United States Supreme Court
After the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, legal segregation advanced across the nation. In
most areas, officials did not even attempt to comply with the "equal" requirement for separate
facilities. Starting in the late 1930s, blacks began challenging the ruling. All cases involved graduate
students seeking admission into medical or law schools. In each case, the court ruled they had to be admitted,
because the separate facilities were not equal in any sense. But these cases involved only a few students
each time.
The Brown case tested the validity of state laws ordering racial segregation of public schools.
Unlike earlier desegregation cases dealing with a few graduate students, Brown and its companion
cases had enormous scope, affecting the daily lives of millions of children. Acknowledging the potential
upheaval from this case, the justices required attorneys to present their oral arguments before the Supreme
Court three times. The court focused its attention on the original intent of Congress and the state legislatures
that drafted and passed the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the meaning of the equal protection clause.
The decision examined the sociological and psychological effects of school segregation on American society,
as well as the legal rights of the plaintiffs. Chief Justice Warren’s opinion first established the importance
of education for success and good citizenship in the United States. Segregation denied minority children
an equal opportunity for success. Racial segregation also created a sense of inferiority among black children,
causing psychological scars that might last forever. Because public education and school attendance were
mandated by law, forced legal segregation in schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, and "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Read all of the specific
reasons the court gives for this declaration.
Brown v. The Board of Education did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson entirely,
because this case dealt only with public education. Even here, the court delayed implementation, waiting
a year before issuing the Brown II decision, which required a "prompt and reasonable start
towards compliance . . ." to be pursued "with all deliberate speed." School desegregation
would be slow and bitterly fought throughout the South. Desegregation of other public facilities would
follow, since Brown had re-established the equal protection intentions of the authors of the Fourteenth
Amendment. |
