schools. In "Brown v. Board of Education", 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the Supreme Court decided that segregated schools were unconstitutional. At least ten southern states passed nullification or interposition measures attempting to preserve segregated schools and refusing to follow the "Brown" decision. The advocates of these nullification and interposition measures argued that the "Brown" decision was an unconstitutional infringement on states' rights, and that the states had the power to prevent that decision from being enforced within their borders.
The Supreme Court explicitly rejected nullification in the case of "Cooper v. Aaron", 358 U.S. 1 (1958). The state of Arkansas had passed several laws in an effort to prevent the integration of its schools. The Supreme Court, in its only opinion to be signed by all nine justices, held that state governments had no power to nullify the "Brown" decision. The Supreme Court held that the "Brown" decision and its implementation "can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation whether attempted 'ingeniously or ingenuously.'" Thus, "Cooper v. Aaron" directly held that states may not nullify federal law.
The Supreme Court rejected interposition in a similar context. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a federal district court that rejected Louisiana's attempt to use interposition to protect its segregated schools. The district court found that interposition by the states is inconsistent with the Constitution, which gives the power to decide constitutional issues to the Supreme Court, not the states. The court held: "The conclusion is clear that interposition is not a constitutional doctrine. If taken seriously, it is illegal defiance of constitutional authority. Otherwise, 'it amounted to no more than a protest, an escape valve through which the legislators blew off steam to relieve their tensions.' . . . However solemn or spirited, interposition resolutions have no legal efficacy." "Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board", 188 F. Supp. 916 (E.D. La. 1960), "aff'd" 364 U.S. 500 (1960). The Supreme Court affirmed this decision, thus holding that interposition cannot be used to negate federal law.
Discrimination in the United States
In the education system, the Civil Rights Movement further became huge after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Oliver Brown challenged the Board of Education of Topeka, Kanas when his daughter was not allowed to enroll in any of the all white schools claiming that "separate but equal" violates the protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ruby Bridges, along with the Little Rock Nine, dealt with discrimination from Caucasian peers, their parents, and the community in general during the desegregation of schools. The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African-American students who volunteered to attend school at the Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They continuously had problems with the public and faced harsh treatment from other students, parents, and even the Little Rock National Guard. However, a change occurred when President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened by sending federal troops to escort the students. For Ruby Bridges, she joined the Civil Rights Movement in the November 14, 1960 when she became enrolled in William Frantz Elementary School. Due to many parents not allowing their children in her class, Bridges was in class by herself, which was taught by Barbara Henry, and often times ate alone and had recess alone. Ruby, along with her family, did face a lot of backlash throughout Louisiana from the desegregation; however, they did receive support from numerous people in the North and Bridges was able to finish the year.
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education", declaring state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. Privately, Eisenhower disapproved of the Supreme Court's holding, stating that he believed it "set back progress in the South at least fifteen years." The president's public response was a frosty, "The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional processes in this country; and I will obey." Over the succeeding six years of his presidency, author Robert Caro notes, Eisenhower would never "publicly support the ruling; not once would he say that "Brown" was morally right[.]" His silence left civil rights leaders with the impression that Ike didn't care much about the day-to-day plight of blacks in America, and it served as a source of encouragement for segregationists vowing to resist school desegregation. These segregationists, including the Ku Klux Klan, dealt with a campaign of "massive resistance," violently opposing those who sought to desegregate public education in the South. In 1956, most of Southern members of Congress signed the Southern Manifesto, which called for the overturning of "Brown".
Brown v. Board of Education
The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall—who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967—argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Assistant attorney general Paul Wilson—later distinguished emeritus professor of law at the University of Kansas—conducted the state's ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument.
Judicial aspects of race in the United States
Legislation enacting racial segregation was finally overturned in the 1950s-1960s, after the nation was morally challenged and educated by activists of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954 with "Brown v. Board of Education", the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" was inherently discriminatory and directed integration of public schools. An executive order of 1961, by President Kennedy, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to oversee workplace affirmative action. Executive Order 11246 of 1965, signed by President Johnson, enforced this policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, the policy included court-supervised desegregation busing plans.
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
In "Cooper v. Aaron" (1958), the Supreme Court dealt with states' rights and the Tenth Amendment. The case came about when conflicts arose in direct response to the ruling of another landmark case, "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954). In "Brown", the Supreme Court unanimously declared racial segregation of children in public schools unconstitutional. Following "Brown", the court ordered district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed." In other words, the Court's decision not only ruled segregation as an unconstitutional and illegal practice, but also prompted all public schools to open its doors to black students and provide access to facilities to white and black students equally. This ruling quickly spurred upsetting conflicts between those trying to enforce the ruling and those refusing to abide by it.
Linda Carol Brown
Linda Brown was born in Topeka, Kansas, on February 20, 1943. She was the oldest of three daughters of Leola and Oliver Brown. Oliver Brown was a welder and pastor. At the direction of the NAACP, Linda Brown's parents attempted to enroll her in nearby Sumner elementary school and were denied. This allowed Brown's family to join the group of civil rights lawsuits coordinated and supported by the NAACP, which would ultimately be decided in the US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown's name was alphabetically first among the families suing the Topeka Board of Education which is why their name was listed first and the case is commonly referred to as Brown vs. the Board of Education. Although her right to attend a non-segregated school was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, Brown did not have the opportunity to attend Sumner. By the time the case was decided in 1954, Brown was in junior high school. Brown was reportedly harassed by journalists after the ruling. Brown later attended Washburn and Kansas State University.
Keys v. Carolina Coach Co.
The match of client Sarah Keys with the young firm of Robertson and Roundtree proved fortuitous, as did the timing of the case, which unfolded during the same two-year period that the Supreme Court of the United States was hearing oral arguments in the landmark school desegregation case, "Brown v. Board of Education". When the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the "Keys" complaint on February 23, 1953 on jurisdictional grounds, Roundtree and Robertson elected to bring their case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, which they believed might be persuaded to re-evaluate its traditional interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Act, in the same way that the Supreme Court was then re-evaluating its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. On September 1, 1953, two months before Thurgood Marshall and his legal team made the second round of oral arguments in "Brown" before the Supreme Court asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment's "equal protection" clause prohibited segregation, Sarah Keys became the first black petitioner to bring a complaint before the Commission on a Jim Crow bus matter.
