Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Term Analysis

A landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision was handed down by Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1954. The plaintiff, Topeka resident Oliver Brown, filed a class-action suit against the Topeka Board of Education after his daughter, Linda, was denied entry to the city’s all-white elementary schools. The case was first brought before the Supreme Court in 1952. At that time, the Court, led by Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, was divided over school segregation but ultimately declared that Topeka’s segregation laws should stand. Vinson died in 1953 and President Eisenhower replaced him with California governor Earl Warren. Warren secured a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board, declaring that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, as it was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. Brown v. Board overturned the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson which declared that public services ought to be “separate but equal.” The Supreme Court’s decision on Brown v. Board sided with the argument that the requirement of separate services and facilities for people of color indicated inequality. In 1955, the Court passed down the Brown v. Board of Education II decision, which demanded that lower courts and school boards proceed with integration “with all deliberate speed.”