Acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, the case of Brown v. Board of Education made a very important desision about the racial segregation of children in public schools. The decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States but it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality. In 1954 the Supreme Court overturned the case Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that segregated public facilities were constitutional so long as the black and white facilities were equal to each other. The justices ruled that racial segregation in public places is unconstitutional.
While the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. This includes due process and equal protection of the laws. These two amendments were put into action to try and eliminate the last of slavery and to protect the citizenship of black Americans. Congress also passed the first Civil Rights Act, which held the “equality of all men before the law”. The racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In 1896 the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts’ decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, a black man from Louisiana, wanted segregated railroad coaches. First the state courts agreed, then came the agreement of the U. S. Supreme Court. The high court upheld the lower courts saying that since the separate cars provided equal services, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was not violated.
Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas school board by Oliver Brown. Brown was a parent to one of the children that was not allowed to attend Topeka’s white schools. Brown claimed that Topeka’s racial segregation violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because the city’s black and…