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Brown v. Board of Education

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Mother and Daughter at U.S. Supreme CourtNettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie sit on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nettie explains to her daughter the meaning of the high court's ruling in the Brown Vs. Board of Education case that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws —and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown , was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment , which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka .

Thurgood Marshall , the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren , then governor of California .

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II ), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”

Though well intentioned, the Court’s actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the “ Little Rock Nine ”— were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board didn’t achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr .), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 .

Runyon v. McCrary Extends Policy to Private Schools

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary , ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation’s public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education , the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation’s school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts . Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press). Cass Sunstein, “Did Brown Matter?” The New Yorker , May 3, 2004. Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org . Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute , April 17, 2014.

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Course: US history > Unit 8

Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Emmett Till
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
"Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
SNCC and CORE
Black Power
The Civil Rights Movement

In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”
The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.

A segregated society

The brown v. board of education case, thurgood marshall, the naacp, and the supreme court, separate is "inherently unequal", brown ii: desegregating with "all deliberate speed”, what do you think.

James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 387.
James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25-27.
Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 387.
Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 32.
See Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 2004).
Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 43-45.
Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Patterson, Grand Expectations, 394-395.

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The Supreme Court Decision That Changed America: Brown v. Board of Education

Finally, the justices overturned jim crow, tossing out ‘separate but equal’ standard.

On December 13, 1952, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court met to consider five cases they had heard argued earlier that week. Those cases raised the most explosive topic any of the jurists would ever have to rule on: whether the Constitution allowed American public school districts to continue to use racial criteria to segregate facilities. Opening the discussion, Chief Justice Fred Vinson admitted, “The situation is very serious and very emotional.”

This was no theoretical matter. In the South, 17 states required public schools to separate students by race, and Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona permitted school segregation by law. But the country had begun to rethink segregation. In 1947, California had repealed a law mandating separate schools for Asians. The next year, President Harry Truman issued an executive order ending racial segregation in the armed forces and Arkansas desegregated its state university.

The justices had long relied on predecessors’ 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson , which said that it was not a violation of the guarantee of equal protection of the law to consign people of different races—for which read Whites and others—to separate facilities, provided those facilities were equal. But the justices had begun to take baby steps away from the court’s historic pattern of defending school segregation. In the mid-1930s civil rights activists had begun litigating the question of whether educational facilities assigned blacks were in fact equal. These efforts led initally to cases that involved graduate education—not nearly as hot-button a topic as integrating primary and secondary schools would have been.

That tactic generated the first Supreme Court ruling against racial segregation in education. The 1938 decision found that Missouri was not giving equal treatment—and therefore was violating the Constitution—when the state university law school refused to admit a qualified African American, even though the institution offered to pay his tuition at a law school in an adjacent state. In 1950 the court held unconstitutional the Texas policy of maintaining separate, racially segregated law schools, because not only did the school for Whites boast a greater variety of courses and a better library but also enjoyed a superior reputation and “standing in the community.” The same day, the justices embraced an even broader reading of “equal” by holding unconstitutional a University of Oklahoma policy forcing a Black doctoral candidate to sit at a separate table when in a classroom, library, or cafeteria.

The justices knew that any ruling on segregation in grades K-12 would detonate in ways that decisions on post-baccalaureate education did not. So incendiary was the prospect that at that December 1952 meeting the justices decided not to rule on the issue. Without a formal vote, they set the five cases for rehearing in 1953. However, discussion revealed that four justices were ready to ban racial school segregation and four others found the Constitution to permit school segregation, while one—Felix Frankfurter—would ban segregation only in Washington, DC.

Three months before the cases were to be argued again, Chief Justice Vinson died of a heart attack. President Dwight Eisenhower gave California Governor Earl Warren an interim appointment to the Court, allowing him to step immediately into the role of chief justice in time to hear the desegregation cases; Warren’s Senate confirmation, by acclamation, came five months later.

Vinson had favored segregation, infusing Warren’s appointment with huge impact. As governor Warren had spurred California’s repeal of its law dictating separate schools for Asians, and as a justice he could be counted as a fifth vote against segregation, making a majority.

But Warren wanted the Supreme Court to strike down school segregation with a unified voice. He opened the conference after the 1953 re-arguments by saying, “There is great value in unanimity and uniformity, even if we have some differences.” He painted the question of continuing segregation as a moral one, precedent be damned.

“The basis of the principle of segregation and separate but equal rests upon the basic premise that the Negro race is inferior,” Warren told colleagues. “I don’t see how we can continue in this day and age to set one group apart from the rest and say that that they are not entitled to exactly the same treatment as all others.”

Warren’s reasoning closely reflected the oral argument the lead lawyer for the students pressing for integrated schools had made to the court. The NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall, later the Supreme Court’s first African-American member, had told the justices that if they found continued school segregation allowable “the only way to arrive at this decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings.”

