Question

Read the article, “Ending School Segregation in the US.” Why is the event described in the article taught in schools today? What are the lasting lessons that we can learn from studying this event? Support your response with textual evidence.

Answer 1

Brown vs Board of Education was the first attempt to legally strike at the Jim Crow laws that had been set up in the South post-Civil War. The case would open the doors to attack other laws and institutions that hid behind the "separate but equal" ruling that was found in the Plessy vs Ferguson case years earlier. It would also be a step in ending the hypocrisy that we had in the US. We claimed democracy was better that dictatorships, like Stalin's, but treated people in our own country as 2nd class citizens. Communists loved to use that talking point to show how weak democracy really was. We can learn from Brown vs Board the value of the idea of Equality. We claim everyone is equal but weren't actually following through with it.