Oliver Brown Case Summary

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This case was brought on by Oliver Brown. He had the help of NAACP to lead on the case. This case was brought up because his daughter, Linda Brown at 7-year-old had to travel several miles and cross a rail track to get to school rather than go to a whites-only school near to their house. The Topeka board of education denied Linda Brown admittance to an all-white school close to her house. Thurgood Marshall argued that a ‘separate but equal' violated equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Warren decided separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. The Supreme Court had decided and stated that Linda Brown should be able to go to the local school and that the doctrine of 'separate but equal' had no place in education. It …show more content…

This conclusion resulted in the children receiving more benefits and opportunities they could have in their ‘all-black school.' In 1954, southern black schools received only 60 percent of the per-pupil funding as southern white schools, up from 45 percent in 1940. Many southern black schools, therefore, lacked the necessities i.e. cafeterias, libraries, gymnasiums, running water and electricity. The plaintiffs also took great personal risks to be part of the case. After the lawsuits were filed, a number of plaintiffs lost their jobs and members of their families. Some of the other plaintiffs also had their credit cut off. The retaliation was arguably most severe in South Carolina, where whites burned down the house and the Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine's church and had reportedly fired gunshots at him one night. He ended up fleeing the state. Judge Waring was also forced to leave. Facing death threats, he retired from the bench and moved to New York City. The schools in the South now had to be desegregated and mixed classes could theoretically reduce racial tensions as people mix and see each other on an equal footing. It also showed the Supreme Court could now be used as a tool of striking down racist laws. The scale of the judgement 9-0 sent a clear message that racism was unacceptable in American

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