LAD#30 - Brown v. Board of Education.

In Topeka, Kansas, a black 3rd grader named Linda Brown dared to challenge the racial segregation that was the norm in public schools across the nation in the 1950's. Linda had to walk one mile each day to go to an inferior all black school even though there was a white elementary school only seven blocks away. The Family went to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for help. The NAACP argued to the District Court that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites, and therefore the schools were inherently unequal. Yet the board of education defended segregation by arguing that segregation in schools prepared the black children for the segregation they would face in their later life. The Judges ruled that, "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children... A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn." But because of the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, the court felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education. Brown and the NAACP along with other similar cases in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware appealed to the Supreme Court a couple months later. Finally, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that "the doctrine of "separate but equal" had no place in the field of public education and deprived the the plaintiff and others like them of equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment." Thus requiring the desegregation of schools across America. Though Brown v. Board of Education did not abolish segregation in other public places, it did take one giant step with the complete desegregation of public schools.