Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - History Other Brown vs Borad of Education Brown vs Borad of Education On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas . State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment states; “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.” This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s. The brown v. board of Education decision solved one problem of many with the treatment of blacks in the white society but The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark court case of 1954 in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared that it was unconstitutional to create separate schools for children on the basis of race. The Brown ruling ranks as one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century. At the time of the decision, seventeen southern states and the District of Columbia required that all public schools be racially segregated. A few northern and western states, including Kansas, left the issue of segregation up to individual school districts. While most schools in Kansas were integrated in 1954, those in Topeka were not. Racial segregation in Southern public schools dates to the 1860s. Before the American Civil War began in 1861, a number of northern states also allowed or required segregated schools. However, throughout the 19th century more than ninety five percent of all blacks lived in the South, so segregation there affected an overwhelming majority of America's black population. After the Civil War ended in 1865, and especially after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the South continued to segregate its schools and other facilities. In the influential case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Supreme Court upheld the practice of segregation as long as the separate facilities were "equal." By 1900, the South was an entirely segregated society. In 1909 blacks and whites, led by W. E. B. DuBois and Arthur and Joe Spingarn, formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization dedicated to fighting for racial equality and ending segregation. The NAACP challenged segregation through its Legal Defense and Education Fund. From 1936 to 1950 the organization won a number of cases leading to the desegregation of law schools and other professional schools at segregated universities in Mississippi, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Texas. The NAACP also had some success in forcing states to equalize public school funding and to pay teachers in black schools at the same rate as those in white schools. But throughout the South, public education for blacks remained terribly inadequate. Brown v. Board of Education developed from several court cases involving school segregation. One of these cases, based in Clarendon County, South Carolina, illustrated the unfairness of segregation. In the 1949-1950 school year the average annual expenditure for white students in Clarendon County totaled one hundred seventy nine dollars, but for blacks it was only forty-three dollars. The county's six thousand five hundred thirty one black students attended school in sixty-one buildings valued at $194,575. Many of the black schools lacked indoor plumbing or heating. The 2375 white students in the county attended school in twelve buildings worth $673,850. These buildings had far superior facilities. Teachers in the black schools received, on average, salaries that were one-third less than teachers in the white schools. In addition, the county provided free school buses for whites but failed to provide them for blacks. These circumstances led blacks in Clarendon County to sue to create equal schools. In the case, Briggs v. Elliott (1950), the United States district court in South Carolina ordered equal funding of black schools but refused to mandate racial integration of the schools. Meanwhile, in Delaware, Virginia, Kansas, and the District of Columbia, other cases emerged in the early 1950s that challenged the legality of racially segregated schools. These cases were consolidated into one case that became known as Brown v. Board of Education, named after the lead plaintiff in the Kansas case, Oliver Brown. Brown filed the suit against the Topeka Board of Education on behalf of his daughter, Linda Brown. At age seven, Linda Brown had to travel one hour and twenty minutes each morning to her segregated school for black children. If her bus was on time, it dropped her off at school a half hour before the school opened. Her bus stop was six blocks from her home, across a hazardous railroad yard, and her school was twenty-one blocks from her home. Linda Brown's white friends attended a local school only seven blocks from her home. They did not have to ride a bus or fact dangerous crossings to reach their school. Oliver Brown argued that he wanted the same conditions for his daughter. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Brown case in 1952, but the justices did not decide the case that year. Political divisions on the court ran deep, and the weak leadership of Chief Justice Frederick Moore Vinson made a decisive ruling unlikely. The court scheduled reargument in case for 1953, but Vinson died before arguments began. His replacement, former California governor Earl Warren, was a skilled politician who brought renewed authority to the court. Moreover, Warren believed that segregation was fundamentally wrong. He successfully persuaded all of the other eight justices to support a single opinion to end segregation. Warren himself wrote the statement of the court's decision, a document known as the opinion of the court. Warren's opinion explained the context of the law in regards to the case, and detailed the reasons why the court reached its judgment. It was his first major judicial opinion since joining the court that year. The question before the court was simple: "Was segregated education unconstitutional?" In the first half of his opinion, Warren did not answer that question, and he gave no hint of the decision the court would make. Reading the opinion in a courtroom packed with news reporters, he simply explained the facts of the cases before him and the history of the American doctrine of "separate but equal." Warren acknowledged that the history of the law regarding segregation was inconclusive, particularly as it was addressed in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, requires that every state give equal protection under the law to all persons, without regard to race. Warren reviewed the histories of the 14th Amendment, public education, and segregation. Then, speaking for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Warren concluded, "In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation." Warren stressed the importance of education to a democratic society, claiming that education is "perhaps the most important function of state and local governments." He emphasized, "It is the very foundation of good citizenship." Warren then restated the original question before the court and provided an answer: "Does segregation of children in the public schools solely on the basis of race . . . deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunity?" His answer: "We believe that it does." Warren supported his analysis with references to research performed by sociologists and psychologists on the damage to children caused by mandatory segregation. Finally, Warren concluded by saying that "in the field of education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. "This ringing statement was followed by a single paragraph of carefully written conciliatory language. Warren declared that segregation was unconstitutional, but that the decision would have no immediate effect on the parties involved. Instead, the court would hear the reargument of the case the following year to consider how to implement its decision. In April 1955 the court heard thirteen hours of arguments over four days on how to