Brown V Board Of Education Of Topeka

A general introduction analyzes the case's legal precedents and situates the case in the historical context of Jim Crow discrimination and the burgeoning development of the NAACP. Photographs, a collection of political cartoons, a chronology, questions for consideration, a bibliography, and an index are also included.

2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Examines the case of an African American girl whom the Board of Education refused admission into school.

Informs readers about Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, segregation in public schools, those involved in the case, and the law applied after the ruling, the fourteenth amendment.

After slavery ended, former slaves gained greater access to education, and free schools became available to children and adults. Over time, free schooling for African Americans in the South began to decrease, and the South became completely segregated. To make matters worse, in the court case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal. Believing the ruling was unconstitutional, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hired lawyers like Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall to fight against segregation in schools. The NAACP started to look for African American parents who had children in public schools that were not equal to white schools. The five cases that make up Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, were heard by the Supreme Court. The Court s 1954 ruling completely changed the direction of American education.

Thurgood Marshall turned a law school rejection based on his race into a passion for ending our nation’s policy of “separate but equal.” He was on the legal team that won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case and used that victory as a precedent to topple other racial barriers. He furthered racial reforms after being named our nation’s first black Supreme Court justice.

After slavery ended, former slaves gained greater access to education, and free schools became available to children and adults. Over time, free schooling for African Americans in the South began to decrease, and the South became completely segregated. To make matters worse, in the court case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal. Believing the ruling was unconstitutional, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hired lawyers like Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall to fight against segregation in schools. The NAACP started to look for African American parents who had children in public schools that were not equal to white schools. The five cases that make up Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, were heard by the Supreme Court. The Court's 1954 ruling completely changed the direction of American education. Book jacket.

Publisher Description

Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legally sanctioned segregation in American public schools, brought issues of racial equality to the forefront of the nation’s attention. Beyond its repercussions for the educational system, the decision also heralded broad changes to concepts of justice and national identity. “Brown v. Board” and the Transformation of American Culture examines the prominent cultural figures who taught the country how to embrace new values and ideas of citizenship in the aftermath of this groundbreaking decision. Through the lens of three cultural “first responders,” Ben Keppel tracks the creation of an American culture in which race, class, and ethnicity could cease to imply an inferior form of citizenship. Psychiatrist and social critic Robert Coles, in his Pulitzer Prize–winning studies of children and schools in desegregating regions of the country, helped citizens understand the value of the project of racial equality in the lives of regular families, both white and black. Comedian Bill Cosby leveraged his success with gentle, family-centric humor to create televised spaces that challenged the idea of whiteness as the cultural default. Public television producer Joan Ganz Cooney designed programs like Sesame Street that extended educational opportunities to impoverished children, while offering a new vision of urban life in which diverse populations coexisted in an atmosphere of harmony and mutual support. Together, the work of these pioneering figures provided new codes of conduct and guided America through the growing pains of becoming a truly pluralistic nation. In this cultural history of the impact of Brown v. Board, Keppel paints a vivid picture of a society at once eager for and resistant to the changes ushered in by this pivotal decision.