Brown vs. Board of Education of 1954 was a landmark court case in U.S. history, one of the first steps towards social justice and eliminating racial discrimination in America. Up until that year, colored children were denied admission to public schools near their homes because of their race. Among them was eight-year-old Linda Brown, who had requested to attend a public elementary school near her home in Topeka, Kansas. Since the nearby school she applied for was a “white” school, the board of education denied her request and registered her to a colored school over twenty blocks from her home. Her parents filed a lawsuit against the school board, which eventually reached the Supreme Court level to “determine whether the segregation of schools was at all constitutional.” Brown argued that the separate schools based on race were harmful to African American children, while the school board argued that the facilities were “equal” by Plessy vs. Ferguson standards from 1896. However, all nine Supreme Court judges ruled in favor of Brown. The official verdict given by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall decided against racial segregation on the grounds that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed all citizens equal protection of the law. From that moment onward, racial segregation in schools and other public facilities was declared both unconstitutional and unlawful.
Although racial discrimination still continued, the ruling at Brown vs. Board of Education had a monumental impact, setting off the social justice movement of the 1950s and 1960s. If the Court’s ruling had never happened, the social justice movements that had followed would likely have been delayed, and without the verdict, the United States would not be as culturally diverse or representative of freedom and opportunity.
References:
http://brownvboard.org/summary/
http://www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases/ar04.html
You have a very sophisticated way of expressing yourself and your blog is structurally solid and has a good flow. One thing to remember is that quotation marks mean that you are citing someone and need to analyze what was said.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that this case was monumental in what it did for the civil rights movement. The fact that a white court would vote in favor of colored people was for that time astounding, but it brings home the idea that humans are fundamentally not racist.
I agree that if this court case had not been one won by brown the US would not be as culturally diverse. Allowing all children to mix together while learning allows many barriers to be broken. Breaking down racism and allowing America to be a more inviting country, and allowing it to become more culturally diverse.
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