The Short Term Significance of the Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling of 1954?

1977 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Desegregation brown v board of education

The Brown v. Board ruling declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, therefore promoting integration. Many viewed this as a turning point, the start of a social revolution. However, there is a view that, although positive, the ruling did not do enough to force real change. It is even possible to argue that it increased white opposition, actually hindering the case of Civil Rights. Overall, however, the positive aspects outweighed the negatives, with the psychological effect and legal backing from the court being most important. The significance of Brown directly following the court ruling has been called a ‘Supreme Court Bomb’1, as depicted in an image published five days later in a Richmond paper. The San Francisco Chronicle felt that Brown would have an immediate and great ‘impact of anti-Segregation’, calling it ‘a social revolution’2. Judge Constance Motley called it ‘the catalyst for all the demonstrations’3 that followed. The last of these sources was from an NAACP lawyer, the other two from pro-Civil Rights publications. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these people wished to promote the success of the ruling, perhaps leading them to exaggerate its significance. By overstating how much they thought would be changed by the court’s decision, they could have been promoting their own hopes. It remains a fact, however, that the ruling did overturn the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson sixty years earlier. The Supreme Court went against that ruling’s central idea, ‘separate but equal’, saying it had ‘no place’ in the American constitution, and that ‘separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’4. Willoughby and Paterson claim that Brown managed to ‘end the vice-like grip of the Plessy precedent’. ... ... middle of paper ... ...s, New York, May 22nd 1954.9 Denver Post, Colorado, May 18th 1954.10 Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky, May 18th 1954.11 Paterson and Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA, p. 119.12 Mark Rathbone, The US Supreme Court and Civil Rights, History Today.13 Extract from President Eisenhower’s letter to a personal friend, 195714 James T. Patterson, The Troubled Legacy of Brown v. Board, p. 7.15 Statement from Conference of Negro Educational Leaders, October 195416 Daily News, Starkville, Mississippi, May 18th 1954.17 Cavalier Daily, Charlottesville, Virginia, May 18th 1954.18 Extract from President Eisenhower’s letter of personal friend, 195719 Tom P. Brady, Black Monday, p.7.20 James T. Patterson, The Troubled Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, 2004, p. 7.21 James T. Patterson, The Troubled Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, 2004, p. 8.

Show More
Related

  • Civil Rights Dbq

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) ‘equal but separate’ decision robbed it of its meaning and confirmed this wasn’t the case as the court indicated this ruling did not violate black citizenship and did not imply superior and inferior treatment ,but it indeed did as it openly permitted racial discrimination in a landmark decision of a 8-1 majority ruling, it being said was controversial, as white schools and facilities received near to more than double funding than black facilities negatively contradicted the movement previous efforts on equality and maintaining that oppression on

    Read More

  • Brown V. Board Of Education

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    The case started with a third-grader named Linda Brown. She was a black girl who lived just seen blocks away from an elementary school for white children. Despite living so close to that particular school, Linda had to walk more than a mile, and through a dangerous railroad switchyard, to get to the black elementary school in which she was enrolled. Oliver Brown, Linda's father tried to get Linda switched to the white school, but the principal of that school refuse to enroll her. After being told that his daughter could not attend the school that was closer to their home and that would be safer for Linda to get to and from, Mr. Brown went to the NAACP for help, and as it turned out, the NAACP had been looking for a case with strong enough merits that it could challenge the issue of segregation in pubic schools. The NAACP found other parents to join the suit and it then filed an injunction seeking to end segregation in the public schools in Kansas (Knappman, 1994, pg 466).

    Read More

  • The Fourteenth Amendment In Melba Beals's Warriors Don T Cry

    1169 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Plessy v Ferguson case would be overturned, ruling the “separate but equal” law to be unconstitutional. Melba Beals was in school that day and was sent home early with the warning to hurry and stay in groups. Even so, it had been decades since the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment. No much had changed. Melba’s teacher knew that this ruling would cause rage among the citizens of Little Rock and she was right.

    Read More

  • Plessy vs. Ferguson: A Case for Desegregation

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Homer Plessy vs. the Honorable John H. Ferguson ignited the spark in our nation that ultimately led to the desegregation of our schools, which is shown in the equality of education that is given to all races across the country today. “The Plessy decision set the precedent that ‘separate’ facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were ‘equal’” (“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”). The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson not only illuminated the racial inequality within our education system, but also brought to light how the standard of ‘separate but equal’ affected every aspect of African American lives.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Domesticity In The 1950's

    1482 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision holds up fairly well, however, as a catalyst and starting point for wholesale shifts in perspective” (Branch). This angered blacks, and was a call to action for equality, and desegregation. The court decision caused major uproar, and gave the African American community a boost because segregation in schools was now