Not every justice agreed. “Segregation is not done on the theory of racial inferiority, but of racial differences,” Stanley Reed, the most adamant resister, argued to his colleagues. “It protects people against the mixing of races.” But Warren was able to convince Reed and the other dissenters that, since a majority was going to hand down a contentious ruling deeming school segregation unconstitutional, it would be best for the nation if there were no public disagreement.

That call for unanimity was so compelling that when the decision came on May 17, 1954, Justice Robert H. Jackson left his hospital bed to be with his colleagues in the courtroom.

To underline the ruling’s national nature and make clear that it was not a regional jab at the South, the High Court cited as the first case one brought on behalf of Kansas schoolgirl Linda Brown. Local authorities had barred her from attending her neighborhood elementary; thus the historic title Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka .

Warren wrote the opinion, a mere 13 paragraphs long and devoid of Latinate legalisms. The issue could no longer be whether educational opportunities being offered Black and White students in segregated schools were equal—in the cases before the court, facilities and programs were in fact equal or making significant strides in that direction—but whether separation itself violated the 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law. Warren insisted that school segregation by its nature was unequal, inflicting particular harm on children: “To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way that is unlikely ever to be undone.” As evidence, Warren unconventionally cited not legal precedent but results of seven sociological and psychological studies showing that Negro children in segregated schools did in fact feel that blacks were inferior.

Warren’s decision acknowledged “a great variety of local conditions” and asked the litigants to recommend how to achieve integration. In May 1955 the chief justice announced the High Court’s second Brown decision, calling for school desegregation to proceed “with all deliberate speed” but telling lower courts overseeing compliance to recognize that they “may find that additional time is necessary to carry out the ruling.”

Change began. However, so many localities resisted that integration was still being fought in 1970. That year President Richard Nixon, declaring Brown “right in both constitutional and human terms,” created a Cabinet-level committee to put federal muscle behind its mandate. But Brown did generate one immediate impact. As lawyer-journalist-professor Roger Wilkins phrased it, the decision was a ringing rebuke to a cultural smear that African Americans had had to grow up with—that they were inherently inferior.

“For me, May 17, 1954 was a second Emancipation Day,” Wilkins declared.

This SCOTUS 101 column appeared in the April 2021 issue of American History

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History of Brown v. Board of Education

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Desegregating SCHOOLS, PRIORITIZING EDUCATION

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in the case, stating that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

Brown v. Board of Education stands as a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, declaring the end of legal segregation in the education system, asserting that segregated schools could never be equal, and mandating the desegregation of schools across America.

Help inform the discussion

Brown v. Board of Education

May 17, 1954: The 'separate is inherently unequal' ruling forces Eisenhower to address civil rights

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. . . . We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote this opinion in the unanimous Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Citing a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the groundbreaking decision was widely regarded as one of America's most consequential legal judgments of the 20th century, setting the stage for a strong and lasting US Civil Rights Movement. Thurgood Marshall, lead counsel on the case, would go on to become a Supreme Court Justice himself.

The Brown decision reverberated for decades. Determined resistance by whites in the South thwarted the goal of school integration for years. Even though the court ruled that states should move with “all deliberate speed,” that standard was simply too vague for real action. Neither segregationists, who opposed to integration on racist grounds, nor the constitutional scholars who believed the court had overreached were going away without a fight.

President Eisenhower didn't fully support of the Brown decision. The president didn't like dealing with racial issues and failed to speak out in favor of the court's ruling. Although the president usually avoided comment on court decisions, his silence in this case may have encouraged resistance. In many parts of the South, white citizens' councils organized to prevent compliance. Some of these groups relied on political action; others used intimidation and violence.

Despite his reticence, Eisenhower did acknowledge his constitutional responsibility to uphold the Supreme Court’s rulings. In 1957, when mobs prevented the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus saw political advantages in using the National Guard to block the entry of African American students to Central High. After meeting with Eisenhower, Faubus promised to allow the students to enroll—but then withdrew the National Guard, allowing a violent mob to surround the school. In response, Eisenhower dispatched federal troops, the first time since Reconstruction that a president had sent military forces into the South to enforce federal law.

In explaining his action, however, Eisenhower did not declare that desegregating public schools was the right thing to do. Instead, in a nationally televised address , he asserted that the violence in Little Rock was harming US prestige and influence around the world and giving Communist propagandists an opportunity “to misrepresent our whole nation.” Troops stayed in Little Rock for the entire school year, and in the spring of 1958, Central High had its first African American graduate.

But in September 1958, Faubus closed public schools to prevent their integration. Eisenhower expressed his “regret” over the challenge to the right of all Americans to a public education but took no further action, despite what he had done the year before. There was no violence this time, and Eisenhower believed that he had a constitutional obligation to preserve public order, not to speed school desegregation. When Eisenhower left the White House in January 1961, only 6 percent of African American students attended integrated schools.

