Brown v. Board of Education National Parks

"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." From the opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas

This case was initiated by members of the local NAACP chapter in Topeka, Kansas. Thirteen parents volunteered to participate. In the summer of 1950, they took their children to schools in their neighborhoods and attempted to enroll them for the upcoming school year. All were refused admission. The children were forced to attend one of the four schools in the city for African Americans. For most, this involved traveling some distance from their homes. These parents filed suit against the Topeka Board of Education on behalf of their twenty children. Oliver Brown, a minister, was the first parent listed in the suit, so the case came to be named after him. Three local lawyers, Charles Bledsoe, Charles Scott and John Scott, were assisted by Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

The case was filed in February 1951. The U.S. District Court ruled against the plaintiffs, but placed in the record its acceptance of the psychological evidence that African American children were adversely affected by segregation. These findings later were quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 opinion.

Belton (Beluh) v. Gebhart

There were two separate cases in Delaware, but the issues were the same. Black families were frustrated with the inequitable conditions in schools reserved for African American children. Belton v. Gebhart was brought by parents in Claymont, who were forced to send their children to a run-down segregated high school in Wilmington rather than a school in the community. Bulah v. Gebhart was brought by Sarah Bulah, a parent who had made several attempts to convince the Delaware Department of Public Instruction to provide bus transportation for black children in the town of Hockessin. Particularly galling was the fact that a bus for white children passed her house twice a day, but would not pick up her daughter.

The parents sought representation from Louis Redding, a local lawyer who was the state’s first black attorney. He suggested that they petition their all-white neighborhood schools on behalf of their children. The children were denied admission and in 1951, the cases Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart  were filed. At the state’s request the cases were heard at the Delaware Court of Chancery rather than the U.S. District Court. Jack Greenberg from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. assisted Redding with the case.

In a groundbreaking decision, the Chancellor ruled that the plaintiffs were being denied equal protection of the law and ordered that the eleven children involved be immediately admitted to the white school. The board of education, however, appealed the decison. Delaware was the only case of the five that achieved relief for the plaintiffs at the state level. The decision did not strike down Delaware’s segregation law.

Bolling v. Sharpe

In 1947, Gardner Bishop and the Consolidated Parents Group, Inc. began a crusade to end segregated schooling in Washington, D.C. At the beginning of the school term in 1950, Bishop attempted to get eleven young African American students admitted to the newly completed John Philip Sousa Junior High School. They were turned away, although the school had several empty classrooms.  Charles Hamilton Houston, the special counsel to the NAACP, provided legal representation for the group.

James Nabrit, Jr. a colleague from Howard University, replaced Houston when he became ill. Nabrit did not present evidence that schools the plaintiffs attended were inferior to the facilities for white students. He felt the sole issue was that of segregation itself. It was a risky position. The U.S. District court dismissed the case on the basis of a recent ruling by the Court of Appeals in Carr v. Corning that segregated schools were constitutional in the District of Columbia. Nabrit filed an appeal and was awaiting a hearing when the U.S. Supreme Court sent word that it was interested in considering the case along with the other four segregation cases already pending. The U.S. Supreme Court rendered a separate opinion on Bolling v. Sharpe based on the Fifth Amendment because the Fourteeth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not applicable in the District of Columbia.

Briggs v. Elliott

The Briggs case was named for Harry Briggs, one of twenty parents who brought suit against R.W. Elliott, the president of the school board for Clarendon County, South Carolina. Initially, parents had only asked the county to provide school buses for the black students as they did for whites. When their petitions were ignored, they filed a suit challenging segregation itself. Reverend J. A. DeLaine, a school principal, was instrumental in recruiting the parent plaintiffs and enlisting the help of the NAACP. Thurgood Marshall, lead counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc., and Harold Boulware, a local lawyer, filed Briggs v. Elliott in the fall of 1950.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court was presented with substantial psychological evidence and expert testimony presented on African American school conditions. The court denied the plaintiffs’ request to abolish school segregation. Instead, they ordered the school board to begin equalization of the schools. In a lone dissenting opinion, Judge Julius Waring adamantly opposed segregation in public education. Facing retaliation from irate segregationists, Waring left the state soon after. J.A. DeLaine and Harry Briggs also lost their jobs as a result of their involvement with the case.

Davis v. County School Board