Brown v the board of education - Research Paper Example

In the middle of the twentieth century,the struggle for racial equality in the United States was reaching a boiling point.Since the end of slavery,African-Americans had been fighting for the same rights and privileges enjoyed by white Americans. By the 1950s, civil rights activists were gaining ground in efforts to desegregate American society. One of the areas in which segregation was a major problem was education. Black students were not allowed to attend school with white students, and their education suffered because of it.

In 1896, the United States Supreme Court heard the case Plessy v. Ferguson, and ruled that racial segregation was not illegal, so long as segregated facilities were "separate but equal."1 In 1954, the case Brown v. Board of Education challenged this ruling and led to its repudiation. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that paved the way for integration and significantly impacted the civil rights movement. The case was brought to the Supreme Court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund under the leadership of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

It was actually five cases that were heard under the name Brown v. Board of Education, after Oliver Brown, who was the lead of almost 200 plaintiffs.2 The unanimous ruling in Brown stated that “separate but equal” schools and facilities were in fact “inherently unequal. to cope with ordinary expressions of prejudice by regarding the prejudiced person as evil or misguided; but he cannot readily cope with symbols of authority, the full force of the authority of the State—the school or the school board, in this instance—in the same manner.

5 These feelings of inferiority were reinforced by the entirety of the society in which black children lived. It damaged their self-esteem and subsequently their chances for success later in life. Segregated education was not only harmful to children’s education, but also to their psyches. The Brown decision meant that black students would be able to attend the schools of their choice. Black schools were not only inferior in principle, they were inferior in practice, as well. Black schools employed black teachers who, because of segregation, had not had access to good educations themselves.

They received fewer tax dollars due to the economic class of the neighborhoods in which the schools were located, _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Patterson, 49 2. Martin, Waldo E. Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (Boston, MA: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1998), 146 3. Ibid a system perpetuated by segregation. After the Brown decision, black students had access to an education equal to that of white students, resulting in subsequent generations of black teachers who could further equal education goals, in addition to black professionals who had benefitted from the educational opportunities Brown afforded them.

The decision was not a popular one in many segments of the American south. Students were threatened by whites who were unhappy with the decision, and in many cases were physically blocked from entering schools