Brown v. Board of Education was not the first Supreme Court case of its

kind. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" segregation of public facilities was not a violation of the constitution. This ruling was considered constitutional as long as the schools for blacks provided the same education as the whites received at their schools; this was obviously not the case. Following this ruling, separate schools for blacks and whites became a basic rule in the south. At this time, Jim Crow Laws had also been passed throughout the south which established separate facilities for blacks and whites in everything from schools to water fountains.

Seven year old Linda Brown walked a mile to her school in Topeka, Kansas every day. Even though there was a school, Sumner Elementary, located within four blocks of her house, Linda was not allowed to attend. Every day when she would walk to the bus stop, this young girl would pass by the school and wonder to herself why she couldn't simply go there but instead had to travel so far to a different school. The reason she couldn't go to the local school was simple, she was black.

Oliver Brown did not take this opposition with a grain of salt. Mr. Brown felt that there was absolutely no reason why young Linda Brown should not be able to attend this school with the other children. The school was less than half the distance of the school she had been attending and also offered a stronger education. To gain support, Mr. Brown went to the Topeka, Kansas branch of the NAACP or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, and sought the help of its head, McKinley Burnett. (Early Civil Rights Struggles: Brown v. Board of Education)

Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the all white Sumner Elementary School to make things a little bit easier on them and to get a better education for his daughter. Both the superintentendent of the school and the members of the school board were strong supporters of segregation and hole-heartedly opposed the idea of allowing a black girl to attend there school.

Two different views of what was considered constitutional could be seen in what was presented by the Warren Court. Firstly,when Warren said, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," he was stating that segregation among the races was unconstitutional and always had been, regardless of time or place. This meant that the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause had not changed since its 1868 adoption, racial segregation was unconstitutional and Plessy had been wrongly decided. (Horwitz pg. 28)

Some common words found in the essay are:
Earl Warren, Plessy Ferguson, Supreme Court, Sumner Elementary, Kansas June, Linda Brown, Protection Clause, Elementary School, Oliver Brown, Fourteenth Amendment, separate equal, brown board education, brown board, plessy ferguson, board education, racial segregation, fourteenth amendment, oliver brown, equal protection, public schools, blacks whites, justice earl warren, civil rights struggles, rights struggles brown, segregation children public,
Approximate Word count = 1085
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)