Brown Vs Board Case Study

The Brown vs. Board of Education case was extremely controversial and unique, as well as a turning point black history. On May 17th, 1954, it’s verdict declared the idea behind the Jim Crow laws, “separate but equal”, as unconstitutional. The Brown vs. Board case was a very influential case that extensively impacted African American’s quality of life and was a giant step towards the type of equality outlined in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution, which can be seen by looking at the facts of the case, the arguments used to support and oppose it, as well as the outcome. The ruling of the Brown vs. Board Case still vastly affects the lives of African Americans today. The issue this case arose from was

The Brown vs. Board case was trying to argue against the previous ruling of the Plessy vs Ferguson case. They claimed it was unconstitutional per the Fourteenth Amendment, while the verdict of Plessey vs. Ferguson already stated, “The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to endorse social, as distinguished from political equality. . . If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” In some ways, Brown vs. Board was not only trying to overrule their 5 conjoined cases, but Plessey vs. Ferguson as well. This must have been an immensely overwhelming task, but this did not stop them. The defense was led by Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP litigator who would be appointed to the Court in 1967, who argued that the operation of separate schools, based on race, was harmful to African American children and provided testimony that legal segregation resulted in both fundamentally unequal education and low self-esteem among African American students. This segregation with these effects proved that African Americans were treated inherently inferior to whites, therefore directly conflicting with the Fourteenth Amendment. The effects also disapproved the Board’s argument that the segregated schools were equal in every way and did not harm the children. They also incorporated the cases of Murray vs. Maryland, Gaines vs. Canada, and Sweat vs. Painter. In each of these three cases qualified black students were denied from universities due to their race. Consequently, the court sided with the students in each of the cases and they were allowed into “white” schools, since this was in violation of the 14th Amendment, as no equal black schools existed. The black students denied from