Charles S. Johnson
Johnson lived to celebrate the landmark Supreme Court decision "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), which ruled that racial segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional. He played a key role in the effort to implement the decision in the face of "massive resistance" in the South. His work and that of his peers also contributed to passage of federal civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.
Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools
After the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954, segregated schools were ruled to be unconstitutional. The NAACP soon signed up nine high-achieving black students, the Little Rock Nine, for attendance at Little Rock Central High School, a previously all-white school. After the school became the site of demonstrations and protests on September 4, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to the school to prevent the students from entering, contradicting the Supreme Court and the wishes of the school district. The crisis escalated with Faubus ordering all public schools in the city closed, rather than allowing the integration of the nine students.
Farmville, Virginia
Farmville and Prince Edward County Public Schools were the source of "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County" (1952–54), a case incorporated into "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), the landmark case that overturned school segregation in the United States. Among the cases consolidated into the "Brown" decision, the "Davis" case was the only one involving student protests.
Summerton, South Carolina
Summerton is well known for the court case "Briggs v. Elliott" (Court citation:347 US 483). "Briggs" was the first filed of the four court cases combined into "Brown v. Board of Education", the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 officially overturned racial segregation in U.S. public schools.
Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education
Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ordered immediate desegregation of public schools in the American South. It followed 15 years of delays to integrate by most Southern school boards after the Court's ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
Oyama v. California
First, Chief Justice Vinson was fairly conservative in issues of race. As the famous story goes, Associate Justice Frankfurter remarked that Chief Justice Vinson’s death in 1953 (that is, in the middle of the "Brown v. Board of Education" case) was perhaps the only evidence of the existence of God he has ever witnessed. While there are of course no certainties in law, the general consensus remains that if Vinson had not been replaced by Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1953, the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" case would have been decided differently.
Jerry Falwell
In speaking of the "Brown v. Board of Education" ruling, he said, in 1958:
Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education
The lawsuit was decided by the New Jersey Supreme Court on January 31, 1944. The court stated that Junior School No. 2 "unlawfully discriminated" against the students and were in a direct violation of statute . This statute states among other things that "it is unlawful for boards of education to exclude children from any public school on ground that they are of negro race". Robert Queen represented the plaintiffs in this lawsuit.
Women's Political Council
In May 1954, shortly after the "Brown v. Board of Education" United States Supreme Court decision was announced, Robinson wrote a letter to Mayor W. A. Gayle saying that there was growing support among local black organizations for a bus boycott.
African-American history
The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) of Topeka. This decision applied to public facilities, especially public schools. Reforms occurred slowly and only after concerted activism by African Americans. The ruling also brought new momentum to the Civil Rights Movement. Boycotts against segregated public transportation systems sprang up in the South, the most notable of which was the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site
In the "Brown" case, the legal opinion was not that the schools for black children in Kansas were qualitatively worse in construction, books, etc. than the schools for white children. Instead, the opinion was that school segregation by itself was an unfair detriment to the education of black children. The holding that "separate" by itself was unconstitutional was what made "Brown" the landmark case in school desegregation. From the decision:
Interposition
Several southern states attempted to use interposition in the 1950s after the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education", which ruled that segregated schools violate the Constitution. Many people in southern states strongly opposed the "Brown" decision. They argued that the "Brown" decision was an unconstitutional infringement on states' rights, and that the states had the power to prevent that decision from being enforced within their borders. James J. Kilpatrick, an editor of the "Richmond News Leader", wrote a series of editorials urging "massive resistance" to integration of the schools. Kilpatrick revived the idea of interposition by the states as a constitutional basis for resisting federal government action. At least ten southern states passed interposition or nullification laws in an effort to prevent integration of their schools.
Brown v. Board of Education
In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting "Brown", but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954 the Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the "Brown" ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D. E. Hudgins Jr., a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to the actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such a progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation.
Mendez v. Westminster
Governor Earl Warren, who would later become Chief Justice of the United States, where he would preside over the "Brown v. Board of Education" case, signed into law the repeal of remaining segregationist provisions in the California statutes. Several organizations joined the appellate case as "amicus curiae", including the NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall and Robert L. Carter and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling but not on equal protection grounds. It did not challenge the "separate but equal" interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that had been announced by the Supreme Court in "Plessy v. Ferguson" in 1896. Instead, the Ninth Circuit held that the segregation was not racially based, but it had been implemented by the school districts without being specifically authorized by state law, and it was thus impermissible irrespective of "Plessy".
Warren E. Burger
The Court issued a unanimous ruling, "Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education" (1971) supporting busing to reduce "de facto" racial segregation in schools. In "United States v. U.S. District Court" (1972) the Burger Court issued another unanimous ruling against the Nixon Administration's desire to invalidate the need for a search warrant and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in cases of domestic surveillance. Then, only two weeks later in "Furman v. Georgia" (1972) the court, in a 5–4 decision, invalidated all death penalty laws then in force, although Burger dissented from the decision. In the most controversial ruling of his term, "Roe v. Wade" (1973), Burger voted with the majority to recognize a broad right to privacy that prohibited states from banning abortions. However, Burger abandoned "Roe v. Wade" by the time of "Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists".
Fairfax County Public Schools
After the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, Daniel Duke, author of "Education Empire", wrote: "Whether local school systems such as Fairfax County, left to their own, would have moved forward to implement desegregation in the late fifties will never be known. Richmond removed any possibility of local option..." It was recognized in court cases that it was the state who was running the show, not the county. The ruling from the court stated, "Prior to the Brown decision Fairfax County maintained a dual school system: one for Negro students; one for all other races. Shortly thereafter the placement of all children in the Fairfax County schools was taken from the local School Board and vested in the state Pupil Placement Board. The assignment of students remained with the state Board until the 1961–62 school year, at which time placement responsibilities were reinvested in the local School Board. Fairfax County began their desegregation efforts shortly thereafter.
