LAD #30: Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas
In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was normal across America, especially due to the previous case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed separate, but equal schools between the races. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. A black third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, named Linda Brown, had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard in order to get to her black elementary school, while a white elementary was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. The NAACP brought this to court in the favor of Linda Brown, and the Board of Education was the defense. The Board of Education's defense was that segregated schools prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood, and they dropped names such as Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver, in saying that they succeeded after going to segregated schools as children. In the end, the Supreme Court removed the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education, and required the desegregation of public education. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation or require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare the mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional. This was a step in the direction of public schools around the country, but it proved that it was going to be a long battle in the future.