Government Paper, Spring 2010
So I did what I promised myself I wouldn't- delayed starting on my government paper until it was due. I wrote most of this yesterday (Monday) and just now finished it. Hooray! :D Don't judge this paper too harshly... I wrote it all in about six hours, maybe less considering the breaks I took. I got the required five pages, and it's not completely horrible, so I'm expecting at least an 80 on this. *cracks knuckles at professor* Also, don't mind the cited sources. Bibliography sucks.
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Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court heard the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education. This case yielded not only the vote that would dismantle the legal basis for segregated schools and public facilities; it also provided a foundation for the modern civil rights movement. Brown was, without a doubt, a highly controversial ruling, and the first fifty years since it occured have been filled with turbulence and highly volatile opinions.
Brown had its beginnings in 1951 in the city of Topeka, Kansas. Oliver Brown was a black American living in Topeka, and he had an eight-year-old daughter named Linda. Due to segregation, she was required to attend Monroe Elementary, which was located a mile away from her home. There was, though, a school that was closer to the residence of the Browns- Sumner Elementary, a white school, which was located seven blocks from their home. According to Linda Thompson, née Brown, she and her family lived in an integrated neighborhood, and she had many playmates of different nationalities (Black/White & Brown). However, when Oliver Brown took his young daughter to Sumner Elementary to enroll her there, she was denied.
For Brown, the rise to the Supreme Court began in 1951 with a class action lawsuit that was sponsored by the NAACP and was filed against the Board of Education of Topeka in the US District Court for the District of Kansas. There were thirteen plaintiffs involved, one of which was Oliver Brown; these plaintiffs were parents fought on behalf of their children. In the fall of 1951, the local chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) advised each of these parents to attempt to enroll their children in the school that was closest to their residence, but each student was refused and directed to the nearest segregated school. As a result, the class action suit was filed. The intention of the suit was to force the school district to reverse its position on segregation; due to an 1879 Kansas law, school districts had the option to maintain segregated elementary schools. Ultimately, the District Court ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education, citing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which required “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. The ruling wasn’t completely against the plaintiffs- the District Court found that segregation did have an adverse effect on black children, but the court ruled in favor of the Board of Education on the grounds that black and white schools in Topeka were “substantially equal” with respect to buildings, transportation, curriculum and qualifications of teachers (U.S. District Court Opinion).
As a result of the failure of the plaintiffs to win in the District Court, the case was taken to the Supreme Court. There it was combined with four other cases: Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.). Brown challenged that segregation in schools was unconstitutional based on the fourteenth amendment, and that segregation violated the Equal Protection clause of said amendment, which said “no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”- essentially, that all persons within a state should be treated equally and fairly. Conversely, since Bolling v. Sharpe was filed in Washington D.C., it couldn’t use the fourteenth amendment as a foundation for its case since that amendment applies to the states and not to the District of Columbia. Thus, it used due process under the fifth amendment to circumvent the absence of the fourteenth amendment in D.C. Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that “...the concepts of equal protection and due process... are not mutually exclusive” and that while the equal protection clause defends against discrimination more so than due process, “...discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.” On the other hand, some scholars have contended that, since schools in D.C. were never required by Congress to be segregated, they were therefore illegal, and thus Bolling need never have been included in the Brown decision.
In the end, the Supreme Court voted unanimously in a 9-0 opinion in favor of the plaintiffs. The fact that there was no dissension in the final vote was seen as being vitally important by supporters of desegregation in that any dissenting opinions could be used by supporters of segregation as arguments in favor of segregation. The key to the Brown v. Board of Education can be summed up in one of Chief Justice Warren’s statements: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In making this ruling, the court effectively overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which had been in place since 1896. In the words of Justice Stephen Breyer, “May 17, 1954, was a great day in the history of [the Supreme Court]. Before May 17, the court read the 14th Amendment's words 'equal protection of the laws,' as if they protected only the members of the majority race. After May 17, it read those words as the framers who wrote them immediately after the Civil War meant them to be read, as offering the same protection to citizens of every race.” (qtd. in “50 Years After Brown”)
A year after Brown v. Board of Education, the court brought the case to the forefront again. In Brown I, the decision was made that separate facilities are inherently unequal, but there were no provisions made for desegregation. In Brown II, as the 1955 case came to be called, the court stated that desegregation should occur “with all deliberate speed”; the court also delegated the responsibility for this mandate to the district courts.
