brown vs board of education newspaper articles 1954

Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated

The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that “separate but equal” has no place in education.

The US Supreme Court’s decision in the case known colloquially as Brown v. Board of Education found that the “[t]he ‘separate but equal ’ doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537, has no place in the field of public education.” The Plessy case, decided in 1896, had found that the segregation laws which created “separate but equal” accommodations for Black Americans, specific to transportation but applicable generally, were not a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Segregation in education had been challenged throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and rulings in a number coalesced to propel Brown to the level of the Supreme Court to address segregation in all public schools.

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Below is an annotation of the opinion, with relevant scholarship covering the legal, social and education history leading up to and after the decision. As always, the supporting research is free to read and download.

The red J indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR . ____________________________________________________________________________

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954) (USSC+)

Argued December 9, 1952

Reargued December 8, 1953

Decided May 17, 1954

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS*

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment —even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities , even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal.

(e) The “separate but equal” doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537, has no place in the field of public education.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.

In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 US 537 . Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case , the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools.

The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not “equal” and cannot be made “equal,” and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented, the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court.

Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.

An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment’s history with respect to segregated schools is the status of public education at that time. In the South, the movement toward free common schools, supported by general taxation, had not yet taken hold . Education of white children was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences, as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states, and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education.

In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of “separate but equal” did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson , supra, involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. County Board of Education , 175 US 528 , and Gong Lum v. Rice , 275 US 78 , the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada , 305 US 337 ; Sipuel v. Oklahoma , 332 US 631; Sweatt v. Painter , 339 US 629; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 US 637 . In none of these cases was it necessary to reexamine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter , supra, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education.

In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter , there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other “tangible” factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.

In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship . Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race , even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In Sweatt v. Painter , supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school.” In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: “…his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.” Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law , for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system .

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson , this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal . Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity . On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question—the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 15, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954.

It is so ordered.

* Together with No. 2, Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, argued December 9–10, 1952, reargued December 7–8, 1953; No. 4, Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al. , on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued December 10, 1952, reargued December 7–8, 1953, and No. 10, Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al. , on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Delaware, argued December 11, 1952, reargued December 9, 1953.

[Transcript available from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education ]

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Brown v. Board of Education

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Separate But Equal Doctrine 

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws —and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown , was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment , which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . 

Thurgood Marshall , the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren , then governor of California .

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II ), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”

Though well intentioned, the Court’s actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the “ Little Rock Nine ”— were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board didn’t achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent  civil rights movement  in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr .), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 .

Runyon v. McCrary Extends Policy to Private Schools

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary , ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation’s public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education , the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation’s school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts . Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press). Cass Sunstein, “Did Brown Matter?” The New Yorker , May 3, 2004. Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org . Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute , April 17, 2014.

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Educator Resources

Brown v. Board of Education

The Supreme Court's opinion in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 legally ended decades of racial segregation in America's public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement. Read more...

Primary Sources

Links go to DocsTeach , the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

Dissenting opinion in Briggs v. Elliott in which Judge Waties Waring opposed the District Court ruling that "separate but equal" schools were not in violation of the 14th amendment – he presented arguments that would later be used by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas , 6/21/1951

View in National Archives Catalog

English class at Moton High School , a school for Black students, one of several photographs entered as evidence in the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia , which was one of five cases that the Supreme Court consolidated under Brown v. Board of Education , ca. 1951

Order of Argument in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka during which attorneys reargued the five cases that the Supreme Court heard collectively and consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education , 12/1953

Page 11 of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling of 5/17/1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools violated the 14th Amendment, marking the end of the "separate but equal" precedent

Page 3 of a letter from President Eisenhower to E. E. "Swede" Hazlett in which the President expressed his belief that the new Warren court would be very moderate on the issue of segregation, 10/23/1954

Judgment of May 31, 1955, in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) – a year after the ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional – directing that schools be desegregated "with all deliberate speed"

• Brown v. Board of Education Timeline
• Biographies of Key Figures
• Related Primary Sources:  Photographs from the Dorothy Davis Case

Teaching Activities

The "Rights in America" page on DocsTeach includes primary sources and document-based teaching activities related to how individuals and groups have asserted their rights as Americans. It includes topics such as segregation, racism, citizenship, women's independence, immigration, and more.

Additional Background Information

While the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery, it wasn't until three years later, in 1868, that the 14th Amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including due process and equal protection of the laws. These two amendments, as well as the 15th Amendment protecting voting rights, were intended to eliminate the last remnants of slavery and to protect the citizenship of Black Americans.

In 1875, Congress also passed the first Civil Rights Act, which held the "equality of all men before the law" and called for fines and penalties for anyone found denying patronage of public places, such as theaters and inns, on the basis of race. However, a reactionary Supreme Court reasoned that this act was beyond the scope of the 13th and 14th Amendments, as these amendments only concerned the actions of the government, not those of private citizens. With this ruling, the Supreme Court narrowed the field of legislation that could be supported by the Constitution and at the same time turned the tide against the civil rights movement.

By the late 1800s, segregation laws became almost universal in the South where previous legislation and amendments were, for all practical purposes, ignored. The races were separated in schools, in restaurants, in restrooms, on public transportation, and even in voting and holding office. 

Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson . Homer Plessy, a Black man from Louisiana, challenged the constitutionality of segregated railroad coaches, first in the state courts and then in the U. S. Supreme Court.

The high court upheld the lower courts, noting that since the separate cars provided equal services, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was not violated. Thus, the "separate but equal" doctrine became the constitutional basis for segregation. One dissenter on the Court, Justice John Marshall Harlan, declared the Constitution "color blind" and accurately predicted that this decision would become as baneful as the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857.

In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was officially formed to champion the modern Civil Rights Movement. In its early years its primary goals were to eliminate lynching and to obtain fair trials for Black Americans. By the 1930s, however, the activities of the NAACP began focusing on the complete integration of American society. One of their strategies was to force admission of Black Americans into universities at the graduate level where establishing separate but equal facilities would be difficult and expensive for the states.

At the forefront of this movement was Thurgood Marshall, a young Black lawyer who, in 1938, became general counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund. Significant victories at this level included Gaines v. University of Missouri in 1938, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma in 1948, and Sweatt v. Painter in 1950. In each of these cases, the goal of the NAACP defense team was to attack the "equal" standard so that the "separate" standard would in turn become susceptible.

Five Cases Consolidated under Brown v. Board of Education

By the 1950s, the NAACP was beginning to support challenges to segregation at the elementary school level. Five separate cases were filed in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware: 

• Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al.
• Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R.W. Elliott, et al.
• Dorothy E. Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al.
• Spottswood Thomas Bolling et al. v. C. Melvin Sharpe et al.
• Francis B. Gebhart et al. v. Ethel Louise Belton et al.