Eisenhower and integration

Eisenhower urged advocates of desegregation to go slowly. believing that integration required a change in people's hearts and minds. And he was sympathetic to white southerners who complained about alterations to the social order—their “way of life.” He considered as extremists both those who tried to obstruct decisions of federal courts and those who demanded that they immediately enjoy the rights that the Constitution and the courts provided them.

On only one occasion during his presidency—in June 1958—did Eisenhower meet with African American leaders. The president became irritated when he heard appeals for more aggressive federal action to advance civil rights and failed to heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s advice that he use the bully pulpit of the presidency to build popular support for racial integration. While Eisenhower’s actions mattered, so too did his failure to use his moral authority as president to advance the cause of civil rights.

Eisenhower's record, however, included some significant achievements in civil rights. In 1957, he signed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, providing new federal protections for voting rights. In most southern states, the great majority of African Americans simply could not vote because of literacy tests, poll taxes, and other obstacles. Yet the legislation Eisenhower eventually signed was weaker than the bill that he had sent to Capitol Hill. Southern Democrats secured an amendment that required a jury trial to determine whether a citizen had been denied his or her right to vote—and African Americans could not serve on juries in the south. In 1960, Eisenhower signed a second civil rights law, but it offered only small improvements. The president also used his constitutional powers, where he believed that they were clear and specific, to advance desegregation, for example, in federal facilities in the nation's capital and to complete the desegregation of the armed forces begun during Truman’s presidency. In addition, Eisenhower appointed judges to federal courts whose rulings helped to advance civil rights. This issue, which divided the country in the 1950s, became even more difficult in the 1960s.

The attorney: Thurgood Marshall

NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, and during a quarter-century with the organization, he won a total of 29 cases before the nation's highest court. In 1961, Marshall was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Kennedy, and in 1965, he became the highest-ranking African American government official in history when President Johnson appointed him solicitor general. Now arguing on behalf of the federal government before the court—Marshall won the majority of those cases as well. In 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to sit on the court, discussing him with Attorney General Ramsey Clark in a conversation captured on the Miller Center's collection of secret White House tapes:

Brown v. Board of Education: A Landmark in American Justice

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Students will learn about the lawyers who argued for and against segregation in the Supreme Court, the arguments that they used, and the importance of Chief Justice Earl Warren and the final decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case. The Decision: A Landmark in American Justice is the fifth section of the online exhibition entitled Separate is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education .

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Brown v. Board of Education

May 16, 1954

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Introduction

In various periods of U.S. history, governmentally sanctioned racial segregation in schools was common in both southern and northern states. The practice was subjected to increasingly serious challenges in the first half of the twentieth century as the NAACP, via the efforts of a group of attorneys trained by Charles Hamilton Houston and eventually led by Thurgood Marshall , won a string of antisegregation victories in a series of carefully crafted constitutional challenges. Those efforts culminated in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas .

In deciding Brown , the Supreme Court consolidated four cases brought from four different states that raised the same constitutional question. In the lead case, plaintiff Oliver Brown filed suit as representative of a class of thirteen plaintiffs, parents of black children who had been prevented from enrolling in schools that district policy reserved for white students. Their contention was that the school districts’ racial segregation policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In one of the most significant rulings in its history, the Court unanimously agreed with the plaintiffs. The ruling aroused predictable controversy at the time (see Southern Manifesto ), but the Court’s decision to invalidate governmentally mandated racial segregation in public schools is now almost universally regarded as an exemplary act of judicial courage and justice. Even so, controversy persists concerning the unorthodox reasoning the Court presented in support of its conclusion, because the Court relied on questionable psychological studies rather than constitutional history, judicial precedent, or elemental principles of right.

Source: 347 U.S. 483 (1954); available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483%26gt .

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN 1 delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases come to us from the states of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.

In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson . 2 Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. . . .

The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not “equal” and cannot be made “equal,” and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. . . .

In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We come then to the question presented: does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In Sweatt v. Painter , in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school.” In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: “. . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.” 3

Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. . . . Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson , this finding is amply supported by modern authority. . . . 4

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. . . .

1. Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891–1974).
2. Plessy v. Ferguson.
3. Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). The decisions in these cases were announced on the same day.
4. In support of this claim, the Court cited in footnote 11 to its ruling various studies from social science fields, including, most controversially, the famous “doll” study by the psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, “Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development,” Mid-century White House Conference on Children and Youth, 1950.

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Brown v. Board: General Discussion Questions

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1. What do you think segregated schools were like in pre-1954 America? In what parts of the country were schools segregated? Were schools in your state segregated? How was the experience of a black student in public school different from that of a white student?

2. The Brown decision called for school desegregation to happen with "all deliberate speed." How quickly — and how fully — do you think schools de-segregated?

3. The Supreme Court decision has come to be known, in shorthand form, as Brown v. Board of Education. But that one name represents several cases. What other cities and states were involved in court battles to end public school segregation? How were these cases alike? How were they different?

4. What is segregation? Does it still exist? Other than schools, where have segregation battles been fought?

5. Different groups in the United States reacted differently to the Brown decision. How did African Americans react? Were all African Americans in favor of the decision? How did white Americans react? Where in the United States was the strongest reaction felt against Brown ?

