Brown vs. Board

In 1896 the Supreme Court made the famous Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which found that the separate but equal doctrine regarding the public facilities did not violate the constitutional rights of Blacks. During the mid 1900s, the NAACP had been working through the courts for decades trying to overturn the Supreme Courts decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed segregation in separate but equal facilities. In the late 1940s, the NAACP won a series of cases involving higher education. One of the great landmark cases in Supreme Court history was argued in the early 1950s by a team of NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall. In a Midwest town of Topeka Kansas, a little girl named Linda Brown had to ride the bus five miles each day, even though a public school was located only four blocks from her home. She could not attend it because of her color. In attempt to gain equal educational opportunities for their children that were not provided for under the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, African American community leaders acted against the segregation in American schools. Aided by the local chapter of the NAACP, thirteen parents filed a class action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka for the desegregation of schools. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, they argued that segregation of black children in the public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the fourteenth amendments guarantee of equal protection of laws. In May 1954, at 12:52 p.m., the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall and overturned the Plessy case. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that, separate facilities are inherently unequal and unconstitutional; he also ruled that segregation in the schools should end with all deliberate speed. These decisions broke the barriers to desegregation.

Although unanimous ruling declared that segregation in education was inherently unequal, many southerner politicians regarded the decision as a clear abuse of judicial power. States in the Deep South fought the Supreme Courts decision with a variety of tactics, including the temporary closing of the public schools. In Arkansas in 1956, Governor Orval Faubus, used the states National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Little Rock Central High school, as ordered by a federal court. President Eisenhower then intervened. While the president did not actively support desegregation and had reservations about the Brown decision, he understood his constitutional responsibility to uphold the federal authority. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to stand guard in Little Rock and protect black students as they walked to school. He therefore became the first president since Reconstruction to use federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans. Ten years after the case, only one percent of black students in the South went to all white schools. The Brown v. Board helped change America forever.