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Brown v. Board of Education
Introduction
Brown v. Board of Education is a U.S Supreme Court case whereby the court decided
that the state laws enacting segregate public schools for white and black students were
unconstitutional. The declaration invalidated the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling which held that
separate public schools were constitutional as long as the facilities in the white and black
institutions were equal to each other. Apparently, the case was a combination of five cases
emerging in different states regarding separation in public schools based on race. In every case,
some public schools had denied admittance to African-American minors by laws permitting
segregation of public education by race. The unanimous decision of the Warren Court on 17th
May 1954 affirmed that educational facilities that were separate were inherently unequal.
Consequently, the law abiding state of affairs racial segregation was regarded an infringement of
the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause of the U.S Constitution. Given this, this
paper will discuss the Brown v. Board of Education court case by analyzing the events that led to
the case, the court hearing, and ruling as well as the impact of the case on American education.
Arguably, the Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 was a result of the tireless effort of NAACP
towards eradication of segregation, and it is one of the most crucial decisions ever made by the
Supreme Court of the United States. Notably, the ruling gave room for integration and was a
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significant success of the Civil Rights Movement as well as an exemplary model for various
futures strategic or rather impact litigation cases.
What led to the Case
For nearly sixty years prior to the Brown vs. Board of Education case, race relations in
America had substantially been dominated by racial segregation. As earlier stated, the policy
had been endorsed by the Plessy vs. Ferguson U. S Supreme Court case which affirmed that it
was constitutional to have separate but equal schools. This case later referred as the Brown v,
Board of Education was the title accorded to a consolidation of five different case appeals
handled by the Supreme Court regarding the public schools’ segregation issue in Virginia,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Kansas, and South Carolina. The cases were Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, Gebhart v. Ethel, Briggs v. Elliot, Boiling v. Sharpe and Davis v. Board of
