Prior to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, racial segregation flourished in America. These segregation policies were largely made legitimate in 1896 with the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case upheld that as long as facilities were ÃÂequalÃÂ it was alright to segregate them under the fourteenth amendment. The resulting doctrine is known as ÃÂseparate but equal.ÃÂ However, facilities for non-whites remained largely inferior. Brown v. Board brought fourth this fact and sought to prove that segregation itself is unequal.
Southern States endorsed segregation of blacks and whites after federal troops withdrew from the region when the Civil War reconstruction was over in 1877. Racial segregation laws such as the Jim Crow laws stemmed from this. A group of well-to-do blacks in Louisiana decided to challenge one of these laws that separated blacks and whites on rail cars. Homer Plessy, who was only 1/8 black, was selected to do the job.
The Court that decided Plessy
English: Photo of the front of Plessy v. Ferguson ...
English: Plessy v Ferguson plaque, Press Street, N...He was arrested and charged for entering a whiteÃÂs only car on a train. Under Louisiana state law 1/8 black was still considered black. Plessy argued that segregated facilities violate the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution, which states that citizens should not have to give up any public rights or access. The state of Louisiana rebutted with the argument that the state is responsible for public safety, and that segregation was the will of the public. The state reasoned that separate but equal facilities would uphold majority (white) public opinion while providing protections required by the 14th Amendment.
Justice Henry B. Brown, a northerner, delivered the 7-1 verdict in favor of the state of Louisiana along with the courtÃÂs opinion. He noted that the states segregation laws did not violate the 13th or 14th amendments. Brown exclaimed that legislation...
Brown v. Board
For a college level essay, this is a frustratingly poor piece.
"brought fourth": Is that what follows "brought third"?
The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment does not mention "public rights or access."
The Supreme Court renders decisions, not verdicts.
The justice explained rather than exclaimed.
Brown v. Board was not the beginning of the civil rights movement; it was the climax of work that men such as Thurgood Marshall had begun some 35 years earlier, working meticulously through one case after another, building to Brown as the climax of their ongoing effort to desegregate public schools in America.
Finally, Brown did not overrule Plessy. Plesy is actually still good law. What Brown said was the in public education, separate is inherently unequal, so that Plessy does not apply.
The key weakness of this essay is that it attempts to rely on sources that I would consider questionable for a junior high school paper and uses them at the college level. There is a wealth of material on Brown v. Brown, much of it of truly superlative quality, readily available on-line and in virtually any library. Given the tremendous range of high quality material easily available, I fail to understand why anyone would rely on such simplistic sources as are used in this essay.
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