As early as 1955 it was noted that in the Virginia General Assembly: Delegates from Northern Virginia openly opposed the Stanley plans as well as calls for even more radical legislation. Virginia's 10th district was the only congressional district to vote against the Gray Plan. Delegate Boatwright also introduced another bill aimed at correcting the unorthodox views of the northern Virginians. Boatwright's legislation would have prohibited certain federal employees from serving on school boards or holding other local offices. The point of this bill, called the "Boatwright Bill" was without a doubt aimed at Northern Virginia and the School Boards. Boatwright himself said his bill affected all of Virginia communities but admitted Northern Virginia was most affected. The reason for the bill was because they felt that Federal Employees were in support of the Federal government's position on integration. The seven-member Fairfax County School Board included four Federal employees.
School integration in the United States
After "Brown vs. Board of Education" ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, the implementation of desegregation was discussed in a follow-up Supreme Court case termed "Brown II". Though the NAACP lawyers argued for an immediate timetable of integration, the Supreme Court issued an ambiguous order that school districts should integrate with "all deliberate speed."
Edward L. Cochran
The Board had pursued a policy of voluntary integration prior to 1964, which resulted in only a fraction of black students attending white schools. As late as 1964, ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Board stated that it would not consider forcing integration until 1967, to "allow for a reasonable period of adjustment" to the change. However, in May 1964, as the county experienced increasing growth, the Board was expanded to five members, and Dr. Cochran was appointed as one of the Board's new members. He is credited by Maryland State Senator Robert Kittleman, then the education chairman of Howard County's NAACP chapter, for providing the swing vote on February 9, 1965 to close all-black schools.
Topeka, Kansas
Monroe Elementary, a segregated school that figured in the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, through the efforts of The Brown Foundation working with the Kansas Congressional delegation place in the early 1990s, is now Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. The Brown Foundation is largely responsible for the content of the interpretive exhibits at the Historic Site. The National Historic Site was opened by President George W. Bush on May 17, 2004.
George Edward Chalmer Hayes
In 1954 with Spottswood William Robinson III, he was the lead counsel on "Bolling v. Sharpe", the companion case to "Brown v. Board of Education". Hayes argued that denying African American students the liberty to attend non-segregated schools violated due process. Bolling was decided under the Fifth Amendment's "due process" clause while Brown was decided under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Secondary education in the United States
In 1954 the Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education" made desegregation of elementary and high schools mandatory, although private Christian schools expanded rapidly following this ruling to accommodate white families attempting to avoid desegregation.
Massive resistance
Using legal challenges, by the 1940s, black attorneys who included Thurgood Marshall, Oliver W. Hill, William H. Hastie, Spottswood W. Robinson III and Leon A. Ransom were gradually winning civil rights cases based upon federal constitutional challenges. Among these was the case of "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County", which was actually initiated by students who stepped forward to protest poor conditions at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Their case became part of the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" Supreme Court decision in 1954. That decision overturned "Plessy" and declared that state laws which established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities and were inherently unequal. As a result, "de jure" racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby paving the way for Desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
Education segregation in Indiana
After "Brown v. Board of Education", the state still needed a legal push. "Bell v. School City of Gary" (1963) was the first. Three years later came Copeland v. South Bend Community School Corporation (1967). Three years after that came "Banks v. Muncie Community Schools" (1970). National policy came the next year in "Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education" (1971), which relied on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Briggs v. Elliott
In 1952 the Supreme Court heard the case and returned it to the district court for rehearing after Clarendon County school officials sent a report on progress in making facilities equal. In March the district court again heard the case. The Court found that progress had been made towards equality. Thurgood Marshall argued that this may be true, but that the real issue was that as long as separation existed, the schools would be unequal. So the case was appealed back up to the Supreme Court in May. The case was then consolidated with several other school desegregation cases into "Brown v. Board of Education".
Mona Davids
In July 2014, Davids filed a lawsuit to invalidate New York State teacher-tenure laws, and said she expected the suit to be consolidated with a similar suit known as "Wright v. New York" that fellow school reformer Campbell Brown, head of Partnership for Educational Justice, had already announced she would file. In September 2014, "Capital New York" reported that the planned alliance with Brown was no more, because Davids held a press conference where she accused Brown "of trying to steal the spotlight and divert resources away from her case" and stated that "Campbell Brown is trying to reform her image and make herself relevant on the backs of black and Hispanic children, our children. This is our lawsuit." At the press conference, members of the New York City Parents Union "held up fake $100 bills with Brown's screaming face in the middle and signs that read 'Campbell Brown does not speak for NYC parents.'" Keoni Wright, a plaintiff in Brown's case, said Davids's allegations against Brown were "disgusting and ludicrous."
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), was an important United States Supreme Court case dealing with the freedom of choice plans created to avoid compliance with the Court's mandate in "Brown II". The Court held that New Kent County's freedom of choice plan did not constitute adequate compliance with the school board's responsibility to determine a system of admission to public schools on a non-racial basis. The Supreme Court mandated that the school board must formulate new plans and steps towards realistically converting to a desegregated system. "Green v. County School board of New Kent County" was a follow up of "Brown v. Board of Education".
Brown v. Board of Education
In June 1987, Philip Elman, a civil rights attorney who served as an associate in the Solicitor General's office during Harry Truman's term, claimed he and Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter were mostly responsible for the Supreme Court's decision, and stated that the NAACP's arguments did not present strong evidence. Elman has been criticized for offering a self-aggrandizing history of the case, omitting important facts, and denigrating the work of civil rights attorneys who had laid the groundwork for the decision over many decades. However, Frankfurter was also known for being one of court's most outspoken advocates of the judicial restraint philosophy of basing court rulings on existing law rather than personal or political considerations. Public officials in the United States today are nearly unanimous in lauding the ruling. In May 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the ruling, President George W. Bush spoke at the opening of the "Brown v. Board of Education" National Historic Site, calling "Brown" "a decision that changed America for the better, and forever." Most Senators and Representatives issued press releases hailing the ruling.
