The document provides background information on key court cases that challenged racial segregation in education, leading up to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. It discusses cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld the doctrine of "separate but equal"; Murray v. Maryland in 1936 and Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada in 1938, which required states to provide equal educational opportunities for black students; and Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents in 1950, which found that segregated graduate schools were inherently unequal. The document then summarizes the consolidation of five cases into Brown v. Board in 1952 and the Supreme Court's unanimous 1954 ruling

1. History of Brown v.
Board of Education
Emily Homel

2. Brown v. Board of
Education Background
 Notwithstanding the Amendments in place, African
Americans were habitually treated very poorly in
comparison to whites in most parts of the United
States.
 Many state legislatures in the south and across the
country even sanctioned laws that officially
required segregation of different races.
 These regulations were known as Jim Crow laws.

3. The Plessy Decision
 Homer Plessy, an African American man in New
Orleans, rejected giving up his seat for a white man
on a train, and was arrested.
 Plessy challenged the Louisiana law that separated
people of color from whites as he believed it
infringed the Fourteenth Amendment.
 In 1896, the Supreme Court directed against Plessy,
and they prolonged the validity of the Jim Crow
laws.

4. NAACP
 The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People was founded in 1909 and fought for
racial equality.
 The organization attempted to encourage Congress
to sanction laws that would safeguard people of
color from unfair racist actions.

5. Murray v. Maryland
 The University of Maryland School of Law continuously
excluded applying candidates who were of color.
 Donald Gaines Murray, a man of color, was just as eligible as
the many white applicants to attend the University of
Maryland’s School of Law.
 Thurgood Marshall made the choice to confront this unfair
tradition in the Maryland court system.
 Marshall claimed that the law schools for students of color
provided a much weaker education than the University’s law
school.
 The Court of Appeals governed on Murray’s side in 1936, and
forced the law school to welcome him into their law program.

6. Missouri ex rel Gaines v.
Canada
 Lloyd Gaines, a man of color and a graduate student of
an all black college known as Lincoln University,
requested admittance to the University of Missouri Law
School.
 He was rejected due to his race and made the choice to
sue the state with the goal of joining the University of
Missouri's law program.
 This case moved to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1938, and
the Court sided with him.
 The state was then required to offer a law program for
both students or color and white students.

7. Sweat v. Painter
 Heman Sweat, an African American students,
requested admittance to the University of Texas’
law school for white students in 1946.
 Sweat, with the support of the NAACP and
Thurgood Marshall, reasoned that the law school
for students of color was not as academically strong
as the law school for white students.
 In 1950, the United States Supreme Court sided with
him due to the obvious fact that the law schools
were not of equal caliber.

8. McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of
Regents of Higher Education
 The University of Oklahoma permitted George
McLaurin, a student of color, to join its doctoral program
in 1949.
 The University mandated McLaurin sit separately from
the rest of the students.
 Because being estranged from his peers hurt his
educational goals, he sued end the segregation of
students.
 The United States Supreme Court sided with McLaurin,
Marshall, and the NAACP, and mandated that the
university terminate the practice of separating students
based on their race.

9. Brown v. Board of
Education Background
 The well-known case that many today know as Brown v.
Board of Education, was truly five separate cases
combined together by the United States Supreme Court.
 All of the five cases differed in details, however, they did
all center on the concern of segregation in the nation’s
public schools.
 The five cases:
 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
 Briggs v. Elliot
 Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County
(VA.)
 Boiling v. Sharpe
 Gebhart v. Ethel.

10. Brown v. Board of
Education
 In 1952, the five cases came together in front of the
Supreme Court were given the name of Brown v.
Board of Education.
 Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme
Court that schools for students of color and schools
for white students were intrinsically not equal.
 He argued that the separation and inequality
violated the Fourteenth Amendment and caused
students of color to feel less valued by society.

11. Brown v. Board of
Education
 The Justices of the Supreme Court were genuinely
divided whether or not separate school were equal.
 The Justices were incapable of determining a solution by
the end of the 1952 – 1953 term.
 While the Justices were on break, one of them passed
away and was substituted by Gov. Earl Warren from
California.
 When their break ended, Chief Justice Warren convinced
all of the Justices of the Supreme Court to affirm
segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

12. Brown v. Board of
Education
 Because the Supreme Court predicted hostility to the
ruling, they did not offer suggestions on how to apply
the new ruling.
 The supreme court requested that individual states
propose policies on how to begin desegregation.
 Finally, on May 31, 1955, the Justices of the Supreme
Court released a plan on how states were to progress
towards desegregation.
 Despite the ruling, it took many years and much hard
work from equal rights activists before all segregated
school systems were desegregated.

13. How does the reform affect
classroom practices?

14. How does it affect classroom
practices in special education?

15. Resources
United States Courts. (n.d.). History of brown v. board of
education. Retrieved from
http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/getinvolved/federal-court-activities/brown-boardeducation-re-enactment/history.aspx
ABRAMS, D. E. (2013). The Little League Champions
Benched by Jim Crow in 1955: Resistance and Reform
after Brown v. Board of Education. Journal Of Supreme
Court History, 38(1), 51-62. doi:10.1111/j.15405818.2013.12003.x

16. Resources
MINOW, M. (2013). Brown v. Board in the World:
How the Global Turn Matters for School Reform,
Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge. San Diego Law
Review, 50(1), 1-27.