Brown V. Board of Education was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Leading up to the case, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) challenged segregation laws in public schools. In 1951, Oliver Brown filed a suit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, after his daughter was denied entrance into an all-white elementary school. He claimed that the black schools were not equal to the white schools, and that such segregation violated the 14th Amendment. The U.S. District Court of Kansas agreed that the segregation had a poor affect on African Americans, but argued that it still upheld the "separate but equal" policy.
The Brown V. Board of Education case combined both Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation. On May 17, 1954, new Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that "separate but equal" is not a doctrine that stands in public education, because segregated schools are unequal. The Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."
This decision ultimately inspired integration in places beyond public schools, and many other African Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. began boldly fighting for their equality.
 |
| Linda Brown |
 |
| Norman Rockwell's painting of Linda Brown |
 |
| Brown V. Board of Education helped to end segregation in schools and marked the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. A year after this case, Rosa Parks sat in the "white section" of a bus in an attempt to help end segregation everywhere- not just in schools. This led to many more equality movements that eventually brought the Jim Crow Laws to an end. |
