Question

Next, read about the Brown v. Board of Education case. In your own words, write a half-page summary discussing the background of the case and the Supreme Court ruling.

Answer 1

Answers will vary but should include the following concepts:

Schools were racially segregated until the Brown ruling due to the “separate but equal clause” upheld by the Plessy ruling.

During the 1950s, civil rights groups began to challenge this notion.

NAACP lawyers began class action lawsuits in favor of black schoolchildren.

A class action suit in Topeka, Kansas, was brought by school board representative Oliver Brown, a parent of a child denied access to Topeka’s white school.

Brown claimed the segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the separate schools were in fact not equal.

The Supreme Court heard the case, with Thurgood Marshall serving as chief counsel for the plaintiffs.

Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that segregation in public schools did in fact violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court’s ruling stated that racial segregation in schools is “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional.

The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision enacted by the US Supreme Court in 1954. It declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. It stated that the "separate but equal" lemma, applied in segregated schools, did not guarantee the equality of rights that should be granted to all US citizens, without discrimination in terms of race, according to the provisions included in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Segregation had been considered constitutional under the lemma "separate but equal" after the Flessy vs. Ferguson case in 1896. The decision enacted by the US Supreme Court stated that the equality of rights abovementioned was secured for every US kid, as long as the educational facilities were equal in terms of quality, no matter whether white and black children were separated or not.

Fortunately, the decision subsequently reached in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 overturned the previous convictions and decisions of the Supreme Court.