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In the fall of 1950, Linda Brown, a seven-year-old third grader,
was denied admission to a modern elementary school just blocks from
her home in Topeka, Kansas. Under the laws of segregation Linda
was forced to walk six blocks to catch a school bus to a black school
when there was a white school within only 7 blocks. Along with 12
other families in Topeka, Linda's family joined forces with the
The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to file suit against the school
district.
When the Topeka case made its way to the United States Supreme Court
it was combined with four other NAACP cases from Delaware, Virginia,
South Carolina and Washington, D.C. to be collectively known as
Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall, the lead
attorney for the NAACP, argued before the court that separate schools
for whites and blacks were inherently unequal because of the psychological
damage they imposed on blacks.
On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous
decision that separate schools violated the Equal Protection clause
under the 14th Amendment. Brown v. Board of Education overturned
decades of legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the United States,
and became widely known as the most significant Supreme Court case
in American history. |
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