THE RULING
— Brown v. Board of Education is a landmark case brought before the Supreme Court by the NAACP’s legal arm to challenge segregation in public schools. It began after several black families in Topeka, Kan., were turned down when they tried to enroll their children in white schools near their homes.
— On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that separating black and white children was unconstitutional, because it denied black children the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
— The decision overturned the court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which on May 18, 1896, established a “separate but equal” doctrine for blacks and whites in public facilities.
WHO WAS BROWN?
The case was named for Oliver Brown, whose daughter Linda was barred from a white elementary school. He became a minister at a church in Springfield, Mo., and died of a heart attack in 1961. His daughters Linda and Cheryl live in Kansas and helped found the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research.
60 YEARS LATER
— The Civil Right Project at UCLA, using Education Department data, has found that segregation has been increasing since 1990, and that black students nationally are substantially more segregated than they were in 1970.
—Around the country, only 23 percent of black students attended white-majority schools in 2011. That’s the lowest number since 1968 and far below the peak of 44 percent in 1988. And segregation is also affecting Latino students, the largest minority group in the public schools. They now are more likely to attend school with other Latinos than black students are with other blacks.
— In a recent bit of good news, high school graduation rates increased 15 percentage points for Hispanic students and 9 percentage points for African-American students from 2006 to 2012, according to a recent GradNation Report. Hispanic students graduated at 76 percent and African-American students at 68 percent in 2012, the report said. The national rate is 80 percent.
Associated Press
President Barack Obama on Friday marked the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision by recommitting to “the long struggle to stamp out bigotry and racism in all their forms.”
Obama also met Friday in the White House East Room with families of the plaintiffs, lead attorneys Jack Greenberg and William Coleman and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Greenberg argued the case; Coleman was a leading legal strategist.
Obama said the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, was “the first major step in dismantling the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine that justified Jim Crow,” the racial segregation laws that were in place at the state and local level across the South.
“As we commemorate this historic anniversary, we recommit ourselves to the long struggle to stamp out bigotry and racism in all their forms,” Obama said. “We reaffirm our belief that all children deserve an education worthy of their promise. And we remember that change did not come overnight, that it took many years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God’s children.”
Obama pledged to never forget the men, women and children who took “extraordinary risks in order to make our country more fair and more free.”
“Today, it falls on us to honor their legacy by taking our place in their march and doing our part to perfect the union we love,” he said.
First lady Michelle Obama on Friday observed the anniversary by visiting Topeka, Kan., site of the lawsuit that initiated the case. She met with high school students in a college preparatory program and delivered remarks at a pre-graduation event for seniors in the Topeka Public School District.
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