LAD #37: Brown vs Board of Education

In 1951 Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas wished to join a white elementary school because it closer to her home and because the black school had an inferior education. Her father asked for the assistance of the NAACP and went to court over the issue. The Board of Education argued that segregated schools offered an education of future segregation that blacks would have in the South and also many blacks overcame odds to become successful. Brown argued that "separate but equal" could never truly be enforced as the minority would always feel inferior, especially in education. Due to the Plessy v Ferguson precedent, the district courts felt the need to uphold the law and side with the Board, also the injunction of many parents forced their hand and an appeal was made to the Supreme Court. Combined with cases from several other states the Supreme Court took two sets of arguments to come to a decision that Justice Earl Warren gave stating that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place", and that the inferiority feeling stemming from this segregation was unavoidable. As a result, Plessy v Ferguson was destroyed in the process opening up the governmental hole for the Civil Rights Movement. Nevertheless, full integration of schools was a slow and painful process to come.