Seventy years ago Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine advanced in an 1896 case. In the Brown case, the opponents of school segregation argued that separate was inherently unequal in our school system.
Public schools were desegregated. But not with “all deliberate speed.” In some areas, it would take decades.
What we now think of as Brown v. Board of Education was actually a combination of five cases that had been working their way through various Federal district courts.
Summerton, South Carolina
Filed: March 16, 1948
The average school district in South Carolina spent $221 per white student but only $45 per Black student. Many Black schools weren’t provided electricity, running water, libraries or buses.
A local minister circulated a petition asking the school board to use some of its 30 school buses to provide transportation to Black students, but the board refused. Twenty parents joined the resulting suit.
A U.S. District Court denied the plaintiffs’ request to end school segregation but instead ordered the school board to begin equalizing the schools.
Topeka, Kansas
Filed: Feb. 28, 1951
A minister attempted to enroll his 8-year-old daughter in the elementary school nearest the family’s home. The principal there refused because that school was open only to white children.
The NAACP recruited this parent and 12 more to file a lawsuit.
In August 1951, the U.S. District Court ruled that while segregation might be detrimental, it was not illegal.
Wilmington, Delware
Filed: April 1951
Black high school students were bused to a high school located in a seedy section of downtown. A Black family in the suburbs saw a new school open in their neighborhood, but that school was for whites only. The family’s children were forced to ride 50 minutes each way.
After her children were repeatedly denied admission to the new school, the mother filed suit against individual members of the local school board.
Two cases were combined and then heard in state court, which ordered the schools to be desegregated. Of the five cases ultimately combined in Brown v. Board, this is the only one in which the plaintiffs had won. The local board of education
Farmville, Virginia
Filed: May 23, 1951
A 16-year-old student at severely overcrowded and underfunded all-Black Moton High School convinced the student council there to ask the local school board for better facilities.
When they received no reply, the student council organized a strike, with more than 400 students picketing outside the school or sitting at their desks with their books closed. The student council then contacted the NAACP for legal help.
In the resulting suit and trial, county officials argued that segregation was core to Virginia’s way of life. A U.S. District Court ruled “we have found no hurt or harm to either race” and dismissed the complaints.
District of Columbia
Filed: Nov. 9, 1950
Black schools in Washington, D.C., were so overcrowded that they were forced to run double and triple schedules in order to accommodate their students. Meanwhile, white schools had plenty of vacancies due to white flight to the suburbs.
A local activist led a group of 11 children and their parents to an all-white junior high school but were denied enrollment there. The activist filed a suit against the president of the board of education.
The district court dismissed the case, saying that segregated schools were constitutional in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs were planning to appeal when the U.S. Supreme Court decided it would consider this case along with the other four cited here.
In June 1952, the Supreme Court agreed to consider Briggs v. Elliott and Brown v. Board of Education in its fall term.
Days before arguments were to be heard, however, the court shifted gears. It decided to combine those two cases with the Virginia, Delaware and D.C. cases. This was considered a significant development because it suggested school segregation wasn’t just a Southern issue — it was a national issue.
Arguments were rescheduled for December 1952.
Arguing for the plaintiffs was NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who had been litigating segregation for years and had won a number of significant victories.
Marshall asserted that school segregation was the result of “an inherent determination” to disadvantage former slaves and their families for as long as possible. He cited a study in which Black children showed “an unmistakable preference” for white dolls, suggesting children had been damaged by segregation.
Arguing the other side was former presidential candidate John W. Davis who said he doubted Black families even wanted schools to be integrated.
n May 1953, the court ordered the case to be reargued that fall. In September, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died of a heart attack. President Dwight Eisenhower named Gov. Earl Warren of California as chief justice.
second round of arguments were held over three days in December 1953. Members of the court were divided. Two justices felt a decision on desegregation should be left to Congress. There was also discussion on how desegregation could be implemented in the South without violence.
After much debate, the court — on May 17, 1954 — issued a unanimous decision that school segregation must end.
In May 1955, the Supreme Court revisited Brown v. Board of Education once again, to instruct local officials and lower courts that schools must be desegregated with “all deliberate speed.” However, the court did not issue a deadline for compliance.
In the 16 states where schools were segregated by law until Brown v. Board, compliance with the ruling was slow and spotty. Here’s the percent of schools in each state that had integrated by the time the landmark Supreme Court decision turned 10 years old in 1964:
In October 1969, the Supreme Court admitted its “all deliberate speed” directive wasn’t working. It ordered the immediate desegregation of schools in Mississippi.
Two years later, the court ruled that busing children into and out of various school districts was an accepted way of desegregating schools located in racially segregated neighborhoods. This would lead to a series of riots in Boston, Massachusetts.
In May 2016, a U.S. District Court ordered the consolidation of two high schools and two middle schools in Cleveland, Mississippi. These were reportedly the final schools in the U.S. to desegregate.
This edition of Further Review was adapted for the web by Zak Curley.