The Long Road to Brown - Essay Example

The case started in 1951 when the thirteen parents of the town with the assistance and representation by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) started a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Kansas over the racial segregation in the schools arguing that separate facilities were inherently unequal and the segregation itself had a negative effects on the education of African American children (Cozzens, “Brown v. Board of Education”). After the decision of the lower court was announced, the Browns and NAACP decided to appeal to the Supreme Court where the key representative and actual winner of the case was Thurgood Marshall.

The case challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine, established by the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). According to the concept of the doctrine separate public facilities of equal quality did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution which provided for the equal protection of the laws to all citizens of the US. One of the apprehension was that because of the precedent, the court would tend to rule in favor of the Board of Education (Cozzens). When the case of Brown v. . The protest demanded the adequate facilities for black Moton school which were extremely unequal in comparison with white Farmville school.

The strike was supported by NAACP that urged the students and their parents to demand the desegregation in the court (“Student Strike at Moton High”). Starting from 1930s NAACP were seeking to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine by applying the strategy to bring the topic of injustice to the lower courts and then appeal the cases to the Supreme Court. In the particular case NAACP argued that the segregated education was bringing the message of inferiority which could discourage the Black children to study.

Those who wanted to keep the status-quo were arguing that since the segregation was inherent element of the way of life in those places, the segregated education should have been maintained because it prepared Black children to face the segregation further in their lives (“NAACP builds the case”). The Brown decision followed by the negative reaction in the South. In several states there were records of violence. In Virginia the Senator Harry Byrd launched the ‘Massive Resistance’ campaign against the school integration.

This campaign gained the support of more than 100 schools on the South. On the community level the reaction took the form of the White Citizens Council in order to preserve the ‘Southern way of life’ applying various methods from public condemnation to legislative lobbying. The importance of the question over how black students would be admitted to schools lied in the quality education for Black children. The integration was a means that guaranteed the proper funding and facilities to all children regardless their race.

The better education would obviously put an end to