The decision in Brown vs. Board of Education marked a significant turning point for American education. However, public schools must work harder than ever to become racially integrated.
The Brown case was the name given to five issues brought before the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund handled all five suits.
Increased Enrollment of African American Students in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities
The Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown sparked a wave of legal victories that desegregated housing, public accommodations, and higher education institutions. The decision discredited the argument that racial segregation was a necessary social good and ushered in a new era of civil rights that continues to this day. But while the broader picture has succeeded, many troubling signs remain for Black students. The most important of these is that despite increased enrollment, Black students are not graduating at rates similar to their white counterparts. Black students are also much more likely to have debt upon graduation. Eighty-six percent of Black college graduates have student debt compared to only 50 percent of their white peers. This is especially problematic, considering Black students are likelier to attend colleges with high tuition rates. Moreover, they are more likely to be the first in their family to attend college. Lastly, these students face many other hurdles to higher education that are outside their control.
These include a lack of financial aid and difficulty finding a job after graduation. Those factors combined can create a vicious cycle that prevents students from completing their degrees and getting the jobs they need to support themselves. The decline in Black students should prompt states and universities to look closely at what drives these trends.
The Impact on the Community
Before Brown, segregated schools in the South were underfunded and poorly equipped. According to an NBER working paper by Orley Ashenfelter, William Collins, and Albert Yoon, students had to travel long distances, and teachers were often paid less than white educators. The authors found that these under-resourced schools hampered student performance, and the quality of education improved only after school desegregation and the passage of civil rights legislation.
In the late 1940s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched a concentrated effort to challenge local segregated school systems. The first case was filed by a Reverend named Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas, whose daughter Linda was denied entrance to a local all-white elementary school located only blocks from her home. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down racial segregation in public education with its 1954 decision.
The ruling of Brown vs Board of Education summary forever discredited the legal rationale for the racial caste system endorsed by the government at all levels since the end of the nineteenth century. However, the Court did not establish a timetable for dismantling segregation and left it to state legislatures and local jurisdictions to take action.
The decision ushered in a period of “massive resistance,” which lasted until President Eisenhower sent the National Guard to protect nine black students attempting to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Despite this, the Brown decision was a powerful precedent for civil rights advocates.
The Impact on Teachers
When the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education, it was a landmark ruling. It raised important questions about democracy, the power of race, and the role of schools in a diverse society.
At the same time, it gave Americans a chance to further construct their image of America as a morally progressive nation. But Brown did more than challenge the nation’s view of racial equality; it shattered many black educators’ lives. Before the decision, black teachers and principals accounted for 35 to 50 percent of the teaching workforce in 17 segregated states. No state has close to those numbers; nationally, just 7 percent of teachers and 11 percent of principals are black. While desegregation was a significant step on the path to civil rights, it did not stop racism from continuing to impact students and their interactions with their teachers. This is mainly because white teachers were forced to work in schools with a predominantly African American student body and struggled to adjust to this new environment.
Furthermore, the desegregation of schools exposed long-standing stereotypes of black people as lazy and criminal, which were reinforced by many white teachers. This profoundly impacted teacher–student relationships and shaped how students perceived their educational experience.
The Impact on Student Performance
The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education catalyzed school desegregation in America. The case revolved around the parents of a seven-year-old black girl, Linda Brown, who was denied admission to the all-white school near her home and was forced to take a bus ride to another far-away school. After the Brown decision, the NAACP launched a concerted effort to end segregation laws nationwide.
In Brown, the Supreme Court ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and that laws requiring segregation violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also created a follow-up ruling known as Brown II that outlined the process for ending segregated schools. This was meant to provide local authorities with a window of time to adjust to the new law, but those opposed to desegregation exploited it.
Although people think of the Brown case as a single lawsuit, it comprised five separate class action cases filed against school districts in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. The cases were consolidated in 1952 after the NAACP brought in Howard University law professor and rising star attorney Thurgood Marshall to lead the legal effort. Marshall recruited the best lawyers in the country, including future federal district judges Jack Greenberg and Louis Pollack and other top law clerks, to argue against segregation. They used research from historians and psychologists, such as Kenneth Clark’s famous doll experiment, to build a solid legal case against segregation.
