Brown V. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education

347 U.S. 483 (1954)

1. Facts

Black children were denied admission to public schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to the races. The white and black schools approached equality in terms of buildings, curricula, qualifications, and teacher salaries. This case was decided together with Briggs v. Elliott and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County.

2. Issues

Whether the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprive the minority children of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

3. Reasoning

The court began by assessing whether the attorneys for the plaintiffs were properly suggesting the relevance of the history of the Fourteenth Amendment. Their argument treated the practice of racial segregation in America prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment, and the details of its consideration in Congress and its ratification by the states. The Court adopted plaintiffs’ assertion that the “inconclusive” history of the Amendment was the result of the extreme positions of its proponents and opponents, and the nature of public education at that time. In the South, tax-supported public elementary and secondary education had not yet become established and the education of children was generally controlled by private groups. The formal education of Negro children was either forbidden by state law or withheld and they were, for the most part, illiterate. In the North, the education of Negro youth was “rudimentary,” and noncompulsory “ungraded schools” with abbreviated terms were common in rural areas.

Cases decided by the Supreme Court shortly after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, interpreted the Amendment to prohibit all state-imposed discrimination against the Negro race. Moreover, the “separate but equal” doctrine approved in Plessy v....