While each case had its unique elements, all were brought on the behalf of elementary school children, and all involved Black schools that were inferior to white schools. Most importantly, rather than just challenging the inferiority of the separate schools, each case claimed that the "separate but equal" ruling violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The lower courts ruled against the plaintiffs in each case, noting the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of the United States Supreme Court as precedent. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education , the Federal district court even cited the injurious effects of segregation on Black children, but held that "separate but equal" was still not a violation of the Constitution. It was clear to those involved that the only effective route to terminating segregation in public schools was going to be through the United States Supreme Court.

In 1952 the Supreme Court agreed to hear all five cases collectively. This grouping was significant because it represented school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one. Thurgood Marshall, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs (he argued the Briggs case), and his fellow lawyers provided testimony from more than 30 social scientists affirming the deleterious effects of segregation on Black and white children. These arguments were similar to those alluded to in the Dissenting Opinion of Judge Waites Waring in Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R. W. Elliott, Chairman, et al . (shown above).

These [social scientists] testified as to their study and researches and their actual tests with children of varying ages and they showed that the humiliation and disgrace of being set aside and segregated as unfit to associate with others of different color had an evil and ineradicable effect upon the mental processes of our young which would remain with them and deform their view on life until and throughout their maturity....They showed beyond a doubt that the evils of segregation and color prejudice come from early training...it is difficult and nearly impossible to change and eradicate these early prejudices however strong may be the appeal to reason…if segregation is wrong then the place to stop it is in the first grade and not in graduate colleges. 

The lawyers for the school boards based their defense primarily on precedent, such as the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, as well as on the importance of states' rights in matters relating to education.

Realizing the significance of their decision and being divided among themselves, the Supreme Court took until June 1953 to decide they would rehear arguments for all five cases.

The arguments were scheduled for the following term. The Court wanted briefs from both sides that would answer five questions, all having to do with the attorneys' opinions on whether or not Congress had segregation in public schools in mind when the 14th amendment was ratified.

The Order of Argument (shown above) offers a window into the three days in December of 1953 during which the attorneys reargued the cases. The document lists the names of each case, the states from which they came, the order in which the Court heard them, the names of the attorneys for the appellants and appellees, the total time allotted for arguments, and the dates over which the arguments took place.

Briggs v. Elliott

The first case listed, Briggs v. Elliott , originated in Clarendon County, South Carolina, in the fall of 1950. Harry Briggs was one of 20 plaintiffs who were charging that R.W. Elliott, as president of the Clarendon County School Board, violated their right to equal protection under the fourteenth amendment by upholding the county's segregated education law. Briggs featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs from some of the nation's leading child psychologists, such as Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose famous doll study concluded that segregation negatively affected the self-esteem and psyche of African-American children. Such testimony was groundbreaking because on only one other occasion in U.S. history had a plaintiff attempted to present such evidence before the Court.

Thurgood Marshall, the noted NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court Justice, argued the Briggs case at the District and Federal Court levels. The U.S. District Court's three-judge panel ruled against the plaintiffs, with one judge dissenting, stating that "separate but equal" schools were not in violation of the 14th amendment. In his dissenting opinion (shown above), Judge Waties Waring presented some of the arguments that would later be used by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas . The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia

Marshall also argued the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, case at the Federal level. Originally filed in May of 1951 by plaintiff's attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, the Davis case, like the others, argued that Virginia's segregated schools were unconstitutional because they violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. And like the Briggs case, Virginia's three-judge panel ruled against the 117 students who were identified as plaintiffs in the case. (For more on this case, see  Photographs from the Dorothy Davis Case .)

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Listed third in the order of arguments, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was initially filed in February of 1951 by three Topeka area lawyers, assisted by the NAACP's Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg. As in the Briggs case, this case featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs that segregation had a harmful effect on the psychology of African-American children. While that testimony did not prevent the Topeka judges from ruling against the plaintiffs, the evidence from this case eventually found its way into the wording of the Supreme Court's May 17, 1954 opinion. The Court concluded that:

To separate them [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.

Bolling v. Sharpe

Because Washington, D.C., is a Federal territory governed by Congress and not a state, the Bolling v. Sharpe case was argued as a fifth amendment violation of "due process." The fourteenth amendment only mentions states, so this case could not be argued as a violation of "equal protection," as were the other cases. When a District of Columbia parent, Gardner Bishop, unsuccessfully attempted to get 11 African-American students admitted into a newly constructed white junior high school, he and the Consolidated Parents Group filed suit against C. Melvin Sharpe, president of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia. Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP's special counsel, former dean of the Howard University School of Law, and mentor to Thurgood Marshall, took up the Bolling case.

With Houston's health already failing in 1950 when he filed suit, James Nabrit, Jr. replaced Houston as the original attorney. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court on appeal, George E.C. Hayes had been added as an attorney for the petitioners, beside James Nabrit, Jr. According to the Court, due to the decision in Plessy , "the plaintiffs and others similarly situated" had been "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment," therefore, segregation of America's public schools was unconstitutional.

Belton v. Gebhart

The last case listed in the order of arguments, Belton v. Gebhart , was actually two nearly identical cases (the other being Bulah v. Gebhart ), both originating in the state of Delaware in 1952. Ethel Belton was one of the parents listed as plaintiffs in the case brought in Claymont, while Sarah Bulah brought suit in the town of Hockessin, Delaware. While both of these plaintiffs brought suit because their African-American children had to attend inferior schools, Sarah Bulah's situation was unique in that she was a white woman with an adopted Black child, who was still subject to the segregation laws of the state. Local attorney Louis Redding, Delaware's only African-American attorney at the time, originally argued both cases in Delaware's Court of Chancery. NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg assisted Redding. Belton/Bulah v. Gebhart was argued at the Federal level by Delaware's attorney general, H. Albert Young.

Supreme Court Rehears Arguments

Reargument of the Brown v. Board of Education cases at the Federal level took place December 7-9, 1953. Throngs of spectators lined up outside the Supreme Court by sunrise on the morning of December 7, although arguments did not actually commence until one o'clock that afternoon. Spottswood Robinson began the argument for the appellants, and Thurgood Marshall followed him. Virginia's Assistant Attorney General, T. Justin Moore, followed Marshall, and then the court recessed for the evening.

On the morning of December 8, Moore resumed his argument, followed by his colleague, J. Lindsay Almond, Virginia's Attorney General. Following this argument, Assistant United States Attorney General J. Lee Rankin, presented the U.S. government's amicus curiae brief on behalf of the appellants, which showed its support for desegregation in public education. In the afternoon, Robert Carter began arguments in the Kansas case, and Paul Wilson, Attorney General for the state of Kansas, followed him in rebuttal.

On December 9, after James Nabrit and Milton Korman debated Bolling , and Louis Redding, Jack Greenberg, and Delaware's Attorney General, H. Albert Young argued Gebhart , the Court recessed. The attorneys, the plaintiffs, the defendants, and the nation waited five months and eight days to receive the unanimous opinion of Chief Justice Earl Warren's court, which declared, "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."

