Brown vs. The Board of Education

Linda Carol Brown was the daughter of the first plaintiff on the list in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. Her father was Reverend Oliver Brown. The Brown family lived in a low income white section of town. She went to a colored school about 21 blocks away from her house, while a white school was only 3.5 blocks away from her house. She had to ride the bus to get to the black school when she could walk to the white school.

 

 

The Brown v. Board of Education was a combination of four cases that the courts had on school segregation. Brown v. Board of Education, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. County School Board, and Belton v. Gebhart were the four cases and Brown was the first on the list. This is why it is known as the Brown case. In each case, “black school children had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race (31 Raffel).

 

 

The Brown case was divided up into two different cases, Brown I and Brown II. The case of Brown one is the case that dealt with the subject of the segregation of the schools. The question that was asked in the Brown I case was does segregation “deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities” (33 Raffel)? They believed that the “inferiority affected the motivation of a child to learn” (33 Raffel). These questions of how and why are what the judges focused on segregation. It was declared that segregation in schools was unconstitutional and because of this case segregation was abolished in schools. The result of this case did not go over peacefully. Many protest were seen because of its result and many black students were still denied acces to the white schools. Even governors of states did not want to follow the law and higher powers were forced to step in and resolve the conflicts.

 

 

In the Brown II case the dealt with the school authorities will have to deal with the problems that will occur from the Brown I case. The school authorities will have to asses “the physical condition of the school plant, the school transportation system, and revision of school districts and school attendance areas” (35 Raffel). The United States District Court was handed down the responsibility of making sure that the desegregation plans were judged. 

 

For more information on Brown v. Board of Education go to: www.brownvboard.org

 

On to Rosa Parks | Little Rock Standoff

 

Back to Civil Rights Act of 1964