Brown v. Board of Education - Significance, Naacp Takes On Topeka Board Of Education, Fight Goes To Supreme Court, Court Throws Out Plessy; Declares Segregation Illegal

Brown v. Board of Education - Further Readings

Brown v. Board of Education - Significance

Brown v. Board of Education held that segregated schools were unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Sometimes in history, events of great importance happen unexpectedly to modest men. Such was the case with Oliver Brown, whose desire that his children be able to attend the public school closest to their home resulted in a fundamental transfor…

Brown v. Board of Education - Naacp Takes On Topeka Board Of Education

Burnett's organization had wanted to challenge segregation for quite some time, but until Brown came to them they had never had the right plaintiff at the right time. Segregation, in the public schools and elsewhere, was a fact of life in Topeka as in so many other places, and few were willing to challenge it. Now that he had Brown, who was joined by several other black parents in Topeka with chil…

Brown v. Board of Education - Fight Goes To Supreme Court

On 1 October 1951 the plaintiffs filed a petition for appeal. Under certain special procedural rules, they were able to go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court instead of going through federal court of appeals. On 9 June 1952 the Supreme Court put the case on its docket and consolidated it with several other cases from across the country where school segregation policies were being challenged. The C…

Brown v. Board of Education - Court Throws Out Plessy; Declares Segregation Illegal

After the 8 December 1953 re-argument, the Court announced its decision on 17 May 1954. According to the published opinion, the re-argument had not revealed anything that shed light on whether the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment had been specifically intended to preclude segregated schools: Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The cur…

Brown v. Board of Education - Related Cases

Brown v. Board of Education - Chief Justice Fred Moore Vinson

Robert W. Langran of the Supreme Court Historical Society noted that of eight Supreme Court justices rated as "failures" by authors Albert P. Blaustein and Roy M. Mersky in a 1978 volume entitled The First One Hundred Justices: Statistical Studies on the Supreme Court of the United States, only one was a chief justice, Fred Moore Vinson. Vinson (1890-1953), appointed chief in 1946, served just sev…