Brown vs. Board of Education
A landmark court case that occurred in the early 1950's resulted in the desegregation of public schools. This historic Supreme Court case was known as Brown vs. Board of Education. The place was Topeka, Kansas, 1951. A little girl named Linda Brown and her father, Oliver Brown, attempted to enroll Linda in a neighborhood elementary school that accepted whites only. The request was denied, by the White elementary school. The little girl only lived a few blocks from the White elementary school, which would have been a good fit for her. Instead, she ended up traveling about a mile each day to attend the nearest Black school. Mr. Brown decided to request the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP was glad to help in the fight. Mr. Brown and the NAACP moved forward and challenged the segregation law. In 1892, the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision had set a precedent for the issue of "separate but equal," which had been applied to school in the Southern states since then. Parents in other states were also pursuing the challenge to the "separate but equal" doctrine in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Mr. Brown's case was heard by the U.S. District Court for the Distri
With the segregation of public schools declared unconstitutional, segregationists across the South sprang into action to prevent the implementation of public school integration. Some states began to pass state laws to uphold segregation, which then had to be challenged in court by the federal government, one by one, delaying black children from attending White schools. Councils began to be developed, by segregationists, to fight against desegregation. One of the most dramatic occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when White mobs screamed threats at nine Black high school students and blocked them, as they tried to go into their new school for the first time. The Black students were unsuccessful, unfortunately. The president at the time was President Eisenhower, of whom ended up calling in the National Guard to protect them so they could enter the school. President Eisenhower had to call in the National Guard to escort black children to an Arkansas school that refused to integrate. Other communities used different tactics to resist. In Virginia, schools closed rather than desegregate. Elsewhere, some white families migrated to suburbs. Some black parents kept their children in the same black schools to avoid conflict. Families who chose white schools under freedom of choice plans, allowing black children attend any school in a district, received threats. In at least one instance, a cross was burned outside the home of a family. Mr. Brown and the NAACP appealed the case and it went to the United States Supreme Court in the latter part of 1951. The case was combined with the Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina cases. The Supreme Court handled this case very delicately and deliberated for quite sometime. The case was first heard by the Supreme Court, but a decision was not made at that time. Various interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment were discussed and whether the Plessy vs
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Approximate Word count = 1290
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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