Search results
Jan 12, 2023 · SAN DIEGO — An 18-year-old former student at Grossmont High School says school administrators and district officials stripped her of her senior year of high school after allowing a...
- Dorian Hargrove
- 5 min
Mar 27, 2018 · The 1954 Supreme Court decision that followed struck down the half-century old “separate-but-equal” standard, ushering in an era of school de-segregation. On Sunday, Linda Brown, the little girl...
Jan 26, 2024 · After 37 years of service to the Grossmont Union Highs School District, Superintendent Mary Beth Kastan announced that she will resign at the end of the 2023.34 school year. Kastan began her career with GUHSD in 1987 as a Social Science Teacher at Mount Miguel High School.
- Overview
- Background and case
In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The 1954 decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal.
What is the significance of Brown v. Board of Education?
Brown v. Board of Education is considered a milestone in American civil rights history and among the most important rulings in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, and the efforts to undermine the Court's decision, brought greater awareness to the racial inequalities that African Americans faced. The case also galvanized civil rights activists and increased efforts to end institutionalized racism throughout American society.
What was the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education?
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, there was wide opposition to desegregation, largely in the southern states. Violent protests erupted in some places, and others responded by implementing “school-choice” programs that subsidized white students’ attendance at private, segregated academies , which were not covered by the Brown ruling.
When was Brown v. Board of Education decided?
In the late 1940s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a concentrated effort to challenge the segregated school systems in various states, including Kansas. There, in Topeka, the NAACP encouraged a number of African American parents to try to enroll their children in all-white schools. All of the parents’ requests were refused, including that of Oliver Brown. He was told that his daughter could not attend the nearby white school and instead would have to enroll in an African American school far from her home. The NAACP subsequently filed a class-action lawsuit. While it claimed that the education (including facilities, teachers, etc.) offered to African Americans was inferior to that offered to whites, the NAACP’s main argument was that segregation by its nature was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. A U.S. district court heard Brown v. Board of Education in 1951, and it ruled against the plaintiffs. While sympathetic to some of the plaintiffs’ claims, it determined that the schools were similar, and it cited the precedent set by Plessy and Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), which upheld the segregation of Asian Americans in grade schools. The NAACP then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In October 1952 the Court consolidated Brown with three other class-action school-segregation lawsuits filed by the NAACP: Briggs v. Elliott (1951) in South Carolina, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1952) in Virginia, and Gebhart v. Belton (1952) in Delaware; there was also a fifth case that was filed independently in the District of Columbia, Bolling v. Sharpe (1951). As with Brown, U.S. district courts had decided against the plaintiffs in Briggs and Davis, ruling on the basis of Plessy that they had not been deprived of equal protection because the schools they attended were comparable to the all-white schools or would become so upon the completion of improvements ordered by the district court. In Gebhart, however, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the original plaintiffs’ right to equal protection had been violated because the African American schools were inferior to the white schools in almost all relevant respects. In Bolling v. Sharpe (1951), a U.S. district court held that school segregation did not violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (the equal protection clause was not relevant since the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to states). The plaintiffs in Brown, Biggs, and Davis appealed directly to the Supreme Court, while those in Gebhart and Bolling were each granted certiorari (a writ for the reexamination of an action of a lower court).
Brown v. Board of Education was argued on December 9, 1952. The attorney for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court (1967–91). The case was reargued on December 8, 1953, to address the question of whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have understood it to be inconsistent with racial segregation in public education. The 1954 decision found that the historical evidence bearing on the issue was inconclusive.
Britannica Quiz
May 16, 2024 · Students mix in a hallway as they change classes at Topeka High School Friday, May 10, 2024, in Topeka, Kan. Schools in the city were at the center of a case that struck down segregated education. Only the district’s grade schools were segregated at the time of the ruling.
May 16, 2024 · TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The lesson on diversity started slowly in a first-grade classroom in Topeka, where schools were at the center of the case that struck down segregated education.
People also ask
Did the Topeka school board fail to desegregate?
How did racial segregation affect Topeka schools?
Did student journalists break the Brown v Topeka story?
Why did Topeka have half-empty classrooms in segregated schools?
Why did the Topeka Board of Education separate black and white?
How does racial isolation affect students in Topeka?
Jan 4, 2024 · It would have also alleviated overcrowding at Topeka High, since Highland Park had 497 empty seats. Instead, the Topeka School Board elected to build a third high school (Topeka West) at the western fringe of the growing city, assigning to it 2 black children and 702 white children.