Brown v. Board of Education
In 1978, Topeka attorneys Richard Jones, Joseph Johnson and Charles Scott, Jr. (son of the original "Brown" team member), with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, persuaded Linda Brown Smith—who now had her own children in Topeka schools—to be a plaintiff in reopening "Brown". They were concerned that the Topeka Public Schools' policy of "open enrollment" had led to and would lead to further segregation. They also believed that with a choice of open enrollment, white parents would shift their children to "preferred" schools that would create both predominantly African American and predominantly European American schools within the district. The district court reopened the "Brown" case after a 25-year hiatus, but denied the plaintiffs' request finding the schools "unitary". In 1989, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit on 2–1 vote found that the vestiges of segregation remained with respect to student and staff assignment. In 1993, the Supreme Court denied the appellant School District's request for "certiorari" and returned the case to District Court Judge Richard Rodgers for implementation of the Tenth Circuit's mandate.
Linda Carol Brown
Linda Carol Brown (February 20, 1943 March 25, 2018) was a campaigner for equality in education. As a schoolgirl in 1954, Brown became the center of the landmark United States civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Brown was in third grade at the time, and sought to enroll at Sumner School in Topeka, Kansas. Her admission was denied based on her skin color. Her lawsuit against segregation in elementary schools was ultimately successful and the resulting Supreme Court precedent overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine which had been previously established in "Plessy v. Ferguson". Brown became an educator and civil rights advocate.
Anderson Hunt Brown
Mr. Anderson H. Brown was a civil rights leader in the community who was first involved in a 1928 lawsuit against the Board of Education and the Kanawha Public Library for denying African Americans access to the public library and later with the NAACP locally and nationally. Mr. Brown with the Charleston WV branch of the NAACP initiated a lawsuit against the school district and the library when three African American citizens were refused entry to the public library. They were refused the books, papers and magazines and the right to sit in the library. The original case was brought before the Circuit Court judge in Kanawha County and the judge ruled that the Board was not in violation of the law. The African American lawyers, along with Anderson H. Brown, took the case to the West Virginia State Supreme Court of Appeals. “The Supreme Court ruled in Anderson Brown’s favor by saying that – ‘the Board of Education could not exclude colored people from using the Kanawha County Library”.
Board of Education v. Walters
Board of Education v. Walters was a 1979 Ohio Supreme Court case relating to the funding of primary and secondary schools in Ohio. The Court ruled that the method of funding public schools at the time was constitutional despite disparities in per-pupil education spending between different districts. Article VI of the Ohio Constitution states that the state must provide an "adequate system of public schools." The ruling overturned a previous trial court ruling that the State's school-funding system violated the Constitution of Ohio's requirement of providing a thorough and efficient system of public education. "Board of Education v. Walters" is one of the cases that played a role leading to "DeRolph v. State of Ohio" in 1997, which found the model of funding for public schools in Ohio to be unconstitutional.
McKinley Burnett
Three years after the suit was filed, the Supreme Court reviewed the case. The case was named "Brown v. Board of Education". Throughout all the hearings and debates, Burnett was in attendance for it all. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the ruling of the Supreme Court: "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
John Paul Jr. (judge)
To Paul and his colleagues fell the task of implementing the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" in desegregation lawsuits in the Western District of Virginia. In August, 1956, Judge Paul issued a historic ruling ordering the desegregation of the Charlottesville public schools, and which soon set off Massive Resistance as by-now-U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd vehemently disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and state officials obstructed its implementation. Judge Paul also sat on the 3-judge panel that ordered the integration of the graduate schools of the University of Virginia in the Gregory Swanson case. He also ordered the desegregation of the schools in Grayson County, and Warren County.
Desegregation busing
In comparison with many other cities in the nation, Nashville was not a hotbed of racial violence or massive protest during the civil rights era. In fact, the city was a leader of school desegregation in the South, even housing a few small schools that were minimally integrated before the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision in 1954. Despite this initial breakthrough, however, full desegregation of the schools was a far cry from reality in Nashville in the mid-1950s, and thus 22 plaintiffs, including black student Robert Kelley, filed suit against the Nashville Board of Education in 1955.
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
In "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, the Warren Court ruled that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. One year later, in Brown II, enforcement of this principle was given to district courts, ordering that they take the necessary steps to make admittance to public schools nondiscriminatory "with all deliberate speed." The term "all deliberate speed" did little to speed up the school board's plan for integration. Judge John J. Parker of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit led many in the South in interpreting "Brown" as a charge to not-segregate, but not an order to integrate. The Supreme Court heard several more cases surrounding the speed and efficacy of desegregation between its initial ruling in "Brown" and the "Green v. School Board" case in 1968.
Julius Waties Waring
In several other cases he ruled in favor of those who had challenged racist practices of the time:In 1951 Waring was one of three judges to hear a school desegregation test case known as "Briggs v. Elliott". Thurgood Marshall represented the plaintiffs against the Clarendon County, South Carolina public schools which were described as separate but not at all equal. Though the plaintiffs lost the case before the three judge panel which voted 2-1 for the defendants, Waring's eloquent dissent, and his phrase, "Segregation is per se inequality" formed the legal foundation for the United States Supreme Court in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision.
Betsey Brown
Set in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Educationm —the landmark case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional—the novel is eponymous.
Brown v. Board of Education
Both scholarly and popular ideas of hereditarianism played an important role in the attack and backlash that followed the "Brown" decision. "The Mankind Quarterly" was founded in 1960, in part in response to the "Brown" decision.
Cooper v. Aaron
Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which denied the Arkansas School Board the right to delay desegregation for 30 months.On September 12, 1958 the Warren Court handed down a per curium decision which held that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagree with them, which asserted judicial supremacy established in Marbury v. Madison. The decision in this case upheld the rulings in Brown v. Board of Education and Brown II which held that the doctrine of separate but equal is unconstitutional.
Education segregation in Wisconsin
After "Brown v. Board of Education", the state still needed a legal push. " Amos, et al. v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee" (1965) was the beginning in Wisconsin.
