Introduction

In 1954, nearly a century after the formal abolition of slavery in the United States, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in US history, declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision partially overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which in 1896 established the “separate but equal” doctrine. Under the doctrine, segregated facilities for black and white Americans were legal if they offered services of the same or comparable quality. In reality, Plessy v. Ferguson confirmed the long-standing practice of discrimination against black Americans. It argued that while the US Constitution protected equal political and civil rights for black and white Americans, it did not ensure equal “social rights.”

Organized efforts to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson began already in the early 20th century. Civil rights activists and lawyers fought to dismantle the legal system of segregation in the United States step by step. In 1951, Oliver Brown, a black father from Kansas, joined that legal struggle. Brown wanted to enroll his daughter in a white public school that was closest to their home in Topeka, Kansas. When the school refused to enroll Brown’s daughter and Brown lost his case in lower courts, he and other local black families, who joined the case, filed a class-action lawsuit in US federal court against the Topeka Board of Education. The plaintiffs argued that Topeka’s racial segregation violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because the city’s black and white schools were never equal. When Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was heard before the Supreme Court, it was one of five cases filed to fight segregation in public schools. The name of the case became the name of the five combined cases. In a unanimous decision (9-0), the Supreme Court agreed that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.   

The Supreme Court decision was a momentous victory for civil rights activists and all black Americans. Simultaneously, many white Americans, particularly in the South, were outraged and ready to block integration efforts. The battle for equal and just access to education was far from over. It was now also additionally complicated by the Supreme Court’s choice not to provide any specific guidelines on when and how desegregation of public education should take place. In this activity, you will examine a speech, in which a white man reflects on the state of racial relations five years after Brown v. Board of Education.