Brown vs. Board of Education
Brown vs. Board of education is one of the most important Supreme Court cases. The Brown vs. Board case was held due to violations of the 14th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause. The “Equal Protection” Clause of the 14th Amendment states that states can’t “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” The 14th Amendment was created on July 9th, 1868 and it says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. In addition, it forbids states from denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In 1954 most of the United States had segregated many things including schools. Segregation was made legal in 1896 in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, as long as it was separate but equal. The problem with this was that segregation wasn’t even close to separate but equal.
Oliver Brown was a father to Linda Brown and she had to walk about 1 mile to get to the black school, including walking over a railway. When a white school was just down the block, Brown wanted to sue the school board but before he was able to do that he would have to have a reason to sue. Brown got help from a group called NAACP. NAACP stands for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, this organization was formed to fight civil rights in the court system. The NAACP told Brown that he would need to enroll Linda in the white school so that they would get denied and then be able sue the school for denying her.
While Brown was in court with the Topeka School Board the story caught wind and the Supreme Court became very interested in the story. The case was moved up to the Supreme Court. On May 17th of that year the Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren ruled that having the black and white school that were clearly not equal was in violation of the 14th amendment. Along with that the Supreme Court made segregation illegal and every state had to now let black people do the same thing as the white.
This case was very important to the Civil Rights Movement because it desegregated schools, restaurants, water fountains, buses, etc. Many states protested to not let black people into the white places. In fact in some cases they had to call down the National Guard to protect the people from being attacked.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=87
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/equal_protection
