In 1951, thirteen Topeka parents (Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, and Lucinda Todd) filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of their 20 children against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas, in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools under an 1879 Kansas law that allowed, but did not require, districts to maintain separate elementary schools for black and white students in 12 communities with populations of more than 15,000. The lawsuit called on the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. Oliver Brown, the named plaintiff, was an African-American, welder, and father of Linda Carol Brown, a third-grader who had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to drive 1 mile to her segregated school (Monroe Elementary), while a white school was seven blocks from her home. Brown was classified as an appointed plaintiff because the NAACP believed his application would be better accepted by Supreme Court justices. Other parents got involved through the NAACP. They were instructed in the fall of 1951 to try to enroll their children in the schools closest to the neighborhood, and they were denied enrollment and sent back to segregated schools. Quote Plessy v. Ferguson ruled in the District Court in favour of the Board of Education. The three-judge panel found that segregation in public education negatively affected black children, but refused to grant redress on the grounds that Topeka`s black and white schools were essentially the same in terms of buildings, transportation, curricula, and teachers` academic qualifications. The Supreme Court first heard arguments in December 1952, but due to the controversial nature of the case and the expected resistance from the Southern states, no decision was made. The justices requested that the case be reheard in the fall of 1953, paying particular attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment`s equality clause prohibits the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks.
For the respondent: Topeka`s lawyers argued that the separate schools for non-whites at Topeka were equal in all respects and fully agreed with Plessy v. Ferguson. The buildings, curricula offered, and quality of teachers were quite comparable, and because some federal funds for Native Americans applied only to non-white schools, some programs for minority children were actually better than those offered in white schools. They pointed to Plessy`s decision to support segregation, arguing that they had created “equal facilities” in good faith, even though the races were separated. In addition, they argued that racial discrimination does not harm children. One of the drawbacks of Brown I was that the decision itself contained no direction, procedure or safeguards to end segregation. To address this issue, the Supreme Court issued the decision in “Brown II,” which came a year after Brown I, but there weren`t many guidelines either, it only ordered states to end segregation “expeditiously.” The implications of the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson for education became clear three years after the decision.
In 1897, the Richmond County School Board in Georgia closed Georgia`s only African-American high school, although state law required school boards “to provide the same facilities for every race, including schools and all other matters related to education.” At that time, the school board offered two high schools for white children. It also provided sufficient funds to educate all white children in the region, while funding only half of African-American school-age children. The Supreme Court upheld the county`s decision. In Cumming v. School Board of Richmond County, GA, (1899), she held that African Americans must not only prove that a law or practice discriminated against them, but that it was passed because of “racial hostility.” Although the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) had been trying to combat segregation since the early 1900s, segregation laws were deeply embedded in the U.S. education system in the 1950s.