    Read More

  • Brown v. Board of Education

    1307 Words  | 3 Pages

    The case started in Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school seven blocks from her house, but the principal of the school refused simply because the child was black. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help (All Deliberate Speed pg 23). The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. The NAACP was looking for a case like this because they figured if they could just expose what had really been going on in "separate but equal society" that the circumstances really were not separate but equal, bur really much more disadvantaged to the colored people, that everything would be changed. The NAACP was hoping that if they could just prove this to society that the case would uplift most of the separate but equal facilities. The hopes of this case were for much more than just the school system, the colored people wanted to get this case to the top to abolish separate but equal.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Brown V. Board Of Education

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Brown decision has generated numerous writings that are used to understand the meaning of the decision; Brown v. Board of Education,

    Read More

  • Brown v. Board of Education Decision

    2171 Words  | 5 Pages

    Before the decision of Brown v. Board of Education, many people accepted school segregation and, in most of the southern states, required segregation. Schools during this time were supposed to uphold the “separate but equal” standard set during the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson; however, most, if not all, of the “black” schools were not comparable to the “white” schools. The resources the “white” schools had available definitely exceed the resources given to “black” schools not only in quantity, but also in quality. Brown v. Board of Education was not the first case that assaulted the public school segregation in the south. The title of the case was shortened from Oliver Brown ET. Al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. The official titled included reference to the other twelve cases that were started in the early 1950’s that came from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The case carried Oliver Brown’s name because he was the only male parent fighting for integration. The case of Brown v. Board o...

    Read More

  • Brown v. Board of Education

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    Smith, Alonzo N. “Project Essay” Separate is not equal: Brown v. Board of Education. URL: http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/resources/pdfs/projectessay.pdf

    Read More

  • Brown vs Board of Education Case

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Brown vs Board of Education as a major turning point in African American. Brown vs Board of Education was arguably the most important cases that impacted the African Americans and the white society because it brought a whole new perspective on whether “separate but equal” was really equal. The Brown vs Board of Education was made up of five different cases regarding school segregation. “While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools ("HISTORY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION") .”

    Read More

  • Brown v Board of Education

    2329 Words  | 5 Pages

    The request for an injunction pushed the court to make a difficult decision. On one hand, the judges agreed with the Browns; saying that: “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn” (The National Center For Public Research). On the other hand, the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had overturned Plessy yet. Be...

    Read More

  • Oliver Brown Vs Board Of Education Essay

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Separate is not equal.” In the case of Plessey vs. Ferguson in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court said racial segregation didn’t violate the Constitution, so racial segregation became legal. In 1954 the case of Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka this case proved that separate is not equal. Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was revolutionary to the education system, because colored people and Caucasians had segregated schools. The Caucasians received a better education and the colored people argued that they were separate but not equal. This would pave the way for integrated schools and change the education system as we knew it.

    Read More

  • The Supreme Court and Civil Rights

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Unger, Harlow G. "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas." Encyclopedia of American Education, 3rd Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. African-American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.

    Read More

  • Race and Supreme Court Decisions

    1896 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1803, the decision in Marbury v Madison held that the Supreme Court had the ability to practice the process of judicial review. With this ruling, the Court gave itself the power to deem legislation constitutional or unconstitutional. With this bolstered power, the Supreme Court made numerous landmark decisions throughout the 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries. The Supreme Court’s power of judicial review played an integral role in shaping post-bellum racial laws and attitudes. In the cases of Plessey v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education the Supreme Court invoked judicial review to assess racial segregation policies as they related to the 14th Amendment. Both Plessey and Brown are landmark cases because they reflected the social climate of their respective time periods, because both cases had immediate impact upon civil rights law and everyday life in America, and because both cases affected basic interpretation of the Constitution.

    Read More

  • The Role of the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement

    1964 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern states the authority to continue persecuting African-Americans for the next sixty years. The first positive aspect of Brown was was the actual integration of white and black students in schools. Unfortunately, this was not carried out to a suitable degree, with many local authorities feeling no obligation to change the status quo. The Supreme Court did issue a second ruling, the so called Brown 2, in 1955. This forwarded the idea that integration should proceed 'with all deliberate speed', but James T. Patterson tells us even by 1964 ‘only an estimated 1.2% of black children ... attended public schools with white children’2. This demonstrates that, although the Supreme Court was working for Civil Rights, it was still unable to force change. Rathbone agrees, saying the Supreme Court ‘did not do enough to ensure compliance’3. However, Patterson goes on to say that ‘the case did have some impact’4. He explains how the ruling, although often ignored, acted ‘relatively quickly in most of the boarder s...

    Read More

More about The Short Term Significance of the Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling of 1954?

Open Document