Brown v. Board of Education at 40: A legal history of equal educational opportunities in American public education

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1994 by Russo, Charles J, Harris, J John III, Sandidge, Rosetta F

INTRODUCTION

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down perhaps its most significant ruling of all time. In a unanimous 9-0 opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown I) (1954), the Court held that the de jure segregation of public education based on race deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A year later, in Brown II (1955), the Court set about dismantling segregated school systems. While subsequent rulings attacked de facto and de jure segregation in the wider arena of American society, Brown I remains unchallenged as the catalyst for systemic change. Beginning with school desegregation efforts and culminating in the civil rights movement and a generation of heightened consciousness for African Americans and other disenfranchised groups, Brown I spawned an era of equal educational opportunities.

In light of the Supreme Court's monumental ruling in Brown I, this article briefly discusses more than three dozen of the cases involving court-ordered public school desegregation decided in the 40 years since 1954. Further, it provides a detailed commentary and analysis of the Court's leading opinions.

A LEGAL HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

The history of the Supreme Court's involvement in school desegregation can be divided into four periods: the first spanning the decade from 1954 to 1964, the next from 1965 to 1979, the third from 1980 to 1989, and the last covering the early years of the 1990s.

A Decade of "All Deliberate Speed": 1954-1964

Flushed with victories in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (1950)--companion cases that prohibited interschool and intraschool segregation, respectively, in higher education--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was set to launch a frontal attack on racial segregation in the public schools. Accordingly, its chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, and his team of NAACP attorneys laid the groundwork for Brown I. In light of the central role Brown I occupies in American history, this case will be examined in greater detail here than the other rulings succeeding it.

Brown I is cited as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas because the lead case was initiated there. It actually involved four class-action suits filed on behalf of African American students who were denied admission to schools attended by White children due to laws that either mandated or permitted racial segregation. The other actions originated in New Castle County (Delaware), Clarendon County (South Carolina), and Prince Edward County (Virginia). Segregation was allowed under state law in Kansas, and it was required both by the state constitutions and statutes in Delaware, South Carolina, and Virginia. The Delaware suit was an appeal from a state court action; the remaining cases sought further review of federal court rulings.

The lower federal courts based their decisions to uphold de jure segregation on the pernicious "separate-but-equal" standard established by the Supreme Court's 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson but which apparently originated almost half a century earlier in a Massachusetts case, Roberts v. City of Boston (1850). Only in the Delaware case did the Court order the immediate admission of African American students to schools previously attended exclusively by White children. It did so based on its finding that the schools attended by White youngsters were superior with respect to such factors as teacher training, pupil-teacher ratios, and physical plant facilities. Thus, although each action was premised on different facts and a variety of local conditions, they were consolidated on appeal in light of their common legal question. Oral arguments in Brown I were initiated in December 1952, but the Court was unable to reach a decision, seemingly because it was divided on the constitutionality of the separate-but-equal doctrine. Consequently, a second round of arguments, focused largely on the circumstances relating to the adoption of the 14th Amendment, was held over a three day period in December 1953.

The Supreme Court finally ruled on Brown I on May 17, 1954. In an opinion written by the then-recently appointed Chief Justice, Earl Warren, the Court handed down a 9-0 decision striking down de jure segregation in public schools. This unanimous holding was not achieved without some difficulty; indeed, it was a tribute to the leadership of Chief Justice Warren and the support of Justice Felix Frankfurter. It was apparently only after they were able to convince justices Robert Jackson and Stanley Reed of the magnitude of Brown I, and the significance that such a vote would have for the nation, that the decision was rendered unanimously (Kluger, 1976; Tushnet with Lezin, 1991).

As a prelude to its 1954 ruling, the Court noted that "education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments" (Brown I, p. 493). It then clearly presented the issue,