Background
Summary and Questions
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In
the early 1950s, Linda Brown was a young African American
student in the Topeka, Kansas school district. Every
day she and her sister, Terry Lynn, had to walk through
the Rock Island Railroad Switchyard to get to the bus
stop for the ride to the all-black Monroe School. Linda
Brown tried to gain admission to the Sumner School,
which was closer to her house, but her application was
denied by the Board of Education of Topeka because of
her race. The Sumner School was for white children only. |
Under the laws of the time, many public facilities
were segregated by race. The precedent-setting Plessy
v. Ferguson case, which was decided by the Supreme
Court of the United States in 1896, allowed for such
segregation. In that case, a black man, Homer Plessy,
challenged a Louisiana law that required railroad companies
to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the
white and African American races. He claimed that the
Louisiana law violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which
demands that states provide "equal protection of
the laws." However, the Supreme Court of the United
States held that as long as segregated facilities were
qualitatively equal, segregation did not violate the
Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the Court classified
segregation as a matter of social equality, out of the
control of the justice system concerned with maintaining
legal equality. The Court stated, "If one race
be inferior to the other socially, the constitution
of the United States cannot put them on the same plane." |
At
the time of the Brown case, a Kansas statute permitted,
but did not require, cities of more than 15,000 people to
maintain separate school facilities for black and white
students. On that basis, the Board of Education of Topeka
elected to establish segregated elementary schools. Other
public schools in the community were operated on a nonsegregated,
or unitary, basis.
The
Browns felt that the decision of the Board violated
the Constitution. They sued the Board of Education of
Topeka, alleging that the segregated school system deprived
Linda Brown of the equal protection of the laws required
under the Fourteenth Amendment.
No
State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.
—Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution |
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Thurgood
Marshall, an attorney for the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argued
the Brown's case. Marshall would later become a
Supreme Court justice. |
The
three-judge federal district court found that segregation
in public education had a detrimental effect upon black
children, but the court denied that there was any violation of Brown's
rights because of the "separate but equal" doctrine
established in the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy decision.
The court found that the schools were substantially equal
with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and
educational qualifications of teachers. The Browns appealed
their case to the Supreme Court of the United States, claiming
that the segregated schools were not equal and could never
be made equal. The Court combined the case with several
similar cases from South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware.
The ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education
case came in 1954.
Questions to Consider:
- What
right does the Fourteenth Amendment give citizens?
- What
problems did Linda Brown encounter in Topeka that eventually
resulted in this case?
- What
precedent did the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling establish?
How was that precedent related to Brown?
- This
case is based on what the concept of "equality"
means. What are the conflicting points of view on this
concept in this case?
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