6. Is your school segregated? In what ways? What could you do to work against that segregation, bringing more integration to your school?

7. Do you believe in what Brown v. Board stands for? How close to — or far from — fully embracing the Brown decision are we, as a society? What else needs to happen for us to move closer to the ideals of Brown?

8. How would schools have looked in your area had the Supreme Court not ruled against segregation in 1954? How would your life, and the lives of other students, be different?

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Milestone Documents

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Citation: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , Opinion; May 17, 1954; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; National Archives.

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View Transcript

In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the "separate but equal" principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.

On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas . State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s.

Arguments were to be heard during the next term to determine just how the ruling would be imposed. Just over one year later, on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, now referred to as Brown II , instructing the states to begin desegregation plans "with all deliberate speed."

Despite two unanimous decisions and careful, if vague, wording, there was considerable resistance to the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education . In addition to the obvious disapproving segregationists were some constitutional scholars who felt that the decision went against legal tradition by relying heavily on data supplied by social scientists rather than precedent or established law. Supporters of judicial restraint believed the Court had overstepped its constitutional powers by essentially writing new law.

However, minority groups and members of the civil rights movement were buoyed by the Brown decision even without specific directions for implementation. Proponents of judicial activism believed the Supreme Court had appropriately used its position to adapt the basis of the Constitution to address new problems in new times. The Warren Court stayed this course for the next 15 years, deciding cases that significantly affected not only race relations, but also the administration of criminal justice, the operation of the political process, and the separation of church and state.

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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (USSC+)

Argued December 9, 1952

Reargued December 8, 1953

Decided May 17, 1954

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS*

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal.

(e) The "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.

In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case, the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools.

The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not "equal" and cannot be made "equal," and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented, the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court.

Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.

An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment's history with respect to segregated schools is the status of public education at that time. In the South, the movement toward free common schools, supported by general taxation, had not yet taken hold. Education of white children was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences, as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states, and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education.

In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of "separate but equal" did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson , supra, involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education , 175 U.S. 528, and Gong Lum v. Rice , 275 U.S. 78, the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada , 305 U.S. 337; Sipuel v. Oklahoma , 332 U.S. 631; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 U.S. 637. In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter , supra, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education.

In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter , there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.

In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In Sweatt v. Painter , supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: ". . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

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. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson , this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

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. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity. On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question -- the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 15, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954.

It is so ordered.

* Together with No. 2, Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, argued December 9-10, 1952, reargued December 7-8, 1953; No. 4, Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued December 10, 1952, reargued December 7-8, 1953, and No. 10, Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al. , on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Delaware, argued December 11, 1952, reargued December 9, 1953.

Snack Bar

In fall 1950, Oliver Brown tried to enroll his seven-year-old daughter Linda in the Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. Black children were not allowed to attend. The Browns appealed, ultimately leading to the monumental Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954. Linda is seated third from the left and her father, Oliver Brown, is standing second from the left. Listen to highlights of the case at the Brown Revisited website (Cornell University co-owns the Oyez Project website on which this project is hosted.)

June 5, 2024 | Source: Brown Revisited

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Articles on Brown v. Board of Education

Displaying 1 - 20 of 41 articles.

9 justices, many opinions: How the Supreme Court tells lawyers, judges and the public about its decisions and disagreements

Ilisabeth S. Bornstein , Bryant University

How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board

Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz , University of North Dakota ; Andrea Guiden Pittman , American University ; Andrene J. Castro , Virginia Commonwealth University , and Marvin G. Powell , George Mason University

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Jessica A. Schoenherr , University of South Carolina and Jonathan M. King , West Virginia University

A surprising history of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, once a leader in expanding civil rights and now a leader in limiting government power

Jonathan Entin , Case Western Reserve University

70 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, public schools still deeply segregated

Erica Frankenberg , Penn State

Lessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era

Marlee Bunch , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas moves to reverse the legacy of his predecessor, Thurgood Marshall

Daniel Kiel , University of Memphis

When the Supreme Court loses Americans’ loyalty, chaos – even violence – can follow

Joseph Daniel Ura , Texas A&M University and Matthew Hall , University of Notre Dame

Alcohol use more likely among Black youths at racially segregated schools

Guangyi Wang , University of California, San Francisco and Rita Hamad , University of California, San Francisco

Decades after Brown v. Board, US schools still struggle with segregation – 4 essential reads

Jeff Inglis , The Conversation

The fight against school segregation began in South Carolina, long before it ended with Brown v. Board

Roy Jones , Clemson University

US schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort

Pedro A. Noguera , University of Southern California

US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill – but what would it mean to codify Roe into law?