Harold Hitz Burton
Burton played a crucial role in the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka", 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Several cases alleging unconstitutional racial discrimination in elementary and secondary public schools were coming before the court in 1952. In the first sign that Burton was ready to reverse "Plessy", on June 7 Burton voted with Clark and Minton to grant certiorari to both "Brown" and another case, "Briggs v. Elliott", 342 U.S. 350 (1952). The Supreme Court subsequently agreed to also hear "Bolling v. Sharpe", 347 U.S. 497 (1954), "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County", 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952), and "Gebhart v. Belton", 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 1952). Oral argument in all five cases was heard at early December 1952. The justices held their first post-oral argument judicial conference on the cases on December 13. Burton, Black, Douglas, and Minton had all come out against racial segregation in the public schools during the conference. Clark seemed unsure, but it appeared that he could be persuaded to join the majority. Burton himself noted in his diary that he felt the court was likely to vote 6-to-3 to bar on racial discrimination in schools, but not on constitutional grounds. Other justices were not so sure. William O. Douglas believed that five justices would vote to uphold "Plessy": Vinson, Clark, Frankfurter, Jackson and Reed. Among these, Frankfurter and Jackson exhibited the most doubt about "Plessy". Douglas even worried that a 5-to-4 decision would be reached in which schools would be given a decade or more to bring unequal African American schools up to par. Vinson was a fence-sitter of a different kind: He was deeply troubled by the effect a desegregation order would have on the nation. It was likely that, even if Vinson joined a majority in barring "separate but equal" in public schools, he would do so only on narrow, technical grounds—leading to a plurality decision, a fragmented court, and a ruling lacking in legal and moral weight. Frankfurter, who personally believed racial segregation to be "odious", argued for the cases to be held over to the next term and reargued. A majority of the court agreed. Some hoped for changes in the political landscape that would make a decision easier, while others worried about the effect a divided opinion would have. On June 8, the Supreme Court issued its order, scheduling reargument for October 12, 1953.
Brown v. Board of Education
Soon after the district court decision, election outcomes and the political climate in Topeka changed. The Board of Education of Topeka began to end segregation in the Topeka elementary schools in August 1953, integrating two attendance districts. All the Topeka elementary schools were changed to neighborhood attendance centers in January 1956, although existing students were allowed to continue attending their prior assigned schools at their option. Plaintiff Zelma Henderson, in a 2004 interview, recalled that no demonstrations or tumult accompanied desegregation in Topeka's schools:
Desegregation busing
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The process of integrating public schools met fierce resistance in the South where segregation laws took hold after the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era of the United States. In Northern and Western states, "de facto" segregation was the customary practice. Due to patterns of residential segregation, a principal tool for racial integration was the use of busing. In the 1971 "Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education" ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had the discretion to include busing as a desegregation tool to achieve racial balance. While the "Swann" decision addressed "de jure" segregation in the South, it failed to address "de facto" segregation which persisted elsewhere in the country. In Georgia, Governor Jimmy Carter saw that "Swann" was "clearly a one-sided decision; the Court is still talking about the South, the North is still going free". In the 1974 "Milliken v. Bradley" decision, the U.S. Supreme Court placed an important limitation on "Swann" when they ruled that students could be bused across district lines only when evidence of "de jure" segregation across multiple school districts existed.
Brown v. Board of Education
The case of "Brown v. Board of Education" as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: "Brown" itself, "Briggs v. Elliott" (filed in South Carolina), "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County" (filed in Virginia), "Gebhart v. Belton" (filed in Delaware), and "Bolling v. Sharpe" (filed in Washington, D.C.).
Race in the United States criminal justice system
In the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education", the United States Supreme Court decision overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine implemented in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case in schools and required that schools be integrated. The case was brought before the Court in 1952 after African American Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter Linda in a local white elementary school and was refused enrollment. He and other African American parents, with the help of the NAACP sued the Topeka school district, and Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953 that public school segregation violated the 14th Amendment. The Court decision was unanimous.
Louis Brandeis
One of the hallmarks of the case was Brandeis's minimizing common-law jurisprudence in favor of extralegal information relevant to the case. According to judicial historian Stephen Powers, the "so-called 'Brandeis Brief' became a model for progressive litigation," by taking into consideration social and historical realities rather than just the abstract general principles. He adds that it had "a profound impact on the future of the legal profession" by accepting more broad-based legal information. John Vile adds that this new "Brandeis Brief" was increasingly used, most notably in the "Brown v. Board of Education" case in 1954 that desegregated public schools.
History of Tallahassee, Florida
As elsewhere, the hardest part of the struggle for integration in Tallahassee concerned the school system. Despite the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, and a court statement in 1955 that compliance with the decision should take place "with all deliberate speed" (Brown II), no schools in Florida were desegregated until 1959 (and only one school, in Miami, was integrated that year). Many Floridians viewed "Brown v. Board of Education" as "a day of catastrophe -- a Black Monday -- a day something like Pearl Harbor". Although the desegregation process in Florida brought less violence and upheaval than in other Southern states, Florida counties resisted integration "by every means", and local lawsuits in federal courts, on a county by county basis, were necessary for integration to take place. Leon County "fought school integration as tenaciously as any community in Florida". Florida schools were not fully desegregated until the late 1960s, and in Tallahassee, only after the "dyed-in-the-wool segregationists", as school Superintendent Freeman Ashmore called them, had decamped for three newly founded segregation academies: Maclay School, North Florida Christian High School, and Maranatha Christian Academy (closed). Governor LeRoy Collins (1955-1961) supported (gradual) school desegregation—the first Southern official to do so—but the legislature passed a resolution declaring Brown v. Board of Education "null and void", as a federal imposition on states' rights. "By the time Collins left office in 1961, Tallahassee, like most of Florida, remained committed to preserving a segregated school system."
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Probably the most famous case in the history of LDF was "Brown v. Board of Education", the landmark case in 1954 in which the United States Supreme Court explicitly outlawed "de jure" racial segregation of public education facilities. During the civil rights protests of the 1960s, LDF represented "the legal arm of the civil rights movement" and provided counsel for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.
Jitu Weusi
Prior to the teachers' strike was the Brown v. Board decision. This decision which called for the integration of the public school systems. The Brown v. Board of Education decision led to public school integration and busing. In New York City the effort to integration the public schools met with resistance and gridlock. In Harlem and in Ocean Hill-Brownsville an alternative to integration and rezoning was the demand for local community boards and parent control of schools.
