Fighting for education: Brown vs. The Board of Education:
Events have recently unfolded in the district of Topeka, Kansas. In the school district, a large segregation rule has been uprooted. Apparently, black parents were complaining against the school district for school facilities for blacks being run-down, while white facilities being well functioning. Such complaints led to many issues, ultimately ending in a suit by the people of the national chapter of the NAACP ( National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ).
The NAACP decided that, at the head of the trial roster, they would get Oliver Brown as their leader. He was convinced by his friend, Scott. Of course, he had hand-on experience with segregation in education. His daughter, Linda Brown, had to walk 6 blocks away from home to a bus stop to get on the bus to travel 1.6 miles to her school, when a white school is only 7 blocks away. Then, the trial was underway and all ears of the district were waiting to hear what the court would decide.
When Dwight D. Eisenhower heard of the news, he was given several opinions on segregation. Fred M. Vinson, a close representative of Federal Court, commented that Congress had not issued desegregation legislation. Similarly, Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete state rights and was inclined to do an interview about it. Other judges had sent in opinions, and it questioned the outcome of the trial. After Fred M. Vinson died in 1953 from a heart attack, Earl Warren replaced him as chief justice, where he gave support to the trial on the Brown side. With the officials on in the subject, it turned the tide of the upcoming trial.
The Brown vs. The Board of Education case was actually consisted of five trials: Brown vs. The Board of Education itself (filed in Kansas), Briggs vs. Elliot (filed in South Carolina), Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart vs. Belton (filed in Delaware) and Boiling vs. Sharpe (filed in Washington, District Columbia). At the trial was several members of the NAACP, and around 400 black students. Prior to the trial, Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP's chief counsel, argued the case before the supreme court for the plaintiffs. The all-white justices and jury made their verdict based on the previous trial, Plessy vs. Ferguson: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment." The NAACP won and justice was served.
Soon afterwards, the doctrine "separate but equal" from the previous Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Soon, U.S. children, both black and white, started being integrated and even the teachers were integrated. However, not all accepted the outcome of the trial, such as people in the south, who started resisting the Brown ruling. Aside from this fact, we can all be rest assured that soon, segregation everywhere will be a thing of the past.
sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education