The Warren Court

In September 1953, President Eisenhower had appointed Earl Warren, governor of California, as the new Supreme Court chief justice. Eisenhower believed Warren would follow a moderate course of action toward desegregation. His feelings regarding the appointment are detailed in the closing paragraphs of a letter he wrote to E. E. "Swede" Hazlett, a childhood friend (shown above). On the issue of segregation, Eisenhower believed that the new Warren court would "be very moderate and accord a maximum initiative to local courts."

In his brief to the Warren Court that December, Thurgood Marshall described the separate but equal ruling as erroneous and called for an immediate reversal under the 14th Amendment. He argued that it allowed the government to prohibit any state action based on race, including segregation in public schools. The defense countered this interpretation pointing to several states that were practicing segregation at the time they ratified the 14th Amendment. Surely they would not have done so if they had believed the 14th Amendment applied to segregation laws. The U.S. Department of Justice also filed a brief; it was in favor of desegregation but asked for a gradual changeover.

Over the next few months, the new chief justice worked to bring the splintered Court together. He knew that clear guidelines and gradual implementation were going to be important considerations, as the largest concern remaining among the justices was the racial unrest that would doubtless follow their ruling. 

The Supreme Court Ruling

Finally, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous opinion: school segregation by law was unconstitutional (shown above). Arguments were to be heard during the next term to determine exactly how the ruling would be imposed.

Just over one year later, on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, now referred to as Brown II (also shown above). It instructed states to begin desegregation plans "with all deliberate speed." Warren employed careful wording in order to ensure backing of the full Court in his official judgment.

The Brown decision was a watershed in American legal and civil rights history because it overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine first articulated in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. By overturning Plessy , the Court ended America's 58-year-long practice of legal racial segregation and paved the way for the integration of America's public school systems.

Despite two unanimous decisions and careful, if not vague, wording, there was considerable resistance to the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education . In addition to the obvious disapproving segregationists were some constitutional scholars who felt that the decision went against legal tradition by relying heavily on data supplied by social scientists rather than precedent or established law. Supporters of judicial restraint believed the Court had overstepped its constitutional powers by essentially writing new law.

However, minority groups and members of the Civil Rights Movement were buoyed by the Brown decision even without specific directions for implementation. Proponents of judicial activism believed the Supreme Court had appropriately used its position to adapt the basis of the Constitution to address new problems in new times. The Warren Court stayed this course for the next 15 years, deciding cases that significantly affected not only race relations, but also the administration of criminal justice, the operation of the political process, and the separation of church and state.

Parts of this text were adapted from an article written by Mary Frances Greene, a teacher at Marie Murphy School in Wilmette, IL.

The New York Times

The learning network | may 17, 1954 | supreme court declares school segregation unconstitutional in brown v. board of education.

May 17, 1954 | Supreme Court Declares School Segregation Unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education

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On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.

The decision overturned the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the court ruled that segregation laws were constitutional if equal facilities were provided to whites and blacks. Segregation was therefore justified under the doctrine “separate but equal,” but in few cases were segregated facilities actually equal. The disparity was particularly clear in public schools, where the amount of financing and the standard of education for all-black schools lagged far behind all-white schools.

In 1951, the NAACP recruited families from Topeka, Kan., to take part in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of school segregation. The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had a daughter who was forced to take a bus to an all-black school rather than attend the all-white school blocks from her house. The case was combined with similar cases from other parts of the country and argued before the Supreme Court by a team of NAACP lawyers headed by the future justice Thurgood Marshall. The New York Times summarized the NAACP’s case: “Their main thesis was that segregation, of itself, was unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment, which was adopted July 28, 1868, was intended to wipe out the last vestige of inequality between the races, the Negro side argued. … The Negroes also asserted that segregation had a psychological effect on pupils of the Negro race and was detrimental to the educational system as a whole.”

The defense argued that there was nothing in the Constitution outlawing segregation and that therefore it was a matter for the states to decide. The court, in a 9 to 0 decision, sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that segregation violated the clause of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing that states could not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In the most famous comment on the case, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared, “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

In a separate 1955 case that became known as Brown II, the court ruled that school districts in the 17 states that required segregation and the four that allowed it (including Kansas) integrate their school systems “with all deliberate speed.” The ambiguity of the phrase encouraged many school districts to strongly resist integration, often by shutting down public schools and financing private schools (which were not affected by Brown) for white students. In some places, it took more than 10 years for public schools to become integrated.

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Even after the implementation of Brown, many schools remained virtually segregated because of neighborhood patterns. In the 1970s, some school districts sought — and some were forced by courts — to achieve a racial balance in schools using tactics like busing students to schools outside their neighborhood. However, in 2007, a divided Supreme Court ruled that public schools “cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race.”

In January 2012, The Times reported on a study by the Manhattan Institute that found that segregation in U.S. neighborhoods had greatly declined and that “the nation’s cities are more racially integrated than at any time since 1910.” While, as the article noted, the findings were generally accepted by a number of experts, some argued that the decline in busing to achieve racial integration has resulted in some public schools that are more segregated than before.

What are your thoughts on the evolution of integration in the United States since Brown? How do you think we should consider the issue of continued school segregation in the context of increased urban integration? Why?

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Yes, it was 1954 that the Supreme Court declared school segregation was unconstitutional. Please tell me how Louisiana can still separate boys and girls in there schools here. I have lived in other States and there is not anymore Boys Academy or Girls Academy. The girls schools here do not even have equal rights when it come to getting to have any kind of sports. There are many other reasons but first how can they do this?

Very useful for my school project

An Overlooked Historical Fact about Brown v. Bd of Education The May 16 article, discussing how the decision in Brown v. Bd of Education impacted on the First Lady, “The Decision That Helped Shape Michelle Obama,” overlooked a crucial and critical historical fact.  Brown v. Bd of Education actually began with a school bus in Calarendon County, South Carolina.  (See Chapter 1, “Simple Justice” by Richard Kluger.)   Levi Pearson and three other individuals were seeking money to pay for gasoline for the school bus they and others in their community had privately purchased to transport black children to their segregated school.  Their children had been walking 8 to 9 miles one way to get to their school, while white children were passing them on the free public school buses.  Pearson volunteered to be the lead plaintiff in Levi Pearson v Clarendon County Bd of Education, signed by attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Harold Boulware.  Mr. Levi, posthumously, received the Congressional Gold Medal on Sept. 8, 2004 for his courage to stand up and bring the first desegregation law suit that eventually became, Briggs v. Elliott, and which subsequently became Brown v. Bd of Education.   We should never forget those who had the courage to stand up and be counted when such an act could result in their death.

I have a question: What landmark did the supreme court declare that the segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment? This is a church assignment that we have to do, but we can use the internet…

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1954: brown v. board of education.