White flight
In some areas, the post–World War II racial desegregation of the public schools catalyzed white flight. In 1954, the US Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) ordered the "de jure" termination of the "separate, but equal" legal racism established with the "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896) case in the 19th century. It declared that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Many southern jurisdictions mounted massive resistance to the policy. In some cases, white parents withdrew their children from public schools and established private religious schools instead. These schools, termed segregation academies, sprung up in the American South between the late 1950s and mid-1970s and allowed parents to prevent their children from being enrolled in racially mixed schools.
Brown v. Board of Education
In spring 1953, the Court heard the case but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks.
Hocutt v. Wilson
Hocutt v. Wilson, N.C. Super. Ct. (1933) (unreported), was the first attempt to desegregate higher education in the United States. It was initiated by two African American lawyers from Durham, North Carolina, Conrad O. Pearson and Cecil McCoy, with the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The case was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing, but it served as a test case for challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine in education and was a precursor to "Brown v. Board of Education", 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (holding that segregated public schools were unconstitutional).
Gray Commission
The Commission on Public Education, known as the VPEC or Gray Commission (after its chair, Virginia state senator Garland Gray), was a 32-member commission established by Governor of Virginia Thomas B. Stanley on August 23, 1954 to study the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education issued on May 17, 1954 and May 31, 1955, and to make recommendations. Its counsel were David J. Mays (until December 1957) and his associate Henry T. Wickham.
Z. Alexander Looby
After the United States Supreme Court ruled in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, Looby filed a suit in Nashville on behalf of A.Z. Kelley. His son had been denied admission to a traditionally white school. Looby is credited with beginning the school desegregation movement in Nashville.
Kenneth and Mamie Clark
This work suggests that by its very nature, segregation harms children and, by extension, society at large, a suggestion that was exploited in several legal battles. The Clarks testified as expert witnesses in several school desegregation cases, including "Briggs v. Elliott", which was later combined into the famous "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954). In 1954, Clark and Isidor Chein wrote a brief whose purpose was to supply evidence in the "Brown v. Board of Education" case underlining the damaging effects racial segregation had on African-American children. The Supreme Court declared that separate but equal in education was unconstitutional because it resulted in African American children having "a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community." This ended segregation in the public school systems. Regarding Brown, this question of psychological and psychic harm fit into a very particular historical window that allowed it to have formal traction in the first place. It was not until a few decades prior (with the coming of Boas and other cultural anthropologists) that cultural and/or social science research—and the questions that they invoked—would even be consulted by the courts and therefore able to influence decisions.
Tom C. Clark
Clark served on the Vinson Court and the Warren Court. He voted with the Court's majority in the several cases concerning racial segregation, including the landmark case of "Brown v. Board of Education". He wrote the majority opinion in landmark "Mapp v. Ohio", which ruled that the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. He also wrote the majority opinion in "Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States", which upheld the public accommodations provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the majority opinions in "Garner v. Board of Public Works", "Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson", and "Abington School District v. Schempp".
School integration in the United States
Throughout the first half of the 20th century there were several efforts to combat school segregation, but few were successful. However, in a unanimous 1954 decision in the "Brown v. Board of Education" case, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The NAACP legal team representing Brown, led by Thurgood Marshall, argued that racially separate schools were inherently unequal, as society as a whole looked down upon African-Americans and racially segregated schools only reinforced this. They supported their argument with research from psychologists and social scientists in order to empirically prove that segregated schools inflicted psychological harm on black students. These expert testimonies, coupled with the concrete knowledge of black schools having worse facilities than white schools and black teachers being paid less than white teachers, contributed to the landmark, unanimous decision.
Earl Warren
Soon after joining the Court, Warren presided over the case of "Brown v. Board of Education", which arose from the NAACP's legal challenge against Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States. Southern states had implemented Jim Crow laws in aftermath of the Reconstruction Era to disenfranchise African Americans and segregate public schools and other institutions. In the 1896 case of "Plessy v. Ferguson", the Court had held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit segregation in public institutions so long as the institutions were "separate but equal." In the decades after "Plessy", the NAACP had won several incremental victories, but 17 states required the segregation of public schools by 1954. In 1951, the Vinson Court had begun hearing the NAACP's legal challenge to segregated school systems, but it had not rendered a decision by the time Warren took office.
Warren Court
"Brown v. Board of Education" banned the segregation of public schools. 
The very first case put Warren's leadership skills to an extraordinary test. The Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP (a small legal group formed for tax reasons from the much better known NAACP) had been waging a systematic legal fight against the "separate but equal" doctrine enunciated in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and finally had challenged Plessy in a series of five related cases, which had been argued before the Court in the spring of 1953. However the justices had been unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks.
Definitions of whiteness in the United States
In a precursor to Brown v. Board the 1947, federal legal case Mendez v. Westminster fought to take down segregated schools for Mexican American and white students, in doing so this prompted Governor Earl Warren to repeal a state law calling for segregation of Native American and Asian American students in California. Further proof that East Asians were segregated in the American education system during the Jim Crow era of the United States. However, as a result of the Wysinger vs. Crookshank, 82 Cal 588, 720, (1890) ruling, Blacks were integrated into California's education system and thus never attended segregated public schools during the Jim Crow era in California.
Zelma Henderson
The 1951 ruling was appealed to the United States Supreme Court after it was combined with four similar cases originating from the District of Columbia, Delaware, Virginia and South Carolina under the shortened case name of "Brown v. Board of Education". The United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down school segregation in its decision on May 17, 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the unanimous majority decision, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," in agreement with Henderson and the other plaintiff's original suit.
Consent decree
The effort to desegregate American public schools began in 1954 with "Brown v. Board of Education". This landmark Supreme Court case established that racial segregation of children in public schools was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that states must not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." To properly enforce this legislation, the Supreme Court allowed district courts to use desegregation decrees obligating states to actively transition into racially nondiscriminatory school systems, with "all deliberate speed". Since the original decree did not include specific ways this could be done, beginning with "Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education" in 1971, the Supreme Court specifically defined the objective as eliminating "all vestiges of state imposed segregation" within school systems, including the limited use of busing, racial quotas, the creation of magnet schools and judicial placement of new schools, and the redrawing of school attendance zones. To stop judicial intervention in schools and end the consent decree through a court order, districts must demonstrate desegregation within six criteria defined in the "Green v. County School Board" ruling—which include, student assignment, faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities.
Keys v. Carolina Coach Co.
