10-28-2012
Reading Response # 2
Introduction
“While speaking at an annual luncheon of the national Committee for rural schools on December 1956, Martin Luther King Jr reflected on the importance of Brown vs. Board of Education: “ To all men of good will, this decision came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of human captivity. It came as a great beacon light of hope millions of color people throughout the world who had a dim vision of the promise land of freedom and justice.. This decision came as a legal and sociological death blow to an evil that had occupied the throne of American life for several decades”. (Papers 3:472)
“Brown vs. Board of Education was a consolidation of five desegregation cases: Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Briggs v Elliot Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, Bolling v. Sharpe, and Belton v. Gebhart. These cases were designed to challenge the “separate but equal “ doctrine established in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy v Ferguson decision, and because of their common legal challenge the supreme court combined the cases and decided them together. The NAACP legal defense was headed by Thurgood Marshall. He was well aware that national racial progress was reliant on the outcome of Brown”. (349 U.S. 294 1955)
“The Supreme Court’s unanimous Brown decision handed down on 17 May 1954, that the Plessy doctrine of “separate but equal” had no place in education and violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote “ to separate blacks 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 likely to ever be undone”. With this decision, racial segregation in schools became unconstitutional.” (349. U.S 204 1955).
Former graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Michael J. Myers 2 authored a