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A New Orleans community center rises from its ugly history as a segregated school

Connie L. Schaffer , University of Nebraska Omaha ; Martha Graham Viator , Rowan University , and Meg White , Stockton University

Legacy of Jim Crow still affects funding for public schools

Derek W. Black , University of South Carolina and Axton Crolley , University of South Carolina

Overruling Roe may not be conservatives’ best strategy – Brown v. Board of Education shows how Supreme Court can uphold precedent while gutting its meaning

Michael J. Saks , Arizona State University

Supreme Court rulings always include the perspective of a white male, but often exclude viewpoints of Black and Latina justices

David Orentlicher , University of Nevada, Las Vegas

How did white students respond to school integration after Brown v. Board of Education?

Charise Cheney , University of Oregon

The Supreme Court’s immense power may pose a danger to its legitimacy

Richard L. Pacelle Jr. , University of Tennessee

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70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, new research shows rise in school segregation

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022.

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.”

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s.

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991.

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

Policies shaping recent trends

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said.

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens.

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most.

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration.

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This story was originally published May 6, 2024 by Stanford Graduate School of Education.

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Condemns Brown v. Education Ruling

A Supreme Court justice has come to criticize a historical ruling. The landmark decision, which just celebrated its 70th anniversary, has had aspects criticized. Justice Clarence Thomas voiced his opinion on the case on Thursday, May 23, 2024.

Clarence Thomas, 75, is an American lawyer and active Supreme Court associate justice. He has served on the Court for over three decades. He was nominated by then-president George Bush and appointed in 1991.

On Thursday, May 23, 2024, the Supreme Court affirmed the court ruling on the congressional voting map. The state legislature designed the South Carolina congressional map to establish voting lines for the state. The voting line has been criticized online as it seems to only negatively affect black voters across the state.

Nine Supreme Court justices voted in favor of upholding the map, resulting in a decision that ended 6-3 against its challenge. Defending the Supreme Court ruling, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. said that he believes the state legislature acted in good faith. The legislators maintained that the lines they drew were not intended to discriminate against anyone, yet they harmed the black community.

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Despite Alito jr. blind excuse for the decision, the most pathetic excuse came from Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas said that the Supreme Court went beyond it allocated powers when made the decisions in Brown v. Board of Education.

Brown v. Board of Education is a historic 1954 ruling that ended segregation in schools. The case was led by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was a lawyer at the time. Marshall was the first black man to sit on the Supreme Court bench, with his tenure lasting from 1967 to 1991, until Thomas was appointed.

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Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court took an infinite approach to equitable remedies. The Supreme Court, going beyond its assigned powers, claimed that it had given the remedy. Additionally, he asserted that the Supreme Court made a lot of anti-segregation decisions by going beyond its jurisdiction.

Thomas stated that every federal court has powers that are limited based on it jurisdiction to grant equitable remedies. Additionally, he said that no court had the power to create a remedy outside of its judicial powers, regardless of how important the ruling might have been.

The Supreme Court ruling in 1954 ended segregation in schools, allowing black students to integrate into white-only schools. The decision was voted on by the panel in a unanimous decision, which started the civil rights movement that lasted 20 years.

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However, over the last three decades, there has been an increase in re-segregation as a result of pay disparities between neighborhoods. Civil rights campaigners have long regarded Thomas with suspicion if not outright hatred. They have accused him of rehashing arguments made by segregationists in the service of promoting general ideas about restrained government intervention.

Finally, His coinciding view coincides with criticism he is currently facing after an ethics probe by ProPublica revealed that he concealed expensive travel arrangements paid for by a well-known Republican megadonor.

In a nod to history, Biden meets with Brown v. Board of Education families

WASHINGTON — It's been a decade since Cheryl Brown Henderson, the daughter of the namesake plaintiff in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education civil rights case, last stepped foot in the White House.

On her last visit in 2014, Henderson's family met the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama.

When the Kansas native and founder of the Brown Foundation returned this Thursday for a conversation with President Joe Biden and other families involved in the case, she'll be celebrating another milestone — the 70th anniversary of the May 17, 1954, decision that led to the desegregation of schools.

"I always like to say that schools were the battle, but society was the target," Henderson, 73, said in an interview with USA TODAY ahead of the meeting. "It began to dismantle other aspects of Jim Crow and Black codes."

The case became a catalyst for major civil rights developments, from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And nearly two dozen family members of plaintiffs and officials from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which organized most of the related civil rights cases that came before the Supreme Court, are in Washington, D.C. to mark the occasion.

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Then vice president Biden didn't get the opportunity to meet Henderson during her last visit. But in some ways, Thursday's meeting in the Oval Office was also historic and emblematic of the evolution the president himself has had on key civil rights issues.

Biden now faces an election that many in America see not as just Biden vs former President Donald Trump but as a view of the future vs. the past.

Some conservatives across the country have argued that efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion have gone too far— changing education standards, shaping decisions in hiring and altering cultural norms in ways they see as deviating from a more traditional America.

Progressives see the contest as a fight to preserve government protections for marginalized groups across the country, including people of color, LGBTQ people and others — and they have to look no further than the overturning of another monumental court case, Roe v. Wade, to point to how tenuous those protections may really be.

