Brown v. Board of Education

From the Library of Virginia:  Brown v. Board of Education was a group of five legal appeals that challenged the "separate but equal" basis for racial segregation in public schools in Kansas, Virginia (Dorothy Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward), Delaware, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. The appeals reached the Supreme Court about the same time, and because they all dealt with the same issues, the Court heard arguments on them together. Because the Kansas case arrived first, the combined appeal was known as Brown et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al. In each case, the legal office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) represented the plaintiffs, and NAACP lawyers, such as Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, and Thurgood Marshall, argued that the black students' rights had been violated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In all five cases, inequality in curriculum, school structures, and transportation were the key issues.

The lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. From left, Louis L. Redding, Robert L. Carter, Oliver W. Hill, Thurgood Marshall and Spottswood W. Robinson III..

Kansas

In 1951 Oliver Brown and twelve other parents, supported by the local chapter of the NAACP, filed suit against the Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education, after the board refused to allow their children attend the white school located in their neighborhoods. To reach their schools, the children rode buses to schools located several miles from their homes. Arguing that African American children attending a segregated school were made to feel interior to whites, Dr. Hugh W. Speer testified that if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child’s curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation. 

Standing outside a Topeka classroom in 1953 are the students represented in Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas et al. From left: Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown (Oliver's daughter), James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and Katherine Carper. Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Attorneys for the Board of Education argued that attending segregated schools prepared children for the segregated society they would face as adults and offered key figures such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver as examples of individuals who overcame racial barriers to achieve fame. Although agreeing with the plaintiff’s argument that segregation had a damaging effect on black schoolchildren, the justices relied on the legal precedent of Plessyto rule in favor of the Board of Education. Brown appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 1, 1951.

South Carolina

In South Carolina, Harry Briggs and nineteen other parents filed suit against R. W. Elliot, president of the Clarendon County school board. Clarendon County provided bus transportation for white children but not for black students. The plaintiffs requested that the county provide buses for their children, but the petition was ignored. With Thurgood Marshall and Harold Boulware serving as counsel, Briggs v. Clarendon County went before the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina in May 1951. The justices ruled 2–1 against the parents but ordered the school board to equalize schools.

Delaware

Two cases—Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart—involved bus tra nsportation and inferior school structures. In Belton v. Gebhart, black parents in Claymont petitioned for both a better school building and bus transportation. Sarah Bulah (Bulah v. Gebhart) asked for bus transportation for black children in Hockessin. Parents of eleven children joined Sarah Bulah’s suit. Argued before the Delaware Court of Chancery which found for the parents, the cases were combined and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Delaware Board of Education.

District of Columbia

Attempting to end segregated schools in the District of Columbia, Gardner Bishop and the Consolidated Parents Group, Inc., tried to enroll eleven African American students in the newly-completed John Philip Sousa Junior High School. The students were denied entrance. James Nabrit Jr., of Howard University, argued in the case Bolling v. Sharpe, that segregation itself was unconstitutional. The U. S. District Court dismissed the case, based on a Court of Appeals ruling in Carr v. Corning that segregated schools were constitutional. The U. S. Supreme Court included Nabrit’s appeal as part of Brown. Because the Fourteenth Amendment was not applicable to the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court gave a separate opinion on Bolling v. Sharpe, basing its decision on the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment. (source: Library of Virginia)