FAMOUS SPRINGS
Where Past Is Present
SCHOOL SEGREGATION ENDS, 1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Propels a Movement and Launches a Legal Legend As Civil Rights leader Malcolm X said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” But it’s not only “any old education” that’s needed for success but rather highquality education. For this reason, the movement to desegregate schools and provide all students fair access to a good education was a multi-decade effort to reform public school systems throughout the United States. This movement found perhaps its greatest success in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which ruled that separating students by race was unconstitutional. The unanimous decision said that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. BAVUAL
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By Kristen Jones
"In the field of public education," Chief Justice Earl Warren said, "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, the Court said that school segregation deprived black students of "the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment." The decision partially overruled the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which said that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal." The Brown case paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement and a
SPRING 2023
