Question

Which statement(s) below did Thurgood Marshall use to argue against segregation of public schools in Brown v. Board of Education?
Check all of the boxes that apply.

It denied African Americans equal protection of the law.

It violated the Thirteenth Amendment.

It made African American children feel inferior.

It created “separate but equal” facilities.

Answer 1

The correct answers are the following:

• It denied African Americans equal protection of the law.
• It made African American children feel inferior.

Brown v. Board of Education was a case that led to the enactment of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court in 1954.  

The case was about the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" lemma that was accepted in a former decision enacted by the US Supreme Court in 1896 in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Such decision allowed the proliferation of segregated schools under the belief that, if facilities were equal in quality, such education system was not violating the equality of rights provision that had been guaranteed for all US citizens by the Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution.  

Brown v. Board of Education overturned the abovementioned previous Supreme Court decision and declared segregation unconstitutional, claming that, in practice, it actually made black students feel inferior. The court published a deadline and all schools nationwide had to abolish such practice and to adopt racial integration.

Answer 2

Correct statements to check:

It denied African Americans equal protection of the law.

It made African American children feel inferior.

Historical context:

Thurgood Marshall argued on behalf of the plaintiffs (black students seeking access to all-white schools) when the cases grouped under Brown v. Board of Education were brought before the Supreme Court in 1952-1953. At the time, Thurgood Marshall was the head of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  

The decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (decided 1954), agreed with the arguments made by Thurgood Marshall. The Court ruled that all Americans are entitled to the same civil liberties and equal protections in regard to access to education. Until that decision, it was legal to segregate schools according to race, so that black students could not attend the same schools as white students.  An older Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), had said that separate, segregated public facilities were acceptable as long as the facilities offered were equal in quality.  In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that standard was challenged and defeated.  Segregation was shown to create inequality and to cause psychological harm to black children.  The Court's decision included this statement:  "To separate them [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."

The Court's ruling affirmed that the 14th Amendment applies to all rights and privileges of citizens, including access to  education.  Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads as follows:

• All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.