Events relevant to this particular case first occurred in 1951, when a public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to allow Oliver Brown`s daughter to enroll in the school closest to her home and instead asked her to enroll in a school further away. Oliver Brown and his daughter were black. The Brown family, along with twelve other local black families, filed a class action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education in federal court under similar circumstances, arguing that the segregation policy of forcing black students to attend segregated schools was unconstitutional. However, the United States District Court for the District of Kansas ruled against the Browns, citing their decision as a precedent to the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, who ruled that racial segregation does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment`s equality protection clause, as long as institutions and situations are equal, hence the doctrine known as “separate but equal.” Following the Kansas District Court decision, the Browns, represented by Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, appealed to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Fred Vinson of Kentucky was not convinced that Plessy should be overthrown on constitutional grounds. Several other judges were undecided and might be inclined to support Plessy. Four justices seemed determined to topple Plessy, but five votes were needed, and there were concerns about a division of the court. Jim Crow laws were a set of state and local laws that legalized racial segregation. Named after a black minstrel show character, the laws, which existed for about 100 years from the post-Civil War period until 1968, aimed to marginalize African Americans through the United States. While it recognized some of the plaintiffs/plaintiffs` claims, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court that heard the cases ruled in favor of the school boards. The plaintiffs then appealed to the U.S.

Supreme Court. In the spring of 1953, the court heard the case but could not decide the matter and requested that the case be heard again in the fall of 1953, paying particular attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment`s equality clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks. [30] Learn about civil rights heroine Rosa Parks and four other women who were also forced off city buses, and how their courage led to a Federal Court decision to end bus segregation. For more information, visit the Library of Congress` Rosa Parks Collection. In what would become the most notorious case, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class action lawsuit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, in 1951 after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied access to all-white elementary schools in Topeka. The court said the issue was complicated by the major social and state changes that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The court noted that public schools were unusual in the southern United States in the late 1860s. Cooley in his 1880 treatise The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America.

[90] Furthermore, Berger argues that the views of the authors of the 14th Amendment in 1866 are decisive—unlike the views of later readers of the 14th Amendment (including the views of supporters of the 14th Amendment after the passage and ratification of that amendment due to the fact that even their views and beliefs about the meaning and scope of that amendment change over time). may have changed and sometimes changed – as in the case of Nevada U.S. Senator William Morris Stewart, who initially opposed school desegregation, but later changed his mind and supported it). [90] To support his view that the original intention is decisive, Berger cites, among other things, a quote from James A. from 1871. Garfield to John Bingham, where Garfield challenged Bingham`s memory of a statement Bingham had already made in 1866 – Garfield telling Bingham that he can make history but not undo it. [90] When Brown rendered his decision in 1954, it had been clear for some time that segregation rarely, if ever, produced equality. Regardless of any psychological issues, the physical facilities provided to blacks were not as good as those provided to whites. This has been demonstrated in a long series of cases. The Court`s realistic decision was therefore either to abandon the pursuit of equality by allowing segregation or to prohibit segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Both decisions would violate one aspect of the original agreement, but there was no way to avoid it.

Since equality and segregation were incompatible, even if the ratifying parties did not understand this, the two could not be respected. Seeing this, it is obvious that the Court must opt for equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that created the Fourteenth Amendment was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was enshrined in law. (b) The question raised in these cases must be decided not on the basis of the conditions that existed at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the country. Conference notes and draft resolutions illustrate differences of opinion prior to the adoption of the decision. [31] Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Harold Hitz Burton and Sherman Minton were predisposed to overthrow Plessy. [31] Fred M.

Vinson noted that Congress had not passed legislation to end racial segregation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and state rights, and was inclined to believe that segregation benefited the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that “we had led states to believe that segregation was acceptable and that we should let them work on it.” [31] Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disagreed with segregation, but also opposed legal activism and expressed concerns about the enforceability of the proposed decision. [31] Vinson C.J. was a major stumbling block. After Vinson`s death in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice. [31] Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students into California school systems after Mendez v. Westminster. [32] However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a dinner at the White House, where the president told him, “These [Southern whites] are not bad people. All they care about is seeing that their pretty little girls don`t have to sit next to tall overgrown black people at school.

[Note 2] Nevertheless, the Department of Justice sided with the African-American plaintiffs. [34] [35] [36] White students in the county received assistance to attend all-white “private academies” taught by teachers formerly employed in the public school system, while black students had no education unless they left the county.