When the Supreme Court handed down its epochal ruling on May 17, 1954 in "Brown v. Board of Education", the ICC initially chose to ignore it. In a September 30, 1954 ruling, ICC Commissioner Isadore Freidson stated that "Brown" had no relevance to the conduct of business by a private bus carrier. Citing "Plessy v. Ferguson" as well as 19th-century ICC decisions handed down prior to "Plessy", and others which the Supreme Court had later overturned, Freidson argued that the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act did not prohibit segregation. Roundtree and Robertson filed exceptions to Freidson's ruling in which they invoked both the commerce clause of the US Constitution and the Supreme Court's reasoning in "Brown" and applied it explicitly to the area of transportation.
Prince Edward County High School
Prince Edward County High School is known for the landmark cases "Davis v. The Prince Edward County Board of Education" and "Griffin v. the Prince Edward County Board of Education". In 1951 the school, which was then called Moton High School, was all black and very impoverished. At the time, white students would attend public all white schools. "Davis v. The Prince Edward County Board of Education" became one of five others forming the foundation of the landmark case, "Brown Versus The Board of Education". By 1959, when the county schools were finally forced to integrate, Prince Edward County reacted by closing their public schools to both white and black students. Moton High School remained closed for several years, and black students who wanted an education, were forced out of the county. Moton High was eventually reopened as Prince Edward High School and later renamed Prince Edward County High School.
John Ben Shepperd
In 1952, Shepperd was elected to the first of two two-year terms as Texas Attorney General. As his state's chief legal officer Shepperd led the fight against the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision "Brown v. Board of Education", which mandated desegregation of public schools.
Lewis F. Powell Jr.
Powell also played an important role in local community affairs. He served on the Richmond School Board from 1951 and was Chairman from 1952 to 1961. Powell presided over the school board at a time when the Commonwealth of Virginia was locked in a campaign of defiance against the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education". Powell's law firm had represented one of the defendant school districts in the case that was decided by the Supreme Court under the "Brown" label. Powell did not take any part in his law firm's representation of that client school district. The lawsuit, "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County", later became one of the five cases decided under the caption "Brown v. Board of Education" before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954.
Spottswood William Robinson III
In the early 1950s, Robinson and his law-partner Oliver Hill, working through the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, litigated several civil rights lawsuits in Virginia. In 1951, Robinson and Hill took up the cause of the African-American students at the segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia who had walked out of their dilapidated school. The subsequent lawsuit, "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County", was consolidated with four other cases decided under "Brown v. Board of Education" by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954. In his arguments before the Court, Robinson made the first argument on behalf of the plaintiffs. Robinson also participated in "Chance v. Lambeth", which invalidated carrier-enforced racial segregation in interstate transportation.
Robinson received a recess appointment from President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 6, 1964, to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia vacated by Judge James Ward Morris. He was nominated to the same seat by President Johnson on February 3, 1964. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 1, 1964, and received his commission on July 2, 1964, becoming the first African-American to serve on this court. His service was terminated on November 8, 1966, due to elevation to the D.C. Circuit.
Albertis Harrison
Part of Massive Resistance involved the closing of public schools in various Virginia cities and counties to prevent racially integrated classrooms. "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County" (1952) was one of the companion cases to "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), but the Supreme Court had left enforcement to the local federal district judge. Moreover, the Gray Commission of Byrd loyalists had recommended passage of various laws to avoid or delay integration. After opinions by the Virginia Supreme Court on January 19, 1959 (the birthday of Robert E. Lee) as well as a three-judge federal panel overturned much of the new Virginia legislation, Governor James Lindsay Almond Jr. (previously attorney general) and Harrison decided not to defy those courts and allowed schools in Arlington and Norfolk to reopen. However the schools in Prince Edward County closed in 1958 and did not reopen until 1963, as white students used tuition grants to attend a private segregation academy at state expense, while black students were left to volunteer efforts. Other problematic school closures, ultimately opened pursuant to federal court orders included those in Albemarle, Warren County and later New Kent County (the subject of the 1968 Supreme Court decision in "Green v. County School Board of New Kent County" (1968). Harrison told the board to comply unless they were willing to risk prosecution. By this time, he, like a number of other Byrd Democrats, had concluded that obstinate resistance to integration could not continue.
Strom Thurmond
Thurmond would later assert the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision as the beginning of the Supreme Court instilling liberal leaning views across the United States that continued with subsequent rulings.
Multicultural education
It was the equal protection clause within the Fourteenth Amendment that stirred the debate of racial equality in 1954. The unanimous 9-0 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that separate schools for black and white students was, in fact unequal, thus overturning the 60-year-old Plessy v. Ferguson decision. It was this victory that widened the path towards multicultural education and laid the course for nationwide integration, as well as a tremendous boost for the civil rights movement. Multicultural education considers an equal opportunity for learning beyond the simple trappings of race and gender. It includes students from varying social classes, ethnic groups, sexual identities, and additional cultural characteristics. On the other hand, there are other views that show the contrary. The fame of Brown v. Board of Education was to undercover all the issues on segregation that were still happening in schools. No matter how much everyone talked or used Brown v. Board of Education as a source to show a positive impact on integration, the reality was that students were still being treated unequally and separated from the rest.
Constitutional colorblindness
The Brown v. Board of Education was a turning point in the civil rights era and was a series of laws that worked to overturn segregation. This case was intended to allow black students to attend white schools. The plaintiffs explained that by being racially separated, black people were treated poorly and that the "separate but equal" doctrine didn't uphold in their favor because the services and accommodations they received were low quality. The Court unanimously decided in "Brown" that laws separating children by race in different schools violated the of the , which provides that "[n]o state shall … deny to any person … the equal protection of the laws." In making its decision, the Court declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The decision in this case influenced the overturning of segregation in other cases that were dealing with separation on buses, trains, and many public places.
Warwick High School (Virginia)
Following the 1954 "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, racial desegregation lawsuits eventually resulted in a federal court-ordered busing program in Newport News which began in 1971. Busing changed the nature of Warwick's population and community. However, in the years after the federal court supervision ended, a magnet school approach was adopted to successfully attract students and families to voluntarily select the school.
