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.

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 model for many future cases. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the U.S., it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement into a full revolution.

History of the Brown Case

In 1950, third-grade student Linda Brown was denied admission to a modern elementary school just blocks from her home in Topeka, Kansas. Under the laws of segregation, Linda was forced to walk six blocks to catch a school bus to a black school when there was a white school within only seven blocks. Along with several other families in Topeka, Linda's family joined forces with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to file suit against the school district.

When the Topeka case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, it was combined with four other NAACP cases from Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington, D.C., to be collectively known as Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for the NAACP, argued before the court that separate schools for whites and blacks were inherently unequal because of the psychological damage they imposed on blacks. His victory set in motion events that led to his ascendancy as the first black Supreme Court associate justice in 1967.

Busing for Integration

Even though the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely uniracial due to housing inequality. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme

Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.

Forced busing was opposed by many citizens, both black and white, however. Some argued that the children were being bused to unsafe neighborhoods and that it would harm their education. It also caused children to spend more time in transit to and from school, which many argued gave them less time for homework and studying. Additionally, they argued, longer distances between students’ homes and schools would make it more difficult for them to be involved in extracurricular activities and could reduce parents’ involvement. Moreover, they worried about the need for more buses for longer trips and its financial impact.

The policy led to what has come to be known as “white flight,” whereby large numbers of whites, especially middle- and upper-class white families, moved to suburbs of large cities. Moreover, many whites who stayed moved their children to parochial or private schools. Taken together, these effects made many urban school districts predominantly nonwhite, reducing the effectiveness of the policy.

By the early 1990s, changing housing patterns had led to a decline in mandatory busing. However, a few school districts were still busing under court orders.

The policy’s impact is still controversial. While opponents believe that it was not effective at changing the racial makeup in most school districts, others say that it was necessary to bring about greater integration.

Beyond Brown and Busing

It has been more than half a century since the decision to integrate public schools and the policy of busing was first implemented. Although we've made major strides racially and educationally since that time, there is much more progress to be made.

Many people think Brown v. Board of Education was just about black children being able to sit next to white children, but there was something deeper to it. It was also about black children having the same access and opportunities that white children have. Unfortunately, this goal has not been fully achieved even today.

Based on microdata from the National Center for Education Statistics’ National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Economic Policy Institute noted the following points in a 2020 article:

● Black children are five times as likely as white children to attend schools that are highly segregated by race and ethnicity.

● Black children are more than twice as likely as white children to attend high-poverty schools.

● Black children are highly likely to be in high-poverty schools with a high share of students of color, but white children are not.

● Performance of black students suffers when these students attend high-poverty schools with high shares of students of color.

The Doll Studies

Nearly 80 years ago, in the 1940s, Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted experiments to study how segregation affected black children. To determine the racial perceptions of 3- to 7-year-old children, they used four dolls that were identical except for their color. Asked to identify the race of the dolls and which doll they preferred, a majority of the children chose the white doll, viewing it more positively. The two psychologists concluded from these “doll tests” that “prejudice, discrimination and segregation” damaged black children’s selfesteem and led to a feeling of inferiority.

The Supreme Court agreed in its 1954 Brown decision. “To separate them [black students] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race,” the Court said, “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.”

Unfortunately, nearly eight decades later, segregation remains a fact of life in much of the U.S. Regardless of the level black people may reach in the nation, we may always have to contend with sharp reminders of our lower status in the view of many of our fellow citizens.

What Now?

In the current environment around the country, the nation, states, districts and schools all have a role to play in supporting their black students. Oftentimes parents don’t receive enough communication about how their children are doing in school. While many black parents want to be involved, they sometimes need help taking that step. It's important to acknowledge that many of the problems and barriers that arise for black students are systemic. Therefore, those at all levels of authority must not shy away from the hard work of changing policies and the way resources are distributed to ensure that the rights of minorities are not stolen.

Two of biggest challenges many schools face at this time are increased calls for more parental control over what students learn and bans on teaching specific topics. The last few years have seen an increase in parents’ rights groups that advocate for more parental control over classes and libraries. These groups, many born out of conservative politics, have been leading the calls for banning certain topics and books. In states with majority-Republican lawmakers, there has been more scrutiny over curriculum materials that some conservatives deem as teaching “critical race theory” and a push to ban certain books that deal with racism. These policies are already affecting the way teachers talk about these topics with their students.

Disparities in early education have existed in the United States since before its inception. Many black children were barred from classrooms by pre-Civil War laws, and afterwards, “separate but equal” policies legally segregated the public education system.

Today, such factors as white flight, housing discrimination, biases in standardized testing, selective referrals, and funding disparities among school districts prevent equitable access for many black students to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education, inclusion in Advanced Placement (AP) courses, and selections for gifted and talented programs. This causes feelings of isolation among black students, who begin to question their value and belonging in STEM. Many enter college at historically white institutions, where elitist/exclusionary cultures further dim their views on science, leading to high attrition rates in STEM.

Many recent successful efforts in advancing quality education for back youth have been black-led or integrated black voices within their leadership. Focusing on K-12 education emphasizes its importance on later career development for black men and women. There seems to be a direct correlation between the lack of education black students receive and their success rates in certain careers. This education gap must be addressed so that this negative cycle won’t continue for future generations of black men and women.

Until then, the struggle continues. In fact, new court cases and other challenges might be just around the corner.