1954: Brown vs. Board of Education
The Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka took place in 1954 and ruled that the racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional. This decision overturned the previous “separate but equal” ruling from the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson, a case in which the Supreme Court decided that the segregation of public facilities was constitutional so long as the facilities themselves were equal.
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In Brown vs. Board of Education, a black man named Oliver Brown sued the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas because his daughter, Linda, was barred from attending the city’s all-white school system. Several other cases involving school segregation were also addressed during the case. After a period of deliberation, the Court decided that the notion of “separate but equal” violated the 14th Amendment and that the segregation of public schools was “inherently unequal.”
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Key Excerpts from the Majority Opinion, Brown I (1954)
The Court did not provide specific guidelines as to how integration should take place, and would later direct all decision-making to lower level courts and school boards to take over the path to desegregation.
The decision was unanimous. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the Court.
. . . Here . . . there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications, and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of these cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education. . . .
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. . . . Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. . . .
To separate them [children in grade and high schools] 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 unlikely to ever be undone. . . . Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. . . .
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and other similarly situated . . . are . . . deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.