Henderson said her own message to Biden would be about the fragility of American democracy and the unfolding of the court's decision to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine as unconstitutional.

"Right now, democracy is on the line. The White House is one of the symbols of democracy," she said. "Democracy gave birth to the rule of law, and the rule of law gave birth to Brown vs. the Board of Education."

One of the plaintiffs told Biden it should be a national holiday, Henderson said in a news conference with reporters following the meeting. To do so, would enable the country to learn more about the decision and commemorate it every year. The plaintiffs also asked the president to keep up his support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

"We're pleased that this administration is so diverse and looks like this country. We waited a long time," Henderson said they told him.

Alongside Henderson was Derrick Johnson, President of the NAACP, John Stokes, a Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff in the Virginia case and Nathaniel Briggs, the son of South Carolina plaintiff Harry Briggs Jr.

Biden's nod to history

Biden was 11 at the time of the of the landmark decision, which involved plaintiffs from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and his home state of Delaware.

As a senator in the 1970s, he would oppose the forced integration of schools through a process known as busing, which saw Black students brought into white communities for classes in an attempt to increase racial diversity — and even led an effort in the Senate to quash the program.

His stance on the policy became a flashpoint in a 2019 presidential debate when he was competing for the Democratic nomination. He came under fire from none other than his future running mate Kamala Harris, who told him she was bused to school as a child.

The Black community would later give him his first victory in South Carolina, which prompted Biden's campaign comeback. Civil rights leader and Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn's endorsement played a major role. Biden then picked Harris to join his ticket. When they were elected, she became the highest-ranking Black woman to ever hold higher office.

He again made history when he put Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court.

Henderson called Harris' election and Jackson's appointment "extremely consequential events." She hopes to one day meet the first Black woman to serve on the high court. "This particular team of president and vice president like no other have a direct connection to Brown," Henderson said.

Henderson's last visit to the White House, when Obama was in office, was equally if not more pivotal. She recalled that it "just brought everybody to their knees and some tears" when the nation's first Black president arrived.

"He looked around the room and just said, look at where we are now," she recalled. "And everybody in the room knew what he meant."

Cause for celebration

Henderson was just three years old when Brown was decided. She and the other children whose parents were plaintiffs have largely relied on research and the memories of their elders to narrate the case.

She began a foundation in 1988 to keep it in the public discourse and educate the public on its affirmation of the 14th amendment.

"One of the reasons for starting the foundation was to help our state and our city of Topeka embrace this history and recognize that it wasn't a negative, that it was in fact something positive that we had done for the nation," she said.

Henderson said her mother, Leola Brown M ontgomery , was pregnant with her when the NAACP approached the family about joining the suit. Her late father, Oliver Brown, was was studying to an African Methodist Episcopal pastor and working as a welder fulltime. Henderson said her mother convinced him, as someone who looking to become a leader in the church, to sign on to the litigation.

He became plaintiff 10 of 13 families that ultimately made up the group.

Workplaces, neighborhoods and some churches were already integrated in Kansas at the time, she explained. It was only elementary schools in cities that had 15,000 people or more in Kansas that were segregated. Henderson's sister Linda was one of the Black children who was turned away from an all-white school.

When the Supreme Court decision came down, Topeka was one of the public school systems that immediately complied. Henderson said she began school the following year in 1955.

The situation was not as rosy in South Carolina, said Briggs. His family was named in the South Carolina case Briggs v. Elliott that was combined with the Brown case.

It took ten years for the community he lived in to integrate the school system, he said.

"It was a struggle in South Carolina," he told reporters Thursday. "It's nice to celebrate and commemorate, but I know the struggle still continues in some of the school districts around this country. I know that unequal access to education still exists in this country. "

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Now a resident of Florida, Henderson still goes back to Kansas on the anniversary for commemorative events. She'll be returning on Friday, she said, after Biden's museum speech.

Henderson said the event with Biden at the White House for litigants came together after she told organizers of the broader events that previous administrations, including former Republican President George W. Bush's had hosted the group on major anniversaries. Thursday was her eighth time at the White House.

"We know we have a lot of work to do, in that education is still challenging in some places. But we have to realize that education is foundational to our country, and the more we can make certain our children are accomplishing and contributing, the better things will be," she said during the news conference.

The meeting was private, but Biden acknowledged the anniversary in a proclamation. While the ruling "allowed so many schools to develop diverse, inclusive learning communities that value empathy, kindness, and tolerance, the full potential of Brown v. Board of Education remains unfulfilled."

"There is still so much work to do to ensure that every student has equal access to a quality education and that our school systems fully benefit from the diversity and talent of our students − because diversity has always been one of our Nation's greatest strengths," Biden wrote.In addition to the Oval Office meeting, Biden will deliver remarks on Friday at the African-American History Museum in Washington, D.C. and hold a closed-door meeting with the leaders of the Black fraternities and sororities that make up the Divine Nine. Biden is also giving the commencement address on Sunday morning at Morehouse College, a private school for Black men in Atlanta, and delivering the keynote address at a NAACP dinner that evening in Detroit.

