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The Story of Brown v. Board of Education

May 17, 2004, is the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The decision brought an end to the legal doctrine of "separate but equal," enshrined by the same court nearly sixty years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson. In Plessy, the Supreme Court held that segregation was acceptable if the separate facilities provided for blacks were equal to those provided for whites. The sole dissent came from Justice Harlan. Arguing that "our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," Justice Harlan accurately predicted further "aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens."

[image:] Photograph of "Colored Waiting Room" sign with the following attribution: ©Bettmann/CORBIS; reprinted with permission.

Justice Harlan's warning was fully realized in the regime of "Jim Crow" laws that, with the Supreme Court's sanction, enforced segregation of blacks and other people of color from many of the facilities enjoyed by white citizens across much of the United States. Public schools, transportation facilities, residential neighborhoods, public and private theaters, restaurants, and even public lavatories and drinking fountains were designated for the exclusive use of "whites," while separate -- and supposedly equal -- facilities were set aside for "coloreds." Any hope of changing these laws through democratic processes was stripped away as states erected legal barriers to the exercise of the vote by black citizens. And in courthouses across the land, blacks were systematically excluded from service on juries.

Segregation was the law, but almost immediately it met with resistance. Less than fifteen years after Plessy, a group of individuals committed to fighting against the brutalities of Jim Crow America had formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP). And in 1926, Mordecai W. Johnson arrived as the first black president at all-black Howard University and put the institution on a crash course for academic excellence. In 1929, he hired Charles Hamilton Houston as dean of the Howard University Law School. The result of Houston's arrival and the changes he initiated was a law school curriculum taught by and capable of producing some of the greatest legal talents America has seen. Working individually and through the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, these lawyers would change the course of American law and society.

This group of black attorneys included Houston himself, Robert L. Carter, William T. Coleman, William Henry Hastie, George Hayes, Oliver Hill, Constance Baker Motley, James M. Nabrit, Jr., Spottswood W. Robinson III, and -- perhaps most famous of all -- Thurgood Marshall. They were joined by others committed to the fight against segregation, including Jack Greenberg of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In the decades leading up to Brown, these lawyers progressively chipped away at the legal structure fortifying segregation. All-white jury pools, covenants that restricted ownership of property in certain neighbors by race, laws disenfranchising black voters, and segregated graduate and professional schools were all challenged, often successfully. Attention then turned to the politically charged arena of public school segregation.

The legal strategy focused first on insisting that states take the Plessy standard seriously. "White" and "colored" schools were certainly separate, but in most cases they were far from equal. District by district, legal challenges were brought insisting that black schools be brought up to par with their "whites only" equivalents. This strategy, however, required fighting district by district and did not directly challenge the doctrine of "separate but equal." In 1950, the NAACP resolved that nothing other than education of all children on a nonsegregated basis would be an acceptable outcome. Work began on laying the final groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education.

The case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas actually included appeals from decisions in four separate states: Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina, and Virginia. Each case represented individual acts of courage by families willing to face local resistance -- evan hostility -- to bring an end to segregation.

[image:] Photograph of black and white children standing together in a classroom with hands over their hearts looking at a flag raised by a young black boy. Includes the following attribution: © Bettmann/CORBIS; reprinted with permission.

Dialogue on Brown v. Board of Education

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