what is the impact of brown vs board of education

The NAACP chose the Brown family because they perceived them to be the most sympathetic plaintiff. He tried to enroll his daughter in a white school that was closer to the Brown's home. The representative plaintiff in the case was Oliver Brown, a pastor in Topeka, Kansas. The NAACP had helped families in Delaware, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Kansas challenge the constitutionality of all-white schools. Board of Education was a consolidated case, meaning that several related cases were combined to be heard before the Supreme Court. They argued that keeping black students separate from white students violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.īrown v.

Thurgood Marshall, who went on to become the first black Supreme Court justice, argued the case on behalf of the NAACP and the plaintiffs. Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, had worked to integrate schools through the courts since the 1930s. The case was the culmination of decades of work by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It remains one of the few Supreme Court cases that many Americans know by name, and its importance to both American education and American jurisprudence is hard to overstate. Board's impact today, as well as the legal and social underpinnings of the decision. Much has been written over the decades about this landmark case, decided on May 17, 1954. It's main holding, that segregated schools are inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, was both an important legal precedent and a decision with a huge social impact. Board of Education of Topeka is one of the most celebrated decisions in U.S. Ferguson and the Separate but Equal Doctrineīrown v.

What is the impact of brown vs board of education