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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown, and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the south lasted into the 1960s.
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by race, which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later.
Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003.
Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 87 A.2d 862, aff'd, 91 A.2d 137, was a case decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1952 and affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. Gebhart was one of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court which found unconstitutional racial segregation in United States public schools.
Homer Adolph Plessy was an American shoemaker and activist, who was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. He staged an act of civil disobedience to challenge one of Louisiana's racial segregation laws and bring a test case to force the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation laws. The Court decided against Plessy. The resulting "separate but equal" legal doctrine determined that state-mandated segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as the facilities provided for both black and white people were putatively "equal". The legal precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson lasted into the mid-20th century, until a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions concerning segregation, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956), was a case heard before a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on Montgomery and Alabama state bus segregation laws. The panel consisted of Middle District of Alabama Judge Frank Minis Johnson, Northern District of Alabama Judge Seybourn Harris Lynne, and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Rives. The main plaintiffs in the case were Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith. Jeanetta Reese had originally been a plaintiff in the case, but intimidation by segregationists caused her to withdraw in February. She falsely claimed she had not agreed to the lawsuit, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to disbar Fred Gray for supposedly improperly representing her.
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that states which provided a school to white students had to provide in-state education to Black students as well. States could satisfy this requirement by allowing Black and white students to attend the same school or creating a second school for Black students.
The McDonogh Three is a nickname for three African American students who desegregated McDonogh 19 Elementary School, in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. Even though school segregation had been illegal since the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, no states in the American Deep South had taken action to integrate their schools.
John Howard Ferguson was an American lawyer and judge from Louisiana, most famous as the defendant in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
The Separate Car Act was a law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1890 which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for Blacks and Whites. An unsuccessful challenge to this law culminated in the United States Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation.
Zelma Henderson was the last surviving plaintiff in the 1954 landmark federal school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. The case outlawed segregation nationwide in all of the United States' public schools. The ruling served as a harbinger of the American Civil Rights Movement and paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in all public facilities.
Robert Morris was one of the first African-American attorneys in the United States, and was called "the first really successful colored lawyer in America."
Charles Erasmus Fenner was a Louisiana lawyer who captained a battery in the American Civil War, and later served as a justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from April 5, 1880, to September 1, 1893. During his service on the court, he hosted a dying Jefferson Davis in his home, and wrote the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson holding that "separate but equal" accommodations could be provided for whites and non-whites, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
George W. McLaurin was an American professor, and the first African-American to attend the University of Oklahoma. He was the successful plaintiff in an important civil rights case against the university, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950).
Linda Carol Brown was an American campaigner for equality in education. As a school-girl in 1954, Brown became the center of the landmark United States civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Brown was in third grade at the time, and sought to enroll at Sumner School in Topeka, Kansas. Her admission was denied based on her race. Her lawsuit against segregation in elementary schools was ultimately successful and the resulting Supreme Court precedent overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine which had been previously established in Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown became an educator and civil rights advocate.
Benjamin F. Roberts was an African-American printer, writer, activist and abolitionist in Boston, Massachusetts, whose famous case on behalf of his daughter, Sarah Roberts v. Boston, resulted in a verdict that laid the foundation for "separate but equal", but was also cited in the landmark 1954 case Brown vs. Board of Education. Despite losing his case seeking access to schools near his home for his 5-year-old daughter at the Massachusetts Supreme Court, he was successful in 1855 bringing the issue to the state legislature.
Transport and bus boycotts in the United States where protests against the racial segregation of transport services before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed forms of discrimination.
Ward v. Flood 48 Cal. 49–52 (1874) was the first school segregation case before the California Supreme Court, which established the principle of "separate but equal" schools in California law, 22 years before the United States Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. Following Ward v. Flood, litigation over racial segregation in schools in California continued for over a century.
References
- ↑ "Sarah C. Roberts – The West End Museum". February 11, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
- ↑ Sumner, Charles, Argument Against the Constitutionality of Separate Colored Schools, 1849.
- ↑ Roberts v. City of Boston 5 Cush. (Mass.) 198 (1850).
- ↑ Massachusetts Chapter 256, Desegregating Public Schools, 1855.