end segregation in the public schools. Ultimately, in what is popularly known as Brown II (1955), the Supreme Court turned the implementation of desegregation over to the federal district courts in the South. The district courts were ordered to desegregate schools with "all deliberate speed," an ambiguous phrase that allowed many Southern judges to avoid desegregation for years. Linda Brown did not attend an integrated school until 1955, when she had reached junior high school. None of the children of the 20 plaintiffs in the Clarendon County case ever attended integrated schools. Nevertheless, Brown helped launch the modern civil rights movement and led to other court decisions that struck down all forms of legalized racial discrimination. The Topeka Board of Education did not wait for the Court to rule before amalgamating its black and white elementary schools. Before the Brown case, Kansas law had provided for the segregation of elementary schools in communities with populations larger than 15,000. Its junior and senior high schools never had been segregated. But over much of the nation, the task would prove more difficult. That's one reason why the Supreme Court, in a lesser-known follow-up decision in 1955, issued an implementation ruling ordering a "prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance" and the achievement of school integration "with all deliberate speed." This case has made several changes in the history of African- Americans but some problems still exist. Race hatred and violence have not been completely eradicated since the Brown decision. Indeed, another type of segregation can still be seen in many schools and neighborhoods. It is known as "de facto" segregation, and it results from prejudices and stereotypes that separate our communities. Nevertheless, it was the Court’s mandate in Brown v. Board of Education that forced Americans to face each other and determine if they were willing to live up to the ideals that are written in the Constitution. Today, in the nearly 40 years since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka formally desegregated public schools, African-American youth have made enormous progress in high school completion, in better test scores, in greater college enrollment, in obtaining college degrees and in careers. On the other hand, the negative statistics tend to overlook the individual accomplishments of those who found their way around the barriers and through the closed doors. However, there are other facts, which we simply cannot avoid. First, while African-American educational attainment has improved, the amount of education needed to have a real chance in life has grown even more. Second, general trends do not reflect how really awful educational conditions are in some schools, in some regions, and for some groups, including African-Americans in urban areas. And third, the gap between white and African-American achievement remains substantial. The minority population of these United States is growing, and in many geographic areas, the term minority has lost its statistical meaning. “Around the year 2020, one-third of our nation will be minority, including Asian Americans. (Whitman, 86)” By the last quarter of the 21st century, as a result of immigration and differing birth rates, minorities may have become the majority. This nation is not preparing to meet this change. In our schools, the future is already upon us. In our country, between 1968 and 1986, the number of white school children fell by sixteen percent, the number of black children increased by five percent, and the number of Hispanic children increased by one hundred percent. While there has been some success in school desegregation over the last twenty-five years, in general segregation has not decreased significantly since 1970. In fact, in some areas it has gotten worse. Today, 22 or 23 of the 25 largest central-city school districts in this nation are predominantly minority. Perhaps desegregation is not the key. Possibly there are other, more important factors on which we should focus if we are ever to provide a quality education for all our children. Maybe the push to raise test scores, to institute competency tests, and to increase teacher standards without addressing root causes of the problems has hurt more than it has helped. African-Americans have long understood that education, above all, is the way to freedom and opportunity. For centuries, we have fought for an educational system that responds to the needs of our children. Without some very definite change in the way we view our interdependence on each other, perhaps the need for this discussion will be with us in the year 2033, 40 years from now. In 1999, many public schools across the nation resembled the school districts of the 50's and 60's. White flight to the suburbs has created its own separate and legal institution. Blacks and minorities are concentrated in inner cities. Busing has not proven to be an effective tool in achieving integration in today's public schools. Is it wrong? What effect does this have on our present children? Are they left with an inferiority complex because they are in school with children who only look like themselves? What effect will this have on our nation? What economic and political ramifications will they suffer? Whether or not "separate but equal" is legal, is not a question that the courts can really answer. We see that it is achieved when public citizens express their right to create neighborhoods where they are the majority or when they invest their dollars in private school education. How do we prepare our children in a separate, equal, legal or otherwise created segregated school system? How do we ensure that our children are not left out at the table of opportunity? Perhaps the concentration should be on the quality and not the color of education. I do not suggest that was the feeling present during 1954. I believe the Brown's and the other plaintiffs were more concern that their children were in an unhealthy and in a less than challenging environment due to allocation of resources. Whether or not Black children received the same quality of education as their white counterparts in the same school is debatable. A recent school system audit in Dekalb County Georgia revealed large disparities in allocation of resources. The auditors found that forty percent of its schools demonstrated little evidence of active learning; maintenance and safety were inadequate, and that these disparities existed mainly due to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. If separate schools exist, and funds are not spent responsibly across the board, then Black parents must ensure that tax dollars are funneled and spent responsibly in our schools. Blacks must seriously hold school officials, board members, teachers and themselves accountable to ensure that Black children will have the means to succeed later in life. Bibliography: Bibliography Blaustein, P. Albert. Civil Rights: Public Schools Cities in the North and West. Camden And Environs, 1963. Clift, A. Virgil. ed. Negro Education In America. Harper & Brothers, 1962. Franklin, P. Vincent. ed. New Perspectives on Black Educational History. Boston: Mass., 1978. Humphrey, H. Hubert. ed. Desegregation: Documents and Commentaries. New York, 1964. Lagemann, Ellen. ed. Brown v. Board of Education: The Challenge for Today’s Schools. Teachers College Press, 1996. Martin, E. Waldo. Brown v. Board of Education. Boston: New York, 1998. Sarratt, Reed. The Ordeal of Desegregation: The First Decade. Harper & Row Publishers, 1966. West, H. Earle. The Black American and Education. Charles Merrill Publishing Company, 1972. Whitman, Mark. ed. Removing A Badge Of Slavery: The Record of Brown v. Board of Education. Princeton & New York, 1993. Wilkinson, Harvie. From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954-1978. New York: Oxford UP, 1979. Word Count: 2601
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