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COURT DECISION

Brown v. Board of Education
1954

Full name: Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.

Click here to read the decision



JUSTICES IN MAJORITY
Hugo Black
Harold Hitz Burton
Tom C. Clark
William O. Douglas
Felix Frankfurter
Robert H. Jackson
Sherman Minton
Stanley Forman Reed
Earl Warren

Note: Court justices do not represent any political party. The color of each judge's name represents the political party of the president who appointed the judge.

Click here for a list of all Supreme Court justices



Related Issues

Discrimination


What was this case about

The Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for a state to maintain public schools that are segregated by race.

"Separate" cannot be "equal"

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the unanimous decision that schools had changed since the end of the Civil War, when white children were educated mostly in private groups, rather than in public schools which eventually become predominant.

Warren wrote...
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.

...To separate (children of color) 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 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.

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