ARTICLE TEXT

Some judgments change the law. A few change a nation. Brown v Board of Education, decided unanimously by the Supreme Court of the United States on 17 May 1954, held that laws requiring Black and white children to attend separate public schools violated the Constitution. It marked the beginning of the end of legal segregation in the United States and became a symbol, around the world, of courts using constitutional rights to confront injustice.

The Background: Plessy v Ferguson

The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868 after the Civil War, guarantees every person “the equal protection of the laws”. Yet in Plessy v Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate railway carriages for Black and white passengers. As long as the separate facilities were equal, the Court said, there was no violation. The “separate but equal” doctrine allowed states, particularly in the South, to build an entire system of segregation in schools, transport, hospitals and public places. In practice, the facilities provided for Black Americans were almost never equal.

The Cases

Brown was not one case but several. The Supreme Court heard together challenges from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware; a companion case from the District of Columbia, Bolling v Sharpe, was decided the same day. The Kansas case gave the decision its name. Oliver Brown and other Black parents in Topeka challenged a system under which their children had to attend segregated schools such as Monroe Elementary, often far from home, while white schools were nearer.

The cases were brought by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first Black justice of the Supreme Court. The strategy was bold: rather than arguing that particular Black schools were unequal, the lawyers argued that segregation itself was unconstitutional.

The cases were first argued in December 1952. Unable to reach a decision, the Court ordered reargument. Before it took place, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died, and President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, the Governor of California. Warren worked hard to achieve a unanimous decision, believing that a divided Court would weaken the judgment’s authority.

The Decision

Warren’s opinion was short and written in plain language, so that it could be read and understood by the public. He noted that the history of the Fourteenth Amendment was inconclusive on education, and that public education had changed completely since 1868. The Court had to consider education as it was in 1954, when it was perhaps the most important function of state and local government and the foundation of good citizenship.

The Court then asked whether segregation deprived Black children of equal educational opportunities even if buildings, teachers and other tangible factors were equal. It answered yes. Separating children solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The Court concluded that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place, and that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

The Aftermath

The Court delayed deciding on remedies. In 1955, in the case known as Brown II, it sent the cases back to the lower courts to order desegregation “with all deliberate speed”. That phrase allowed years of resistance. In 1957, federal troops had to escort nine Black students into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Real change in many areas came only after the Civil Rights Act 1964.

Why It Matters

Brown shows the power, and the limits, of constitutional adjudication. The judgment declared a principle that transformed American law, but implementing it required political action, federal enforcement and years of struggle. For comparative lawyers, it is a leading example of a court interpreting equality in substance rather than form: equal treatment is not achieved merely by providing identical facilities if the system itself marks one group as inferior. That idea resonates with Article 27 of the Constitution of Bangladesh, which guarantees equality before law and equal protection of law, and with Article 28’s prohibition of discrimination. For students, Brown is essential reading on equality, precedent and the role of courts in social change.

Sources

1. Brown v Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Justia: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/
2. US National Archives, Milestone Documents: Brown v Board of Education: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education
3. US National Park Service, Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park: https://www.nps.gov/brvb/