Brown v. Louisiana - Impact

The Court's ruling in this case and in others proved vital to the Civil Rights struggles and to Vietnam war protests that would follow. Indeed, without these rulings the 1960s and early 1970s may have been a completely different period of time, especially for the Civil Rights movement. Yet, the Court's support was not to last. In the last line of Justice Black's opinion in Brown v. Louisiana he wrote: "The holding in this case today makes it more necessary than ever that we stop and look more closely at where we are going." That same year in Adderley v. Florida the Court appeared to follow Justice Black's advice. In that case, the Court upheld the convictions of 32 students at Florida A&M, a historically black college. The students went to a jail to protest the arrests of others demonstrating against racially discriminatory practices in that state.