Brown V. Board Of Education Case

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Pages: 3

Max Swanson
Mr. Reuker
AP U.S. History
21 January 2017
Brown v. Board of Education
The case Brown v Board of Education had actually been composed of five cases, filed in the District of Columbia and four other states (Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and Kansas), all of which came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court consolidated each of the five cases under the name of Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown v. Board of Education case had been brought up by local NAACP members in Topeka, Kansas. Thirteen parents volunteered to participate on behalf of their children. In the summer of 1950, they then took their children to the neighborhood schools and attempted to enroll them; however they were all refused admission. Their parents
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The Court found the practice of segregation was unconstitutional and refused to apply its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson to “the field of public education.”
This access to such an education was then seen as “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” (Civilrights.org)
Concluding that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal”, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools subsequently denied African American children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court's decision May 17, 1954 was a major step in the direction of equality. Prior to this decision blacks had been placed in schools that while separate were not equal, in the both the quality of the facilities and the quality of instruction. While the integration of blacks and whites initially faced heavy resistance in the South, this decision helped to spark the civil rights movement in an attempt to gain equality in areas outside public education. The effects of improved public education for African Americans stretched long after the days spent in elementary/ high
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Today, the Census Bureau reports, that 87% of African-American adults hold high school degrees, in close comparison with 88.8% of whites. These educational advances have also resulted in other gains in the community, this includes the growth of a substantial black middle-class and health gains that have cut the white-black gap in life expectancy at birth by more than half since 1950.

References
"Brown v. Board of Education (1954)." PBS. PBS. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.
"Civil Rights: Brown v. Board of Education I (1954)." Civil Rights: Brown v. Board of Education I (1954). Web. 22 Jan. 2017.
"History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment." United States Courts. U.S. Courts. Web. 21 Jan. 2017.
History.com Staff. "Brown v. Board of Education." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 21 Jan. 2017.
United States. National Park Service. "Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. Web. 21 Jan.