There are several cases related to Brown v. Board of Education, as it wasn’t the first attempt to eliminate school segregation; neither was the ruling the end of prejudice and racism, which caused further issues. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), “separate but equal” facilities were ruled as constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1883 that the fourteenth amendment applied only to the actions of the government, not private individuals. In the Plessy case, a man by the name of Homer Plessy, who was by far more white than black, chose to sit in a train car reserved for whites. In an act of civil disobedience, he refused to move to the ‘colored’ car, and was subsequently arrested and jailed. His case went from the local court, to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. He argument that his rights were denied under the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments was ruled against every time. In Brown, of course, the fourteenth amendment came to be viewed as applying to every person with a state, not just to the actions of the government. Another case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), established busing as a way to promote integration. After Brown, many states, particularly those in the South, were vehemently opposed to integration. They delayed the orders as long as possible, and used the term ‘all deliberate speed’ to do so. In Charlotte, North Carolina, where Swann originated, the school district had begun to desegregate. But due to the locations of where the blacks and whites lived, there wasn’t much integration happening. Eventually, a solution was proposed: busing. Buses would take the black students to the outskirts of Charlotte where more of the whites lived. Following that order, blacks in formerly all-white schools was anywhere from 2 to 36% of the population.
There have been many lasting impacts of Brown v. Board of Education. As stated previously, it overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and in so doing re-defined the fourteenth amendment as applying to all citizens. It was the “harbinger of the federal government’s return to the civil rights arena” (Milestone Documents); it also provided a substantial boost to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. There was definite resistance to the implementation of the orders of the Supreme Court- fourteen years are Brown, less than 20% of black students in the South attended integrated schools. In large part, busing was meant to resolve that resistance to change. Many whites protested strongly against desegregation and busing. In the years after Brown, the NAACP and the plaintiffs involved in the Brown case were targets of hostility.
There have also been long-term impacts of Brown. There continues to be legislation and court cases that reference or are directly connected to Brown. For example, in June 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky couldn’t take steps to bring students of different races together (Resegregation Now). Some people see Brown as a thing of the past, that is flawed and, while it should be remembered, it should be buried (Don’t Mourn). Others view Brown as one of the most important court cases in history, if not the most important, and that anything that challenges or tries to change Brown is an assault on history and civil rights.
As for my own opinion; I think that Brown v. Board of Education was very important in paving the way for the future civil rights movement. Who knows how long integration would have taken without Brown, or if it would have ever happened. It is possible that without Brown II occurring, integration would have happened. One can make the argument that more peaceable and longer-lasting harmony between races can happen if the barriers between them are removed and laws that force mixing are not applied. Brown I was definitely the right step, but in some ways, Brown II and Swann were not required. Full integration would’ve taken longer, but it might’ve been more peacefully done. But a counter-argument to that viewpoint would be the people that are very entrenched in their ways and dislike change- if there were no mandates compelling them to mix with other races, they could very well still be willfully segregating.
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case, and remains to this day an important piece of American history; not only for what it did in the 1950s and 1960s, but for its ongoing legacy.
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Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court heard the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education. This case yielded not only the vote that would dismantle the legal basis for segregated schools and public facilities; it also provided a foundation for the modern civil rights movement. Brown was, without a doubt, a highly controversial ruling, and the first fifty years since it occured have been filled with turbulence and highly volatile opinions.
Brown had its beginnings in 1951 in the city of Topeka, Kansas. Oliver Brown was a black American living in Topeka, and he had an eight-year-old daughter named Linda. Due to segregation, she was required to attend Monroe Elementary, which was located a mile away from her home. There was, though, a school that was closer to the residence of the Browns- Sumner Elementary, a white school, which was located seven blocks from their home. According to Linda Thompson, née Brown, she and her family lived in an integrated neighborhood, and she had many playmates of different nationalities (Black/White & Brown). However, when Oliver Brown took his young daughter to Sumner Elementary to enroll her there, she was denied.
For Brown, the rise to the Supreme Court began in 1951 with a class action lawsuit that was sponsored by the NAACP and was filed against the Board of Education of Topeka in the US District Court for the District of Kansas. There were thirteen plaintiffs involved, one of which was Oliver Brown; these plaintiffs were parents fought on behalf of their children. In the fall of 1951, the local chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) advised each of these parents to attempt to enroll their children in the school that was closest to their residence, but each student was refused and directed to the nearest segregated school. As a result, the class action suit was filed. The intention of the suit was to force the school district to reverse its position on segregation; due to an 1879 Kansas law, school districts had the option to maintain segregated elementary schools. Ultimately, the District Court ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education, citing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which required “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. The ruling wasn’t completely against the plaintiffs- the District Court found that segregation did have an adverse effect on black children, but the court ruled in favor of the Board of Education on the grounds that black and white schools in Topeka were “substantially equal” with respect to buildings, transportation, curriculum and qualifications of teachers (U.S. District Court Opinion).
