M.S. Handout 4A
Background Case Facts and Arguments on the Brown Decision (Secondary Source)
The Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 gave legal sanction to the "separate but equal" doctrine.
"Separate but equal" was always separate, but it was almost never equal. "Separate but equal" laws hit blacks in every part of their lives. Men and women were forced to sit in the back of public buses, wait in separate rooms in train stations, and even use separate drinking fountains. Most important, these laws made segregated education the prevailing pattern.
In the twentieth century, these men and women refused to be held down. Some moved from farms to cities. Others moved from the South to the North. Many began to earn more money than before at jobs in factories. Some achieved fame as writers, musicians, or athletes. Others became lawyers and doctors.
By the 1950s, while some gains were made, African-Americans still suffered because of "Jim Crow" laws. They began to form groups to take their causes into the courts. The most important case for them in the twentieth century came in 1954. It was called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas). Let’s investigate this key case.
On school mornings, Linda Brown would wake up early. She had to get up earlier than most of the kids in her neighborhood because even though there was a grade school just five blocks from Linda’s house, that school was for white children only. Linda had to take a bus that would carry her twenty-one blocks to the school for black children. This was because Kansas law allowed segregated schools.
Linda’s parents were angry about this situation. They took their case to a federal court in Topeka. They said that the school that Linda was forced to attend because of her race was not as good as the school in her own neighborhood, which was predominantly white. The black school’s building was old. The classrooms were crowded, and there weren’t enough teachers. Mr. and Mrs. Brown claimed that their daughter had been denied the “equal protection of the laws” promised by the Fourteenth Amendment.
They argued that schools could never by equal so long as they were separate. They argued that segregated schools were harmful to black children. The only cure was to end all segregation.
The federal court in Topeka ruled against the Browns. This court maintained that separate schools reflected community values and that the mixing of races in public schools would "alienate public support of the schools."
Linda’s parents took their case to the (United States) Supreme Court.
Source: National Center for History in the Schools, The Regents, University of California, 1991, pp. 16-17.
