Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Paper Summary:

An examination into the history of U.S. constitutional law on the subject of racial segregation in public places and the different interpretations of the 14th Amendment (equal protection clause). The writer shows how this matter was clarified once and for all by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education when segregation was finally declared illegal in America.

From the Paper:

"Once the Supreme Court decided that segregation definitely caused inequalities, it used the Constitution to prove that segregation was illegal. Warren admitted that the Fourteenth Amendment was vague and inconclusive, but also concluded that segregation defied the Fourteenth Amendment. Segregation in public schools did not provide equal opportunities, and students who were equally talented, but of different races, were being separated. The Chief Justice's famous closing statement summed up the reasoning used in the decision: "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal . . .. the plaintiffs . . . are . . . deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment". (Urofsky-1989)"

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