On May 17, 1954, in a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional. The decision dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public schools and Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of African Americans, particularly in the South.

Segregation in Schools

Naacp challenges segregation in court, separate, but equal has 'no place', brown v board quick facts.

What is it? A landmark Supreme Court case.

Significance: Ended 'Separate, but equal,' desegregated public schools.

Date: May 17, 1954

Associated Sites: Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site; US Supreme Court Building

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Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park , Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

Last updated: July 12, 2023

70 years later, 1 in 3 Black people say integration didn’t help Black students

Landmark Brown. v. Board Supreme Court decision is revered, but Post-Ipsos poll shows mixed feelings about how to address today’s school segregation

Seventy years after the Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision outlawing school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education ranks as perhaps the court’s most venerated decision. A Washington Post-Ipsos survey shows it is overwhelmingly popular.

That’s the simple part. Most everything else related to the decision — and to school segregation itself — is complex.

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say more should be done to integrate schools across the nation — a figure that has steadily climbed from 30 percent in 1973 and is now at its apex. But a deeper look into the views of both Black and White people shows skepticism about the success of Brown and mixed messages about how to move forward.

In its unanimous decision in Brown , the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” combining five cases in which Black students and their schools had far fewer resources than their White peers — longer commutes, lower-quality classes, overcrowding, fewer opportunities and less money. Yet 1 in 3 Black Americans now say integration has failed to improve the education of Black students, a companion Post-Ipsos survey of Black Americans finds.

Today, about half of Black adults favor letting children attend neighborhood schools, even if it means most students would be of the same race — which, given housing patterns, is often the case.

White Americans also sometimes hold conflicting views. Nine in 10 Whites say they support the Brown decision, and nearly 2 in 3 say more needs to be done to integrate schools throughout the nation. Nonetheless, large segments of the White population oppose strategies that would help make that a reality. Nearly 8 in 10 White adults say it is better for children to go to neighborhood schools over diverse ones.

“The Brown decision speaks to our highest ideals as a nation. It’s who we say we want to be as a country,” said Stefan Lallinger, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes school integration, whose grandfather was part of the team of civil rights attorneys who appeared before the Supreme Court in the Brown case. “Where the rubber meets the road is where people’s personal decisions about where to send their kids to school clash with those ideals.”

The decision, which was issued 70 years ago Friday, continues to hold a special place in American history. On Thursday, President Biden marked the anniversary by meeting with some of the surviving plaintiffs and their families from the five lawsuits that were consolidated into the Brown decision. On Friday, he addressed an NAACP event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington marking the milestone.

“The Brown decision proves a simple idea. We learn better when we learn together,” Biden said.

The Brown decision focused on the value of mixing children of different races. But for many integration activists — then and now — the case is about a path to fair and equitable educational resources. Those legal battles continue.

Today’s complex views about schools and integration come amid persistent segregation that has risen in recent decades, changes in the legal landscape and the complicated dynamics of education and race in America today.

Because of Brown , school officials may no longer deliberately separate students by race — but under more recent Supreme Court orders, they aren’t allowed to deliberately mix them by race either. Integration advocates today have stopped looking to the federal courts for help and are pursuing state lawsuits instead. And some Black leaders have concluded that the answer is not integration at all but more money and more opportunity for high-poverty schools serving students of color.

“It never worked the way it was supposed to,” said Candace Northern, 43, of Sacramento, who is Black. She had a mixed experience with integration as a child growing up in the area. Now, as mother to four children who went to or will attend public schools, she sees how the system keeps most poor students of color concentrated in certain schools and wealthy, mostly White students in others.

“The intention behind [ Brown ] was good, but it really didn’t make sense to integrate the schools if you were still going to have separate neighborhoods and then only give the resources to the rich people,” she said. “It was more of an appeasement — ‘Let’s give these Black people something so they’ll shut up.’”

The evolution of a landmark ruling

The Brown decision was deeply polarizing, with massive resistance in the segregated South, where federal troops were at times required to escort Black students into what had been all-White schools, and violence in the North, too, as some White parents angrily protested busing orders that federal courts began issuing in the 1970s. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, a Gallup poll found 55 percent of Americans approved of Brown , while 40 percent disapproved.

But it succeeded in diversifying schools, with segregation rates falling through the 1970s and ’80s . Integration peaked around 1988; then courts began lifting their orders, and segregation began to rise again. A majority of Americans wrongly believe that schools are less racially segregated today than 30 years ago, The Post-Ipsos poll finds; in fact, by multiple measures, they are more segregated.

Jackie Beckley was raised in a small town in Kentucky and saw it all up close. Her father had to walk for miles and then travel by train to reach the nearest Black high school because the closer, White schools would not let Black children attend. Born in 1961, Beckley was among the first Black children to be admitted to White schools.

It wasn’t easy for her.

“You’re very much aware of the fact that you’re not like everybody else. You’re different,” she said. She remembered not being chosen as a cheerleader in elementary school despite her excellent gymnastic skills. She knew the reason and if there was any doubt, a White classmate said it out loud: “They didn’t pick her because she’s colored,” he told the class. Students were usually nice to her, she recalled, but if there was an argument, someone might hurl the n-word.

Over time, the Brown decision took on a revered status, one both liberals and conservatives cite as among the Supreme Court’s finest moments. By 1994, 87 percent of Americans approved of the ruling, and the new Post-Ipsos poll finds it just as popular today. But support is lower among Black people — about 8 in 10 say they approve of the decision. Asked if integration had improved the lives of Black students, 75 percent of White people say yes, but a smaller share — 63 percent — of Black people say the same — down from 70 percent in 1994.

Beckley understands why. Her own son attended an integrated school in suburban Columbus, Ohio, where she now lives, but she thinks more funding for schools serving students of color — “so they are educating the kids to the same standard” — is more important than creating diverse schools.

Isaac Heard, 74, is also skeptical after seeing the entire history of school integration unfold before him in Charlotte.

When Heard was growing up in Charlotte, his segregated neighborhood elementary school was so overcrowded that students attended in shifts — either morning or afternoon. “They had decided basically they weren’t going to build any more schools in the Black neighborhoods,” he recalled. His parents sent him to a private Catholic school instead.

Heard returned to public school in ninth grade and the experience was better, though still segregated. His school was economically if not racially diverse, and he recalls the teaching as excellent; in his senior year, four of his teachers had PhDs. He credited the talented Black women who had few career options other than teaching.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district did not fully desegregate until 1970, three years after Heard graduated and went off to Dartmouth College. But once it did, the district gained a reputation for running a successful busing program. In the 1990s, Heard’s own children attended the same district, and he said they received an excellent education.

“The biggest thing is they had role models, and resources were available,” he said. “If they were curious about something, they had access to it.”

Later, working in city planning in Charlotte, Heard saw things change again after the federal court order mandating desegregation was lifted in 1999 and the schools began to resegregate. While some wealthier Black families (including his own) now lived in diverse neighborhoods and attended racially diverse schools, lower-income Black and Hispanic families were concentrated in urban areas and their schools became segregated again .

