Plessy: Brown V. Board Of Education

In 1896, a supreme court case known as Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that the separation of whites and blacks into “separate but equal” public facilities, was fair and legal. Once formed, these separated schools were anything but equal, from both a quality of education, and a future opportunity aspect. However, in 1954 the Supreme Court overruled the previous decision made in 1896, in a case known as Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas.) The case involved a man named Oliver Brown, who was the father of a student who had been refused entry into one of Topeka, Kansas’ white schools. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that separating children into different schools according to race, violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. …show more content…
White facilities were generally superior to black facilities, and as a result, they were inequal. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to provide everyone with the same treatment and the same circumstances. The separated schools clearly did not provide equal circumstances to everyone, which is why the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Oliver Brown, and outlawed the segregation of public facilities within the United States. Naturally, such a drastic change was met with great resistance by some, and no resistance by others. Resistance was most common in the Southern United States, where even political leaders rejected the Supreme Court’s decision. A large portion of the American people protested the ruling almost immediately after it was passed, and for several years afterwards, because it was such an extreme change to a law that had been considered morally correct for such a long time. People believed there was nothing wrong with segregated schools, and were adamant that there was no feasible reason for their