Harris was on a trip Milwaukee on Thursday and was not present for the Oval Office meeting, but she'll take part in the Divine Nine meeting on Friday.

How one Wilmington bus tour honors 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

One 76-year-old University of Delaware student had an idea.

Karen Ingram had been cultivating interest in a particular chapter of Delaware history long before she enrolled. Now, about to earn her first master's degree this spring, almost all of her academic writings have surrounded this history. Her own experience led her to it. And this weekend, she got to share that passion on "The Trail to Desegregation."

Ingram, empowered by community partners for a final capstone project, marked the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision with a bus tour. It would trace Delaware's own roots in this landmark desegregation ruling, as the sold-out Saturday tour made stops at Redding House Museum and Community Center, Howard High School, Claymont Community Center and Hockessin Colored School #107C.

"I wanted to tell the whole story," Ingram said, knowing people rarely get to put all these pieces together. "That is what got us here. I wanted to tell the whole story, on a half-day ride on a bus."

By Saturday morning, some 40 people would pack that fitting school bus in front of now-Howard High School of Technology, once the only high school serving Black students in the state and one of the earliest in the nation. Seats filled with fellow organizers, members of the public and a few special guests.

And while the bus rolled down the street, these Delaware institutions have quietly weaved their own way into well-known national history. Seemingly everyone understands the Brown v. Board of Education decision, eventually stripping the country of its "separate but equal" doctrine, to be one of the most seminal cases in American history.

But many might need a reminder of how closely Delaware is tied to the same story.

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Reclaiming connections

Ingram has been hungry to learn more about this history.

Coming to Delaware as a young woman, the New Jersey native took a job working as a legal secretary for Louis L. Redding in 1968, first as a Goldey-Beacom College co-op student. The Wilmington powerhouse lawyer and civil rights advocate had helped lead the legal team on two cases challenging school segregation in Delaware, then at the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board.

Only, as a 21-year-old, Ingram didn't realize it. She left the work for a corporate job, hoping for better benefits.

"I did not know at the time being, you know, that the man who I was working for was very powerful," Ingram recalled. In fact, growing up in New Jersey, in school, in early years of corporate work, she was often in majority-white spaces.

"I did not realize that I lacked a lot of knowledge in African history, of my African American history," she said. "So, I had an opportunity to go to the University of Delaware, and my focus was on African American subjects."

Working within community organizations, earning a bachelor's in her 50s, this master's before 80, soon going for her doctorate — she has been soaking up as much as she can ever since. And rather than write a thesis for her program, Ingram decided to create a project to honor Redding’s legacy.

It started by getting on the bus.

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'The Trail to Desegregation'

The family home of Ingram's once-boss is more than a house today.

Tour takers saw a Redding House Museum and Community Center maintained by its own foundation, now also a historical landmark located near downtown Wilmington. After rehabilitation that followed in 1997, it looks to honor Redding’s legacy, one of impact on civil rights, community and law.

During the more than 50 years that he practiced law in Delaware, according to the foundation, the state's first Black attorney handled cases that challenged discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and criminal justice.

Redding's two Delaware cases would consolidate with four other cases, now collectively remembered as Brown v. Board of Education. Those cases were Bulah v. Gebhart and Gebhart v. Belton.

"Does anyone know why we're on a bus?" Ingram posed from the front, looking back at her tour as it moved along.

Everyone got the idea. In 1951, the families of Ethel Louise Belton and Shirley Barbara Bulah hired Redding in two separate cases, suing the state for refusing to provide transportation to attend the schools closest to their homes. Belton was required to attend Howard High School, a forced 20-mile round trip on public transportation, while living just blocks from all-white Claymont High. Bulah attended Hockessin Colored School #107-C, even though a white school would have been much closer for the 7-year-old.

Now Claymont Community Center, the high school once housed the "Claymont Twelve," a group of Black students who successfully integrated the school under court order in 1952, according to organizers, despite the Delaware attorney general's instructions not to do it.

Most further desegregation ceased until cases made their way through the Supreme Court. And, though the coming decision called for "immediate" stop to segregated schools, the reality would play out much more slowly. In Delaware, school segregation in some areas persisted until the late '60s.

Hockessin Colored School #107C ceased operations after desegregation. After a rocky road, the school has now been restored and transformed into a Center for Diversity and Social Equity. In 2022, President Joe Biden protected the site, having signed a law incorporating Hockessin Colored School #107 into the National Park System among other additions.

Biden and parks: Delaware played a big role in Brown v. Board of Education. So did this Hockessin school

“The Trail to Desegregation: A Journey to Freedom and Equality” — Ingram's project coming together thanks to help from Delaware Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Delaware Heritage Commission, the Delaware Historical Society and more partners — followed these markers in a loop, while speakers and tours padded it with historical context.