Heard believes one answer is to spread affordable housing to wealthier neighborhoods, so the neediest students are spread out, but he said these proposals “raised the hackles in this community like you wouldn’t believe.”

Heard’s experience — segregation, integration, and partial segregation again — leaves him with mixed feelings about the impact of Brown . “There’s a generation of kids who really benefited from it, but it’s slowly receding in terms of its positive impact, particularly among lower-income populations,” he said.

A tangle of contradictions

The views of White Americans are also wrapped in contradictions. A wide majority says they support the Brown decision, but many oppose leading ideas for integration today.

Those include adding low-income housing in the suburbs and other high-income areas (43 percent opposed), redrawing boundaries to create more racially diverse districts (45 percent opposed) and requiring schools to bus some students to neighboring districts (70 percent opposed). Only one strategy enjoys support from a large majority (71 percent) — more regional magnet schools with specialized courses (24 percent of Whites are opposed).

Among Black Americans, there is majority support for all four strategies — with at least 7 in 10 backing the proposals for mixed-income housing, redrawing boundaries and magnet schools.

At the same time, nearly 8 in 10 White people say they support “letting students go to the local school in their community, even if it means that most of the students would be of the same race,” while 17 percent favor “transferring students to other schools to create more integration, even if it means that some students would have to travel out of their communities to go to school.”

Elaine Burkholder, 44, who is raising five children in a rural community in central Pennsylvania, did not hesitate when asked her views on Brown . “It was a good decision,” she said. “It’s definitely good to have integration, open the children up to different viewpoints and that sort of thing.”

She said she is not concerned about any segregation that persists today because the law is no longer barring children from going to school together.

“As long as you have the ability to move and stuff you can probably get your children into a decent school district,” she said. “It’s pretty well a personal choice at this point, where your children go to school.”

Burkholder, whose children attend a private Christian school, was not particularly concerned that some families cannot afford to move to another school district. “I’m a little more of a pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Burkholder said. “I like to see people working to get where they want to go.”

The way forward

The contradictions inherent in public opinion have given rise to conflicting strategies about what should come next.

David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City schools, the nation’s largest school system, who is Black, attended integrated schools in Queens as a child but does not see integration as the answer for children in New York City today. Today, 24 percent of the students in the city schools are Black, and 41 percent are Hispanic. Just 15 percent of students are White. He said the path to a better education for a student of color cannot be sitting next to a White student; there aren’t enough White students to go around.

“I do not believe Black kids need to go to school with White kids to get a good education. I fundamentally reject that,” he said in an interview.

Instead of integration, Banks favors directing more money and adding programs to high-poverty schools serving students of color and providing more opportunities for advanced coursework in low-income areas.

But others say students of color will never get what they need if so many are isolated in high-poverty school districts. A new generation of legal advocates is now targeting the boundary lines that separate school districts, which drive most of the racial and economic segregation today.

They’ve also shifted legal strategy. Supreme Court rulings issued in the years since Brown make success in federal courts unlikely, they say, so unlike their counterparts from past decades, they are focused on state courts.

A lawsuit in New Jersey is challenging district boundary lines based on a provision in the state constitution. The parties have been negotiating for months in hopes of reaching a settlement. Another case challenging segregation in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., schools has been working its way through the Minnesota courts for nearly a decade. A lawsuit in New York City relies on the state constitution to challenge admissions policies that place students into gifted and advanced programs, creating a two-tiered education system that hurts Black and Hispanic students.

A new organization called Brown’s Promise is looking for other potential lawsuits, possibly based on state constitutions that guarantee a “thorough and efficient” public education.

“Any meaningful definition of a ‘ thorough education’ has to mean learning to live, work and thrive in a multiracial community,” said Ary Amerikaner, co-founder of Brown’s Promise.

She pointed to research that shows the post- Brown integration years succeeded in raising achievement levels of Black students.

“We cannot keep concentrating poverty in a small number of districts and expecting the adults to work miracles,” she said. She said it’s worth fighting for more money for these schools — adding that a little more money probably won’t help, but a lot more would.

“But even that cannot create the sort of social capital that we know comes from access to communities that are historically more privileged.”

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll of 1,029 U.S. adults was conducted April 9-16 and included a partially overlapping sample of 1,331 non-Hispanic Black adults. The margin of sampling error among Americans overall and Black Americans is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points; among the 703 White Americans the margin of error is 3.9 points.

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Brown vs. Board of Education: Here’s what happened in 1954 courtroom

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E DITOR’S NOTE: On May 17, 1954, a hushed crowd of spectators packed the Supreme Court, awaiting word on Brown vs. Board of Education, a combination of five lawsuits brought by the NAACP’s legal arm to challenge racial segregation in public schools. The high court decided unanimously that “separate but equal” education denied black children their constitutional right to equal protection under the law, effectively removing a cornerstone that propped up Jim Crow, or state-sanctioned segregation of the races.

Associated Press reporter Herb Altschull chronicled the decision and what it meant for segregation, which in 1954 permeated many aspects of American life. Using the style and language of journalists of his era, including a reference to Asians as “Orientals,” Altschull captured the uncertainty hanging over a society on the brink of seismic change. H ere is Altschull’s compelling report.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the states of the nation do not have the right to separate Negro and white pupils in different public schools.

By a unanimous 9-0 vote, the high court held that such segregation of the races is unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Warren read the historic decision to a packed but hushed gallery of spectators nearly two years after Negro residents of four states and the District of Columbia went before the court to challenge the principle of segregation.

The ruling does not end segregation at once. Further hearings were set for this fall to decide how and when to end the practice of segregation. Thus a lengthy delay is likely before the decision is carried out.

Dean Acheson, secretary of State under former President Harry Truman, was in the courtroom to hear the ruling. He called it “great and statesmanlike.”

Atty. Gen. [Herbert] Brownell was also present. He declined comment immediately. Brownell and the Eisenhower administration, like Truman’s, opposed segregation.

For years 17 Southern and “border” states have imposed compulsory segregation on approximately two-thirds of the nation’s Negroes. Officials of some states already are on record as saying they will close the schools rather than permit them to be operated with Negro and white pupils in the same classrooms.

In its decision, the high court struck down the long-standing “separate but equal” doctrine first laid down by the Supreme Court in 1896 when it maintained that segregation was all right if equal facilities were made available for Negroes and whites.

Here is the heart of today’s decision as it deals with this hotly controverted doctrine:

“We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities?”

“We believe that it does.”

James C. Hagerty, presidential press secretary, told a news conference the White House would have no comment at this time. He noted that Warren’s opinion said formulation of specific decrees must await later hearings.

Gov. Herman Talmadge, one of the most outspoken supporters of segregation, hit back from Atlanta that the court’s decision had reduced the constitution to “a mere scrap of paper.”

