The plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education sought to strike down a Kansas state law that permitted racial segregation in public elementary schools in certain cities, specifically Kansas General Statute 72-1724 (1949).
Understanding the Kansas Law and Its Impact
At the heart of the landmark Supreme Court case was the challenge to state-sanctioned segregation in public education. While Kansas law did not mandate statewide segregation, it allowed cities of a certain size (like Topeka, with a population over 15,000) to maintain separate schools for Black and white children. This statute, though permissive rather than mandatory, effectively enabled and upheld the discriminatory practice of "separate but equal," which the plaintiffs argued was inherently unequal.
- The Specific Statute: The law in question was Kansas General Statute 72-1724 (1949).
- Its Provisions: This statute authorized cities of the first class (those with populations exceeding 15,000) to establish separate elementary schools based on race.
- The Topeka Context: In Topeka, this law meant that while some schools were integrated, many elementary schools remained segregated, forcing Black children to attend separate facilities that were often inferior.
Why the Law Was Challenged
The plaintiffs, led by Oliver Brown whose daughter Linda had to walk a significant distance and cross dangerous train tracks to reach her segregated Black school, while a white school was much closer to her home, argued that this segregation violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The core arguments against the Kansas law and similar statutes in other states included:
- Equal Protection Clause: The segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
- Inherent Inequality: Even if facilities were deemed "equal" in terms of physical resources, the act of segregating children by race created a sense of inferiority among Black children, harming their educational and psychological development. This concept was famously summarized by the phrase "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
The Supreme Court's Decision
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling delivered by Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared state-sanctioned segregation of public schools unconstitutional. This historic decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, fundamentally overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) as it applied to public education. The Court found that segregation in public education indeed violated the Fourteenth Amendment, paving the way for desegregation efforts across the United States.
