BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION DECISION 64 YEARS AGO MAY 17-1954

Murphy Browne © May 17-2018

BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION DECISION 64 YEARS AGO MAY 17-1954

Sixty four years ago on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was against the law. It was one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The events that led up to May 17, 1954 began in Topeka, Kansas in 1951 when an African American father, Oliver Brown challenged the Topeka, Kansas School Board in court on behalf of his 8 year old daughter Linda Brown. Oliver Brown’s 8 year old third-grader Linda had to walk one mile through a dangerous railroad switchyard to get to her segregated elementary school when a white elementary school was a few blocks away from her home. Brown, tried to enroll his daughter in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused to enroll the child. Oliver Brown, pastor of St. Mark’s A.M.E. Church appealed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for help and a class action lawsuit against the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education was launched when 13 other African American parents on behalf of their 20 children joined Brown and the NAACP requested an injunction to forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.


The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of the USA with 200 plaintiffs from five states; Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. Three years later the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional and called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not require desegregation of public schools by a specific time but after the decision the NAACP attempted to register African American students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South.

The Browns (Oliver and Leola) had two younger daughters Terry and Cheryl who were 4 years old and 5 months old at the time of trial. Linda Brown attended Monroe Elementary, a school located 21 blocks from their home on West First Street with all African American students. At the time only four of the city's 22 elementary schools were open to African American students. During the trial Oliver Brown testified that "many times [Linda] had to wait through cold, the rain, and the snow" for a bus to take her to Monroe, even though the family lived only seven blocks from an all-white elementary school. Oliver also testified that Linda's route to her bus stop took her over a "main thoroughfare...with a vast amount of traffic." Just six years after the decision when Oliver Brown was only 42 when he transitioned to the ancestral realm in 1961 due to a heart attack. His daughter Linda Brown (born February 20 1943) on whose behalf he engaged in the battle against the school board transitioned to the ancestral realm on March 25 2018 at 75 years old.

Murphy Browne © May 17-2018