“It has blatantly ignored all law and precedent and usurped from the Congress and the people the power to amend the Constitution and from the Congress the authority to make the laws of the land,” Talmadge said.

Thurgood Marshall, Negro attorney from New York who had argued the case against segregation last December, said he was highly pleased that the decision was unanimous and that the language used was unequivocal.

“Once the decision is made public to the South as well as to the North,” Marshall said, “The people will get together for the first time and work this thing out.”

He said he was not in any way fearful lest the final decree nibble away at the principles in the decision. Marshall said, too, he believes the people of the South will abide by the ruling. “The people of the South are just as law abiding as any other good citizens,” he said.

Marshall is a special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which has spearheaded the drive against segregation. He said NAACP people will meet this week to discuss “what we are going to do.”

Today’s decision was the first major ruling of the Supreme Court since Warren became chief justice last October, succeeding the late Fred Vinson.

The court confined its ruling to the question of the segregation of Negro public school pupils, but it obviously is applicable to the exclusion from public schools of any minority group -- Orientals, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and so on.

Today’s decision was the latest in a series of court rulings wiping out legal restrictions on Negroes.

In previous cases the Supreme Court had:

1. Ruled that colleges must admit Negroes to study professional courses not open to them in Negro colleges.

2. Ruled that Negroes may not be excluded from train and bus coaches operated in interstate travel.

3. Ruled that Negroes may not be barred from eating in restaurants in the District of Columbia.

The “separate but equal” doctrine was set forth in a 7-1 decision on May 18, 1896, in a case involving Homer Adolph Plessy, who was part Negro.

Plessy boarded a train for a ride from New Orleans to Covington, La., and took a seat in a coach assigned to white passengers in violation of a Louisiana law which required segregation of whites and Negroes on trains.

The conductor asked Plessy to leave the white coach but he refused. A policeman arrested Plessy and took him to jail in New Orleans.

That set off a vigorous legal battle in which the Louisiana Supreme Court eventually upheld the state law. Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States and the decision went against him.

Justice Henry Billings Brown, who wrote that decision, said the Louisiana law was not in conflict with the U.S. Constitution since Plessy was not refused the right to ride in trains so long as he stayed in a coach restricted to Negroes.

Thus grew up the philosophy of “separate but equal” facilities. Warren, in today’s decision, wrote that the Plessy case involved transportation, not public schools. Inasmuch as he called special attention to the distinction, it is apparent that the court is not now dismissing all forms of segregation.

Warren said that when the 14th Amendment was enacted, “education of Negroes was almost nonexistent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states.”

“Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences as well as in the business and professional world.”

Warren noted that in the early 1870s when cases dealing with segregation first went to the Supreme Court, “compulsory education was virtually unknown” and that for this reason the question of school segregation was unimportant.

After the 1896 decision, Warren wrote, American courts began using it as a basis for decisions on all matters dealing with separation of Negroes and whites.

But it was not until the present cases were brought before the court, Warren said, that the “separate but equal” doctrine was challenged insofar as it might deal with public school education.

Warren noted that the lower courts, in finding against Negro appellants on the basis of the 1896 decision, maintained that the Negro and white schools involved had, in fact, been equalized “with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers and other ‘tangible’ factors.”

But, the Chief Justice said, “our decision. cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.”

The Warren opinion recalled that in an earlier decision dealing with the question of whether Negroes should be admitted to graduate courses in segregated universities, the court had said this:

“To separate them (Negroes) from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

Reaction from Capitol Hill was swift and in some cases strongly critical.

Sen. [Richard] Russell of Georgia, leader of Southern Democrats in the Senate, termed the decision “a flagrant abuse of judicial power.” He said questions like that of segregation should be decided by the lawmakers, not the courts.

Other Southerners were plainly unhappy, but they did not go so far as Russell. Sen. [Marion Price] Daniel (D-Texas) said the verdict was “disappointing” and that he couldn’t see how the court could arrive at such a decision.

Sen. [Allen J.] Ellender (D-La.) said, “I am of course very much disappointed by this. But I don’t want to criticize the Supreme Court. It is bound to have a very great effect until we readjust ourselves to it.”

He said there would be “violent repercussions” if enforcement were ordered too quickly.

Rep. [Kenneth B.] Keating (R-NY), a strong backer of civil rights legislation, said “There is no doubt about the soundness of the court’s decision.”

Gov. William B. Umstead of North Carolina said in a statement put out by his office that he was “terribly disappointed.”

J.M. Hinton, South Carolina conference president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said:

“Christianity and democracy have been given a great place in America through the elimination of segregation in public school and communism has lost a talking point.”

The appeals from the four states - Kansas, Delaware, Virginia and South Carolina - challenged the legality of segregation on the ground that it violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The District of Columbia complaint alleged violation of the 5th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment, put through shortly after the end of the Civil War, was designed to reinforce the rights of the newly freed slaves. It said that no state may deprive any person of due process or equal rights under the law.

The 5th Amendment gives all persons involved in court cases dealing with federal matters the right to due process of law.

Actually, the court did not decide the question purely on the basis of these amendments.

Warren wrote that the court “cannot turn the clock back” to the enactment of the 14th Amendment in 1868 or the imposing of the “separate but equal” doctrine in 1896.

“We must consider public education,” Warren wrote, “In the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the nation. “

“Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.”

“Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments... It is the very foundation of good citizenship... In these days it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”

“Such an opportunity where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”

The court minced no words in applying the “equal rights” section of the 14th Amendment to the issue of school segregation. It said:

“We hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the action has been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

It disposed of the “due process” section in this way:

“This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the due process clause...”

That was for the cases of the four states. But in the District of Columbia case, the court applied the due process provisions of the 5th Amendment, saying:

“We hold that racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteed by the 5th Amendment to the Constitution.”

Warren’s opinion noted that enforcement of the court ruling raised “problems of considerable complexity.”

It was for this reason that the court ordered further arguments in the fall. Brownell and the attorneys general of all states where segregation is now permitted were invited to take part, so that appropriate decrees can be worked out.

Briefs must be filed by Oct. 1.

The decision was made public in a highly unusual manner. Normally, copies of Supreme Court rulings are given to reporters simultaneously with the start of their reading from the bench.

In this case, no copies were given out until after Warren had finished reading the opinion. Thus it was not until he was well into it was the full import of the court’s decision known— that segregation had been ruled unconstitutional.

No reason was announced for this departure from the usual practice.

The court had weighed the issues for a long time. The first arguments on the cases were held in December 1952. Rearguments were heard in December 1953, after the Eisenhower Administration took over.

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

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In Clash Over Affirmative Action, Both Sides Invoke Brown v. Board of Education

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday about admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina — and the meaning of a civil rights landmark.

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By Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday on the fate of affirmative action in higher education, the justices will be working in the looming shadow of a towering legal landmark: Brown v. Board of Education , the unanimous 1954 decision that said the Constitution prohibits racial segregation in public schools.

