Question

read about the Brown v. Board of Education case. In your own words, write a half-page summary discussing the background of the case and the Supreme Court ruling.

Answer 1

Answer:

The case known as “Brown vs. Board of Education ”resolved by the Supreme Court of the United States on May 17, 1954 marks a milestone in US jurisprudence on equal rights by changing the criteria it had held for more than 70 years regarding access to African-American people to the public education system.

The plaintiff Oliver Brown, along with 12 other parents of students from Topeka, Kansas, acted on behalf of their children who were then entitled to attend educational establishments that were not attended by white students. This situation was verified even after the sanction of the Fourth Amendment in 1868.

Indeed, African-American citizens received a different treatment in 1950 compared to white citizens. And this legal situation of inferiority and discrimination was sustained in normative instruments of each of the States through the enactment of decrees that prohibited them from using the same public transport, attending the same schools or entering the same buildings. This situation of inferiority was received by the judges and embodied in numerous judgments as the doctrine of "equal, but separate"

Prior to deciding "Brown," he had ruled in "Plessy vs. the Court." Ferguson ”by a overwhelming majority of 8 votes against 1 (dissent of Judge John Marshall Harlan), ruling that Mr. Homer Plessy was responsible for being arrested for refusing to give his seat to a white person on a New Orleans train. The reasoning of the sentence is synthesized in that the Fourth Amendment undoubtedly reinforced the idea of ​​equality of two races before the law, but if one took into account the nature of things, this could not imply the elimination of distinctions based on the color, or social status. If one race was inferior to another socially, the Constitution of the United States could not place them on the same footing.

In "Brown" the decision of the Court meant abandoning the historical interpretation of the constitutional text to employ a sociological interpretation of the effect of discrimination in American society. The Framers or the first editors of the Constitution had not been able to consider the legal status of African-American citizens because at that time they were not in school, and therefore they had to use surpassing arguments for the community at that time.

It is not a single case, but five causes related to discrimination in public education establishments: “Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ”,“ Briggs v. Elliot ”; "Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County ”,“ Bolling v Sharp ”and finally“ Gebhart v. Ehtel ”, all brought to the attention of the American Court of Justice and which gave rise to an important turn in jurisprudential matters.

Answer 2

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court Case in which it was ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. It was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movements in the United States.

It overruled a previous Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), that stated that racially segregated public facilities were legal as long as their were equal in quality ( the so called 'separate but equal doctrine').

The plaintiff, Oliver Brown, filed a lawsuit against the Board of education of Topeka, Kansas. His daughter, Linda Brown, was denied access to Topeka's white school which was located seven blocks from her home. Instead, she had to walk six blocks to her school bus to ride one mile to her segregated black school. The plaintiff claimed that schools for black children were not equal to the white schools.

Furthermore, Brown claimed that this segregation violated the  'equal protection clause' of the 14th Amendment that guarantees equal protection of the laws to every person.

The Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated but it affirmed that the 'separate but equal doctrine' was not applying as segregated schools were 'inherently unequal".

The ruling of this case raised awareness about racial segregation in the United States and gave way to the civil right movement.