Brown v. Board of Education

Brown combined cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. In each, Black children had been denied admission to schools under laws requiring or allowing segregation. Lower courts had ruled against them under Plessy v. Ferguson, which permitted segregated facilities if they were equal. NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall had spent years attacking segregation in graduate and professional schools, and now challenged the principle itself.

Does the segregation of public education based solely on race violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Yes. Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren held that “separate but equal” facilities are inherently unequal and violate the Equal Protection Clause.

Warren reasoned that segregating children by race instilled a sense of inferiority that harmed the education and personal growth of Black children. He relied heavily on social science studies rather than precedent, and wrote in plain language because he believed all Americans needed to understand the decision. The Court scheduled further argument on how to carry out the ruling; in Brown II (1955) it instructed states to begin desegregating “with all deliberate speed.”

Despite two unanimous decisions, there was considerable resistance, and in 1957 President Eisenhower had to send federal troops to enforce the integration of Central High School in Little Rock. Some constitutional scholars criticized the decision for relying on social science rather than precedent; supporters of judicial restraint said the Court had written new law.

Civil rights activists were energized by Brown, and the Warren Court went on for fifteen years to issue decisions reshaping race relations, criminal justice, the political process, and church-state relations. The National Archives counts Brown among the milestone documents of American history.