Brown Vs Board Of Education Of Topeka Case Study

Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka was an historic Supreme Court case in 1954. The outcome from this case was the court’s unanimous decision that, in the words of the Warren Court, “separate educational facilitates are inherently unequal”. Furthermore, they declared separate schools to be unconstitutional “we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment”. Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) which allowed state-sponsored segregation in education was overturned by this decision. During the following year (1955) the Supreme Court, after schools requested relief in doing their

In fact the town of Topeka had their junior high integrated as early as 1941 and began to end elementary school segregation in August of 1953. One of the plaintiffs, Zelma Henderson, had this to say about how Topeka handled the Supreme Court’s decision, “They accepted it…It wasn’t too long until they integrated the teachers and principals”. This example of Topeka was a rarity, as in most parts of America it took much longer for the integration to happen, largely in part to it having to be forced on them. One of the more famous examples of this happened in Alabama in 1963. There Governor George Wallace blocked the door to an auditorium at the University of Alabama in order to block two black students from enrolling. This is known as the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door. Wallace was backing his policy that he set in his inaugural address in 1963. There he said, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. He continued this until he was forced to move by the Alabama National Guard, who were following the orders of President John F. Kennedy. Additionally, the lawsuit helped create more activism among African-Americans. Mae Mallory was one, backed by the NAACP, who had a successful lawsuit against the city and state of New York. Mallory’s victory was won by using Brown’s