The cases they traced went on to reshape education across the country, even as new challenges persist today. Students, families, communities in Delaware helped fuel this May 17, 1954, decision finding racial segregation in schools unconstitutional in the United States.

Ingram hopes people take that with them, maybe even fueling future tours.

"In the '50s, people were not supposed to be an advocate for their rights; they were just supposed to let things be the way they are," she said. "So I'd like to think that people will know: There is an opportunity for anybody who wants to change things. They can do that."

Got a story? Kelly Powers covers race, culture and equity for Delaware Online/The News Journal and USA TODAY Network Northeast, with a focus on education. Contact her at [email protected] or (231) 622-2191, and follow her on X @kpowers01 .

IMAGES

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Brown v. Board of Education Historical Marker
NAACP Celebrates 67th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education
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COMMENTS

Brown v. Board of Education
Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v ...
Brown v. Board of Education
The 1954 decision found that the historical evidence bearing on the issue was inconclusive. Brown v. Board of Education, case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. It was one of the most important cases in the Court's history, and it helped ...
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court's opinion in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 legally ended decades of racial segregation in America's public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the ...
Brown v. Board of Education
Kentucky (1908) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), [1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 ...
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (article)
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The Court declared "separate" educational facilities "inherently unequal.". The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.
The Supreme Court Decision That Changed America: Brown v. Board of
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, 11 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The justices unanimously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), proclaiming that segregated educational facilities are inherently unequal and violate the right to equal protection under the law. On December 13, 1952, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court met to consider five ...
Separate Is Not Equal
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land. Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme ...
History of Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education stands as a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, declaring the end of legal segregation in the education system, asserting that segregated schools could never be equal, and mandating the desegregation of schools across America. A landmark case. Decades in the making. Separate is not equal. Pivotal Places.
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education. May 17, 1954: The 'separate is inherently unequal' ruling forces Eisenhower to address civil rights. Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. . . . We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no ...
PDF The Living Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education
The Living Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has worked for decades to ensure equal educational opportunities for all of America's schoolchildren, as promised by the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This year, we recognize the 70th anniversary of ...
Brown v. Board of Education: Timeline
Board of Education: Timeline. This timeline provides an overview of events related to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case , from the 1849 case, Roberts v. the City of Boston, to the 2003 case, Grutter v. Bollinger. This resource is available as a downloadable PDF, and is included in the online exhibition entitled Separate is Not ...
Brown v. Board of Education: A Landmark in American Justice
Board of Education: A Landmark in American Justice. Students will learn about the lawyers who argued for and against segregation in the Supreme Court, the arguments that they used, and the importance of Chief Justice Earl Warren and the final decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case. The Decision: A Landmark in American Justice is the ...
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education. by Earl Warren. May 16, 1954. Edited and introduced by Peter C. Myers. Version One. Version two Version three. Image: [Man speaking at microphone in front of crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting the integration of Central High School, with signs reading "Race mixing is Communism" and "Stop the race mixing ...
Brown v. Board of Education Case Summary
Brown v. Board of Education was a consolidated case, meaning that several related cases were combined to be heard before the Supreme Court. The NAACP had helped families in Delaware, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Kansas challenge the constitutionality of all-white schools. The representative plaintiff in the case was Oliver Brown, a ...
Brown v. Board: General Discussion Questions
Brown v. Board: General Discussion Questions. Discuss the impact of Brown v. Board and the current state of segregation using articles from Teaching Tolerance magazine's special anniversary section. July 7, 2009. Add to a Learning Plan. Explore Teaching Tolerance magazine's special anniversary section on Brown v. Board.
Brown v. Board of Education
Board of Education. Amdt14.S1.8.2.1 Brown v. Board of Education. Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State sh all make or enforce any law which sh all abridge the privileges or ...
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate ...
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In fall 1950, Oliver Brown tried to enroll his seven-year-old daughter Linda in the Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. Black children were not allowed to attend. The Browns appealed, ultimately leading to the monumental Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954.
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The fight against school segregation began in South Carolina, long before it ended with Brown v. Board. Roy Jones, Clemson University. The Brown v. Board of Education case, which resulted in the ...
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The era of legal segregation in America, from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954), is seldom fully explored by students of American history and government. At most, these studies are sidebar discussions of isolated people or events.
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As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v.Board of Education, a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over ...
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Board of Education. Amdt14.S1.8.2.1 Brown v. Board of Education. Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or ...
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Brown v. Board of Education is a historic 1954 ruling that ended segregation in schools. The case was led by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was a lawyer at the time. Marshall ...
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WASHINGTON − Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas this week criticized a piece of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision s that made racial segregation in schools illegal in arguing ...
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3:58. WASHINGTON — It's been a decade since Cheryl Brown Henderson, the daughter of the namesake plaintiff in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education civil rights case, last stepped foot in the ...
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Ingram, empowered by community partners for a final capstone project, marked the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision with a bus tour. It would trace Delaware's own roots ...

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