Brown v. Board of Education
Taylor Bowen
1954
Brown v. Board of Education is a landmark Supreme Court case of the 20th century and a key moment of the Civil Rights Movement.
Backlash
This Supreme Court ruling resulted in backlash mainly from white southerners. Some districts refused to desegrate while some people turned violent.
Separate was never equal
All white schools were well kept while African American schools were not. African American schools had outdated textbooks and school supplies.
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was one of the NAACP lawyers that fought on behalf of African American school children. He would later be the first African American man to become a Supreme Court justice.
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education unanimously ruled that segregating schools violated the fourteenth amendment under the Equal Protection Clause. Segregating of schools became legal by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which ruled that schools could be "separate but equal" but this was never the case.
"no state shall make or enforce any law which shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Although segregation of schools still occurred in the south this case marked the beginning of racial equality.