Both sides claim the mantle of Brown, which is widely thought to be the court’s finest moment. The challengers say the decision requires admissions policies to be colorblind, dooming race-conscious programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The universities respond that Brown meant to do away with a racial caste system that subjugated Black students, and that the decision surely allowed efforts to assemble varied student bodies to ensure educational diversity.

Brown’s singular status only deepened the debate over its meaning, Justin Driver , a law professor at Yale, said.

“Brown is the Mona Lisa of American constitutional law,” he said. “It is not only the court’s most scrutinized and most famous opinion, but its meaning also shifts when viewed from different angles.”

Both sides may have a point, Michael W. McConnell , a law professor at Stanford, said.

“The Brown opinion is profoundly ambiguous, and they are appealing to different aspects of the opinion, legitimately different aspects,” he said. “Is it a case about not assigning on the basis of race or is it a case about making sure that African American schoolchildren get a fair shake in education?”

The group challenging the two admissions programs, Students for Fair Admissions, or S.F.F.A., put Brown front and center in its briefs.

“Any discussion of racial classifications in education must start with Brown,” its lawyers wrote in May .

And here are the opening lines from a reply brief filed in August : “U.N.C.’s argument is not with S.F.F.A.; it is with Brown. That landmark decision fulfilled the 14th Amendment’s promise by requiring that ‘education … be made available to all on equal terms.’”

Lawyers for U.N.C. said that was a profound misreading of the decision. “Brown held that the arbitrary separation of students based on race violates equal protection,” they wrote . “Institutions like U.N.C. that seek to bring students of diverse backgrounds together are the rightful heirs to Brown’s legacy.”

In a brief for student and alumni groups at Harvard, lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the civil rights group that litigated Brown, wrote that the court would be playing with fire were it to adopt the challengers’ understanding of the decision.

“The Brown decision was one of the finest moments in this court’s history,” they wrote. “Yet, this court risks jeopardizing that legacy — and damaging its own legitimacy — should S.F.F.A. prevail in misconstruing one of its canonical decisions to dismantle decades of precedent that affirmed the legality of race-conscious admissions.”

The court in Brown held that segregated public schools denied Black students the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote.

Exactly what else the ruling and its reasoning required has long been the subject of debate. In 2007, for instance, the Supreme Court debated the meaning of Brown in a decision that limited the ability of public schools to take account of race to achieve integration, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 .

Only three justices serving then are still on the court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Along with Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016 , they all signed a plurality opinion adopting a colorblind understanding of Brown.

The parties “debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2007 for the plurality, “but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer.”

The chief justice quoted from the transcript of the 1952 argument in the case.

“We have one fundamental contention, which we will seek to develop in the course of this argument,” Robert L. Carter, a lawyer with the legal defense fund, said then, “and that contention is that no state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.”

Chief Justice Roberts added: “There is no ambiguity in that statement. And it was that position that prevailed in this court.”

S.F.F.A., the group challenging admissions policies, repeatedly cited a truncated version of Mr. Carter’s statement in its briefs, indicating that it represented the holding of the 2007 decision. “The court vindicated the promise of the 14th Amendment in Brown v. Board of Education,” one S.F.F.A. brief said , by “rejecting ‘any authority … to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities.’”

In an interview with The New York Times on the day the 2007 decision was issued, the lawyer who had made that statement, by then a 90-year-old senior federal judge in Manhattan, said the chief justice had gotten things backward.

“All that race was used for at that point in time was to deny equal opportunity to Black people,” Judge Carter, who died in 2012 , said of the 1950s. “It’s to stand that argument on its head to use race the way they use it now.”

Jack Greenberg, another lawyer who had worked on the Brown case, said on the same day that the chief justice’s interpretation was “preposterous.”

“The plaintiffs in Brown were concerned with the marginalization and subjugation of Black people,” Professor Greenberg said. “They said you can’t consider race, but that’s how race was being used.” Mr. Greenberg died in 2016 .

That understanding of Brown, articulated by the civil rights lawyers who won the case, may be overtaken by a more limited one when the Supreme Court decides the new cases, probably in late June. The court’s six-member conservative majority now includes three justices appointed by President Donald J. Trump.

The court has issued three major cases on the use of race in admissions decisions in higher education: University of California v. Bakke , in 1978; Grutter v. Bollinger , in 2003; and Fisher v. University of Texas , in 2016. All were closely divided and all sent the basic message that numerical racial quotas were forbidden but that a holistic approach, using race as one factor among many in the admissions process, was permissible.

The decisions allowed only a single justification for race-conscious admissions plans: creating educational diversity so that students of different backgrounds may learn from one another.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been among the lawyers who argued the Brown case, issued a partial dissent in the Bakke case, saying that Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.’s controlling opinion was too cramped in rejecting the use of race to remedy past discrimination.

“It must be remembered that, during most of the past 200 years, the Constitution as interpreted by this court did not prohibit the most ingenious and pervasive forms of discrimination against the Negro,” he wrote. “Now, when a state acts to remedy the effects of that legacy of discrimination, I cannot believe that this same Constitution stands as a barrier.”

In the Grutter decision, the majority endorsed Justice Powell’s approach. The challengers in the new cases ask the Supreme Court to overrule Grutter.

“Because Brown is our law,” S.F.F.A’s lawyers wrote, “Grutter cannot be.”

In its Supreme Court brief , lawyers for Harvard wrote that the three affirmative action cases rested on Brown. “Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher uphold Brown in every way,” they wrote. “Like Brown, those decisions relied on the overriding importance of education.”

The Biden administration, in a brief supporting the universities , urged the justices to reject what it said was a revisionist view of Brown.

“Nothing in Brown’s condemnation of laws segregating the races to perpetuate a caste system calls into question admissions policies adopted to promote greater integration and diversity,” the brief said. “And petitioner’s persistent attempts to equate this case with Brown trivialize the grievous legal and moral wrongs of segregation.”

But the challengers wrote that Brown must be read broadly to forbid consideration of race.

“Harvard and the United States trivialize Brown by trying to confine that foundational precedent to its facts,” lawyers for S.F.F.A. wrote, adding: “Surely Harvard doesn’t think that Brown would have been different if Southern schools had used a holistic policy that covertly reduced the number of Black students.”

At bottom, said Kenji Yoshino , a law professor at New York University, the debate over the meaning of Brown turns on how and why school officials take account of race.

“The segregationists believed in race-conscious policies that entrenched the subordination of Black Americans,” he said. “U.N.C.’s race-conscious policies, in stark contrast, seek to ameliorate that dehumanizing subordination. This has always been the crux of the affirmative action debate. Does the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause forbid racial classification itself or only racial classification that entrenches historical subordination?”

Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. More about Adam Liptak

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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Biden commemorates Brown v. Board of Education anniversary with White House meeting

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Reporting by Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman and Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Tom Hogue and Alistair Bell

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Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA's work was recognized with Deutsche Welle's "Freedom of Speech Award." Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA's “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure" award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists' "Breaking News" award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.

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Biden marks Brown v. Board of Education anniversary amid concerns over Black support

May 16, 2024 / 5:22 PM EDT / AP

President Biden marked this week's 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that struck down institutionalized racial segregation in public schools by welcoming plaintiffs and family members in the landmark case to the White House.

The Oval Office visit Thursday to commemorate the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate schools comes with Biden stepping up efforts to highlight his administration's commitment to racial equity.

The president courted Black voters in Atlanta and Milwaukee this week with a pair of Black radio interviews in which he promoted his record on jobs, health care and infrastructure and attacked Republican Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden is scheduled Friday to deliver remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and — along with Vice President Kamala Harris — meet with the leaders of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities. And the president on Sunday is set to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College, the historically Black college in Atlanta, and speak at an NAACP gala in Detroit.

During Thursday's visit by litigants and their families, the conversation was largely focused on honoring the plaintiffs and the ongoing battle to bolster education in Black communities, according to the participants.

"He commended them for changing our nation for the better and committed to continue his fight to move us closer to the promise of America," White House senior adviser Stephen Benjamin told reporters following the meeting.

Mr. Biden faces a difficult reelection battle in November and is looking to repeat his 2020 success with Black voters, a key bloc in helping him beat Trump. But the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research's polling from throughout Mr. Biden's time in office reveals a widespread sense of disappointment with his performance as president, even among some of his most stalwart supporters, including Black adults.

• Biden campaign ramps up outreach to Black voters in Wisconsin as some organizers worry about turnout

"I don't accept the premise that there's any erosion of Black support" for Biden, said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who took part in the Oval Office visit. "This election is not about candidate A vs. candidate B. It's about whether we have a functioning democracy or something less than that."

Among those who took part in the meeting were John Stokes, a Brown plaintiff; Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, Oliver Brown, was the lead plaintiff in the Brown case; and Adrienne Jennings Bennett, a plaintiff in Boiling v. Sharpe, which was argued at the same time and outlawed segregation of schools in Washington, DC. Plaintiffs and family members of litigants of five cases that were consolidated into the historic Brown case took part in the meeting.

The Brown decision struck down an 1896 decision that institutionalized racial segregation with so-called "separate but equal" schools for Black and white students, by ruling that such accommodations were anything but equal.

Brown Henderson said one of the meeting participants called on the president to make May 17, the day the decision was delivered, an annual federal holiday. She said Mr. Biden also recognized the courage of the litigants.

"He recognized that back in the fifties and the forties, when Jim Crow was still running rampant, that the folks that you see here were taking a risk when they signed on to be part of this case," she said. "Any time you pushed back on Jim Crow and segregation, you know, your life, your livelihood, your homes, you were taking a risk. He thanked them for taking that risk."

The announcement last month that Mr. Biden had accepted an invitation to deliver the Morehouse graduation address triggered peaceful student protests and calls for the university administration to cancel over the president's handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Mr. Biden in recent days dispatched Benjamin to meet with Morehouse students and faculty.

Benjamin told reporters Thursday that the situation in the Middle East was among the issues he discussed with students and faculty during the visit.

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Biden marks Brown v. Board of Education anniversary amid signs of erosion in Black voter support

President Joe Biden speaks at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies’ 30th annual gala, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Cheryl Brown Henderson, right, daughter of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Oliver Brown, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, following a meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision. Henderson is joined by, from left, NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff and veteran John Stokes. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Cheryl Brown Henderson, center, daughter of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Oliver Brown, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, after meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision. Henderson is joined by, from left, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff and veteran John Stokes, unidentified, and Nathaniel Briggs, son of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Harry Briggs Jr. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff and veteran John Stokes speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, following a meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

NAACP President Derrick Johnson, second from left, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, after meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision. Johnson is joined by, from left, Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff and veteran John Stokes, Nathaniel Briggs, son of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Harry Briggs Jr., and Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Oliver Brown. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden marked this week’s 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that struck down institutionalized racial segregation in public schools by welcoming plaintiffs and family members in the landmark case to the White House.

The Oval Office visit Thursday to commemorate the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate schools comes with Biden stepping up efforts to highlight his administration’s commitment to racial equity.

The president courted Black voters in Atlanta and Milwaukee this week with a pair of Black radio interviews in which he promoted his record on jobs, health care and infrastructure and attacked Republican Donald Trump.

Biden is scheduled Friday to deliver remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and — along with Vice President Kamala Harris — meet with the leaders of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities. And the president on Sunday is set to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College , the historically Black college in Atlanta, and speak at an NAACP gala in Detroit.

During Thursday’s visit by litigants and their families, the conversation was largely focused on honoring the plaintiffs and the ongoing battle to bolster education in Black communities, according to the participants.

“He commended them for changing our nation for the better and committed to continue his fight to move us closer to the promise of America,” White House senior adviser Stephen Benjamin told reporters following the meeting.

Biden faces a difficult reelection battle in November and is looking to repeat his 2020 success with Black voters, a key bloc in helping him beat Trump. But the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research’s polling from throughout Biden’s time in office reveals a widespread sense of disappointment with his performance as president, even among some of his most stalwart supporters, including Black adults.

“I don’t accept the premise that there’s any erosion of Black support” for Biden, said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who took part in the Oval Office visit. “This election is not about candidate A vs. candidate B. It’s about whether we have a functioning democracy or something less than that.”

Among those who took part in the meeting were John Stokes, a Brown plaintiff; Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, Oliver Brown, was the lead plaintiff in the Brown case; and Adrienne Jennings Bennett, a plaintiff in Boiling v. Sharpe, which was argued at the same time and outlawed segregation of schools in Washington, DC. Plaintiffs and family members of litigants of five cases that were consolidated into the historic Brown case took part in the meeting.

The Brown decision struck down an 1896 decision that institutionalized racial segregation with so-called “separate but equal” schools for Black and white students, by ruling that such accommodations were anything but equal.

Brown Henderson said one of the meeting participants called on the president to make May 17, the day the decision was delivered, an annual federal holiday. She said Biden also recognized the courage of the litigants.

“He recognized that back in the fifties and the forties, when Jim Crow was still running rampant, that the folks that you see here were taking a risk when they signed on to be part of this case,” she said. “Any time you pushed back on Jim Crow and segregation, you know, your life, your livelihood, your homes, you were taking a risk. He thanked them for taking that risk.”

The announcement last month that Biden had accepted an invitation to deliver the Morehouse graduation address triggered peaceful student protests and calls for the university administration to cancel over Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Biden in recent days dispatched Benjamin to meet with Morehouse students and faculty.

Benjamin told reporters Thursday that the situation in the Middle East was among the issues he discussed with students and faculty during the visit.