Essays for school
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
Historical Background
Perhaps no other case decided by the Court in the 20th century has had so profound an effect on the social fabric of America as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. By the end of World War II, dramatic changes in American race relations were already underway. The integration of labor unions in the 1930s under the eye of the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the desegregation of the armed forces by President Truman in 1948 marked major steps toward racial integration.
The legal framework on which segregation rested—formally established in 1896 by the Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision—was itself being dismantled. Challenged repeatedly by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the doctrine of “separate but equal” was beginning to crack. Beginning in 1938, the Supreme Court had, in a number of cases, struck down laws where segregated facilities proved to be “demonstrably unequal.” The Court ordered the law schools at the University of Missouri and the University of Texas to be integrated in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 1938, and Sweatt v. Painter, 1950. Neither case had made the frontal assault needed to overturn the Plessy standard. However, the 1950s brought a new wave of challenges to official segregation by the NAACP and other groups.
Circumstances of the Case
Linda Brown, an eight-year-old African-American girl, had been denied permission to attend an elementary school only five blocks from her home in Topeka, Kansas. School officials refused to register her at the nearby school, assigning her instead to a school for nonwhite students some 21 blocks from her home. Separate elementary schools for whites and nonwhites were maintained by the Board of Education in Topeka. Linda Brown's parents filed a lawsuit to force the schools to admit her to the nearby, but segregated, school for white students.
Constitutional Issues
The central
Historical Background
Perhaps no other case decided by the Court in the 20th century has had so profound an effect on the social fabric of America as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. By the end of World War II, dramatic changes in American race relations were already underway. The integration of labor unions in the 1930s under the eye of the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the desegregation of the armed forces by President Truman in 1948 marked major steps toward racial integration.
The legal framework on which segregation rested—formally established in 1896 by the Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision—was itself being dismantled. Challenged repeatedly by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the doctrine of “separate but equal” was beginning to crack. Beginning in 1938, the Supreme Court had, in a number of cases, struck down laws where segregated facilities proved to be “demonstrably unequal.” The Court ordered the law schools at the University of Missouri and the University of Texas to be integrated in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 1938, and Sweatt v. Painter, 1950. Neither case had made the frontal assault needed to overturn the Plessy standard. However, the 1950s brought a new wave of challenges to official segregation by the NAACP and other groups.
Circumstances of the Case
Linda Brown, an eight-year-old African-American girl, had been denied permission to attend an elementary school only five blocks from her home in Topeka, Kansas. School officials refused to register her at the nearby school, assigning her instead to a school for nonwhite students some 21 blocks from her home. Separate elementary schools for whites and nonwhites were maintained by the Board of Education in Topeka. Linda Brown's parents filed a lawsuit to force the schools to admit her to the nearby, but segregated, school for white students.
Constitutional Issues
The central