LAD/Blog #39: Brown v. Board of Education
LAD/Blog #39: Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education was a Supreme Court case in 1954 where it was unanimously ruled that the segregation of children in public schools by race was unconstitutional. It established that the “separate but equal” idea from Plessy v. Ferguson wasn’t actually equal. Oliver Brown filed a suit against the Board of Education in Topeka after his daughter Linda Brown was denied access to the all-white elementary schools near them. He claimed that the schools were not equal, and segregation violated the 14th Amendment which says that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The U.S. District Court in Kansas agreed that there were detrimental effects of segregation but upheld the idea of “separate but equal.” However, when the case made it to the Supreme Court in 1952 along with four other school segregation cases, the court combined them and Chief Justice Earl Warren obtained a unanimous verdi