Brown v. Board of Education | BRI's Homework Help Series

[Music] racial tension related to segregation has fueled some of the most important court cases in American history maybe the most important case which dealt with segregation in the United States was the 1954 case of brown via the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas to understand this Landmark case it's important to appreciate some context the equal protection Clause of the 14th Amendment reads no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws however the Supreme Court denied equal justice in the 1896 case of pie v Ferguson as the court used

the idea of separate but equal to give official government approval to segregation in America almost 50 years later th Good Marshall a lawyer for the National Association for the advancement of colored people or NAACP led the charge in arguing that the segregation of schools violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution several similar segregation questions from different parts of the country were combined into one case and the case of Linda Brown a third grade African-American student from Topeka Kansas led the list just like many of the other cases that were combined into hers Linda was denied

acceptance into white schools close to her home and was forced to attend a school miles away while separate was considered equal at the time th Good Marshall argued for the African-American families that white school facilities were often of much higher quality than the separate schools for blacks inly in Topeka there was really no difference in the quality of the two sets of schools the school for blacks was equally well equipped and had excellent teachers this Focus his attention on the more important question can schools really be equal if students are segregated merely on the basis

of skin color the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in 1953 but the justices were deeply divided they decided to put the case on hold to allow for new briefs and arguments while the case was on hold chief justice Fred venson died and was replaced by California governor Earl Warren who believed segregation was unconstitutional Warren understanding that many in the South would resist the decision believed a unanimous decision was important to give the Court's ruling legitimacy when the case resumed in 1954 the court was still divided most justices believed that segregation was a violation

of the 14th amendment's equality Clause but some believed it was a federalism issue and decisions about how to end segregation should be left to the states the question remained can schools really be equal if students are segregated merely based on the color of their skin chief justice Warren wrote and rewrote the Court's decision until he had finally achieved a unanimous opinion leaving the question of the equality of the schools aside Warren wrote we must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education so rather than focusing on whether there was equal opportunity to

attend school they looked at the ill effects of segregation ation on society the court based this decision partly on controversial doll experiments used to make the argument that to separating students solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority in a unanimous decision the Court ruled that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal therefore the plaintiffs were deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment although some Southerners engaged in a massive resistance campaign in which they refused to follow the decision many Southern communities gradually desegregated their schools in the coming

years the decision and brown V the Board of Education helped to chip away at racist social structure by outlawing segregation in schools it helped to stimulate the Civil Rights Movement culminating a decade later in the Civil Rights Act which banned segregation in all public facilities and the Voting Rights Act which outlawed racially discriminatory voting restrictions for more information on this and many other important court cases throughout history be sure to check out the other videos in our homework help series