Plessy+v.+Ferguson+and+Brown+v.+Board+of+Education

Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education



This case was a milestone in the way the public schools were run in the United States. The result of this case cause desegregation in public schools and destroyed the term "seperate but equal". Linda Brown was an insignificant small girl in Topeka, Kansas in 1951, and she lived only a few blocks down from a white public school. But, when her father attempted to enroll her in the school, his request was denied, forcing her to have to travel a mile to the nearest black school in the state. This outraged her Father and he immediately took the matter to court, assisted by Topeka's NAACP branch to challenge the segregation law. The NAACP stated that sending Blacks to a different school would result in an inferior feeling and therefore, far from equality. But in response, the Board of Education claimed that segregation was a fact of life, and they gave examples of successful African Americans that had to deal with the same problem of intergrated schools. The judges decided to rule in favor of the Topeka Board of Education and so the case was sent to the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall of 1951. The case went un-noticed until December of 1953 when the first African American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, argued for Brown and the NAACP. On May 17th 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that "segregation of children in public schools based on race, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities...so we conclude that the term "seperate but equal" has no place..." With this decision made, segregationists in the South attempted to prevent the integration in public schools, trying to delay the day when Black children would be let into public schools. Mobs formed and the National Guard was needed to prevent the anger outbursts. This case was the legal decision to make desegregation in schools possible.

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