Brown Vs Board Of Education
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Submitted by anu2012 on 01/05/2012 03:13 PM Flag This Paper
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Brown Vs Board Of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court over the years has made some very important decisions regarding the rights of American citizens.One of these cases is Brown v. Board of Education.The Brown versus Board of Education decision was an immense influence on desegregation of schools and a milestone in the movement for equality. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous, ruling that "separate but equal is inherently unequal." They ruled that no state had the power to pass a law that went against the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution.
During this time in history the doctrine of "separate but equal" was the law. This came to be because of an earlier Supreme Court case entitled Plessy v. Ferguson. In this case, the Supreme Court stated that separate, but equal public facilities for people of different races was legal under the 14th Amendment. The time that this case happened was in 1896. In 1951, a black railroad worker named Oliver Brown sued the Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education for not allowing his daughter to attend an all-white school near her home. Similar cases were being brought against the states of South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. These states, and others, had Jim Crow laws limiting the constitutional rights of African-Americans. People were unwilling to accept what they thought of as an inferior race. The plaintiffs had all lost their cases in the district courts, so the case appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court agreed to hear their cases, but as one case based on one issue, desegregation.