As a result of the failure of the plaintiffs to win in the District Court, the case was taken to the Supreme Court. There it was combined with four other cases: Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.). Brown challenged that segregation in schools was unconstitutional based on the fourteenth amendment, and that segregation violated the Equal Protection clause of said amendment, which said “no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”- essentially, that all persons within a state should be treated equally and fairly. Conversely, since Bolling v. Sharpe was filed in Washington D.C., it couldn’t use the fourteenth amendment as a foundation for its case since that amendment applies to the states and not to the District of Columbia. Thus, it used due process under the fifth amendment to circumvent the absence of the fourteenth amendment in D.C. Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that “...the concepts of equal protection and due process... are not mutually exclusive” and that while the equal protection clause defends against discrimination more so than due process, “...discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.” On the other hand, some scholars have contended that, since schools in D.C. were never required by Congress to be segregated, they were therefore illegal, and thus Bolling need never have been included in the Brown decision.
In the end, the Supreme Court voted unanimously in a 9-0 opinion in favor of the plaintiffs. The fact that there was no dissension in the final vote was seen as being vitally important by supporters of desegregation in that any dissenting opinions could be used by supporters of segregation as arguments in favor of segregation. The key to the Brown v. Board of Education can be summed up in one of Chief Justice Warren’s statements: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In making this ruling, the court effectively overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which had been in place since 1896. In the words of Justice Stephen Breyer, “May 17, 1954, was a great day in the history of [the Supreme Court]. Before May 17, the court read the 14th Amendment's words 'equal protection of the laws,' as if they protected only the members of the majority race. After May 17, it read those words as the framers who wrote them immediately after the Civil War meant them to be read, as offering the same protection to citizens of every race.” (qtd. in “50 Years After Brown”)
A year after Brown v. Board of Education, the court brought the case to the forefront again. In Brown I, the decision was made that separate facilities are inherently unequal, but there were no provisions made for desegregation. In Brown II, as the 1955 case came to be called, the court stated that desegregation should occur “with all deliberate speed”; the court also delegated the responsibility for this mandate to the district courts.
There are several cases related to Brown v. Board of Education, as it wasn’t the first attempt to eliminate school segregation; neither was the ruling the end of prejudice and racism, which caused further issues. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), “separate but equal” facilities were ruled as constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1883 that the fourteenth amendment applied only to the actions of the government, not private individuals. In the Plessy case, a man by the name of Homer Plessy, who was by far more white than black, chose to sit in a train car reserved for whites. In an act of civil disobedience, he refused to move to the ‘colored’ car, and was subsequently arrested and jailed. His case went from the local court, to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. He argument that his rights were denied under the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments was ruled against every time. In Brown, of course, the fourteenth amendment came to be viewed as applying to every person with a state, not just to the actions of the government. Another case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), established busing as a way to promote integration. After Brown, many states, particularly those in the South, were vehemently opposed to integration. They delayed the orders as long as possible, and used the term ‘all deliberate speed’ to do so. In Charlotte, North Carolina, where Swann originated, the school district had begun to desegregate. But due to the locations of where the blacks and whites lived, there wasn’t much integration happening. Eventually, a solution was proposed: busing. Buses would take the black students to the outskirts of Charlotte where more of the whites lived. Following that order, blacks in formerly all-white schools was anywhere from 2 to 36% of the population.
There have been many lasting impacts of Brown v. Board of Education. As stated previously, it overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and in so doing re-defined the fourteenth amendment as applying to all citizens. It was the “harbinger of the federal government’s return to the civil rights arena” (Milestone Documents); it also provided a substantial boost to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. There was definite resistance to the implementation of the orders of the Supreme Court- fourteen years are Brown, less than 20% of black students in the South attended integrated schools. In large part, busing was meant to resolve that resistance to change. Many whites protested strongly against desegregation and busing. In the years after Brown, the NAACP and the plaintiffs involved in the Brown case were targets of hostility.
There have also been long-term impacts of Brown. There continues to be legislation and court cases that reference or are directly connected to Brown. For example, in June 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky couldn’t take steps to bring students of different races together (Resegregation Now). Some people see Brown as a thing of the past, that is flawed and, while it should be remembered, it should be buried (Don’t Mourn). Others view Brown as one of the most important court cases in history, if not the most important, and that anything that challenges or tries to change Brown is an assault on history and civil rights.
As for my own opinion; I think that Brown v. Board of Education was very important in paving the way for the future civil rights movement. Who knows how long integration would have taken without Brown, or if it would have ever happened. It is possible that without Brown II occurring, integration would have happened. One can make the argument that more peaceable and longer-lasting harmony between races can happen if the barriers between them are removed and laws that force mixing are not applied. Brown I was definitely the right step, but in some ways, Brown II and Swann were not required. Full integration would’ve taken longer, but it might’ve been more peacefully done. But a counter-argument to that viewpoint would be the people that are very entrenched in their ways and dislike change- if there were no mandates compelling them to mix with other races, they could very well still be willfully segregating.
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case, and remains to this day an important piece of American history; not only for what it did in the 1950s and 1960s, but for its ongoing legacy.