Brown v. Board of Education
William Rehnquist wrote a memo titled "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases" when he was a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1952, during early deliberations that led to the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision. In his memo, Rehnquist argued: "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think "Plessy v. Ferguson" was right and should be reaffirmed." Rehnquist continued, "To the argument . . . that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minorities are." Rehnquist also argued for "Plessy" with other law clerks.
Brown v. Board of Education
In 1955, the Supreme Court considered arguments by the schools requesting relief concerning the task of desegregation. In their decision, which became known as ""Brown II"" the court delegated the task of carrying out school desegregation to district courts with orders that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed," a phrase traceable to Francis Thompson's poem, "The Hound of Heaven".
Brown v. Board of Education
In December 1952, the Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief in the case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that
Ruby Bridges
Ruby was born during the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. "Brown v. Board of Education" was decided eight months and nine days after Ruby’s birth. The famous court ruling declared the process of separating schools for black children and white children unconstitutional. Though the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision was finalized in 1954, southern states were extremely resistant to the decision that they must integrate for the six following years. Many white people did not want schools to be integrated and, though it was a federal ruling, state governments were not doing their part in enforcing the new laws. In 1957, federal troops stationed in Little Rock, Arkansas were ordered to combat violence that occurred as a result of the decision. Under significant pressure from the federal government, the Orleans Parish School Board administered an entrance exam to students at Ruby’s school with the intention of keeping black people out of white schools.
Lum v. Rice
"Lum" was effectively overruled by the Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools. However, an important part of the decision still stands. The power of the state to make racial distinctions in its school system, and to determine the race of its students, has not been overturned because it was not an issue in "Brown v. Board of Education".
Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley
"Board of Education v. Rowley" is the most significant court case concerning the interpretation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It was the only occasion the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on the requirement of public schools to provide an appropriate education to students with disabilities until "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School Dist. RE–1" was decided in 2017. It is estimated that it has been cited by at least 3,279 cases. In a 2008 article published in the "Journal of Law and Education", Julie F. Mead and Mark A. Paige described "Rowley" as "the primary precedent whenever the educational rights of children with disabilities are considered." Likewise, in a 2012 article, Mark C. Weber wrote that "Rowley" "remains the most important American special education case ever decided." Joyce O. Eckrem and Eliza J. McArthur stated in 2001 that "Rowley" has been described as a "seminal case", though they also recognized that the case did not "provide clarity on the issue of appropriateness" and that the Court only "cryptically addressed" the question of how to measure benefits for students. In a 2005 article published in the "Suffolk University Law Review", Lester Aron also noted that circuit courts of appeal have issued conflicted rulings when interpreting "Rowley".
Oliver Brown (American activist)
Oliver Brown (August 19, 1918 – June 1961) was an American welder who was the plaintiff in the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case "Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al". The Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who, besides Brown, included Barbara Johns who was only 16 when she organized a student revolt at her badly-underfunded high school.
States' rights
Though "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) overruled the "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896) decision, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments were largely inactive in the South until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 () and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Several states passed Interposition Resolutions to declare that the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown usurped states' rights.
Charles D. McAtee
McAtee was one of two attorneys representing the Topeka school district when the Brown v. Board of Education case was reopened. After a six-week hearing in 1986 in U.S. District Court, District Judge Richard Rogers found the school district was substantially in compliance with the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in American schools. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision and sent the case back to Rogers, who monitored it for another 13 or 14 years. Rogers then ruled the school district was in compliance and that decision was accepted.
Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke
In "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled segregation by race in public schools to be unconstitutional. In the following fifteen years, the court issued landmark rulings in cases involving race and civil liberties, but left supervision of the desegregation of Southern schools mostly to lower courts. Among other progressive legislation, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI of which forbids racial discrimination in any program or activity receiving federal funding. By 1968, integration of public schools was well advanced. In that year, the Supreme Court revisited the issue of school desegregation in "Green v. County School Board", ruling that it was not enough to eliminate racially discriminatory practices; state governments were under an obligation to actively work to desegregate schools. The school board in "Green" had allowed children to attend any school, but few chose to attend those dominated by another race. In 1970, in "Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education", the Supreme Court upheld an order for busing of students to desegregate a school system.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site
The story of Monroe Elementary begins long before the "Brown" decision. In 1859, John Ritchie, an abolitionist, bought 160 acres (65 ha) from Jacob Chase in Topeka, Kansas. After the Civil War a number of newly freed African Americans came to Topeka and built homes on this land. Due to the sizable African American population, the school board decided to establish a school for black children in the neighborhood. "Ritchie's Addition" became the site of Monroe School. After Ritchie's death in 1877, the land was purchased by the Topeka Board of Education to build a school for African American children.
John Hope Franklin
In the early 1950s, Franklin served on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team led by Thurgood Marshall, and helped develop the sociological case for "Brown v. Board of Education". This case, challenging "de jure" segregated education in the South, was taken to the United States Supreme Court. It ruled in 1954 that the legal segregation of black and white children in public schools was unconstitutional, leading to integration of schools.
Stanley plan
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education", in which the unanimous court held that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. Although agitation for an end to racial segregation in schools (and society at large) had been building in the United States since the end of World War II, "Brown" sparked the modern American civil rights movement.
Roby C. Thompson
Along with his colleague Theodore Roosevelt Dalton and Senior Judge John Paul Jr., Thompson presided over school integration cases in Western Virginia, implementing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Thompson ordered the integration of the public schools in Floyd County, Virginia and Galax, Virginia in 1959 and Pulaski County, Virginia in 1960, noting that more than five years had passed since the Brown decision.
Virginia Civil Rights Memorial
The protest led to a court case where Virginia civil rights lawyers Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson brought suit against the school board. "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County" was eventually one of the four cases combined into "Brown v. Board of Education", the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1954, officially overturned racial segregation in U.S. public schools. However the policies of Massive Resistance delayed integration until the 1960s when national legislation was passed.
Brown v. Board of Education
All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The "Davis" case, the only case of the five originating from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a 450-student walkout of Moton High School. The "Gebhart" case was the only one where a trial court, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court, found that discrimination was unlawful; in all the other cases the plaintiffs had lost as the original courts had found discrimination to be lawful.