One’s in a while the breakthrough, political or social, as in our case, or otherwise that totally changes the society, allow us to move forward and achieve more. Brown vs. Board of Education case basically destroyed the division between the colored people NAACP and white population of the United States of America when it was about education or any educational instances. The years of 50 and 60 became the most struggled for a fair treatment of the society among all the people and this case is highlight brightest this era in the brightest way.
The Backstory
One of the major features of the relationship between races in the US of the primary half of the 20th century was racial segregation. African Americans were isolated from the white population. They had separate bus seats, separate sidewalks and even separate drinking place. This segregation also touched public education and people of different races were attending different educational establishments. And many laws as the famous Fourteenth amendment as well as the 1890 segregation law were supposed to grant equality of quality of life of American citizens regardless of the skin color this equality was only on paper. Black oriented schools were severely lacking in virtually every significant aspect: including the presences of skillful teachers. But this was about to come to an end in the 1950 once UNESCO began strongly condemning racism and question the state of race relations in the US.
The Process of the Case
The Board of Education located in Topeka faced a class action suit signed by a group of activists, determined to end segregation by racial status as public educational establishments. The group was led by an African American pastor named Oliver L. Brown, and the student behind a major high school revolt Barbara Rose Johns (the process was named after the former). The rest of the members consisted of parents whose kids were denied a decent education and good citizens who desired fairness in their great country. Lawsuit was filled in early 1951, signifying what was destined to be one of the most monumental events in the contemporary American history.
But the success was not immediate. During the first hearing the judges, while admitting certain negative effects of the segregation on African American Children, denied the inequality that the group was stating, going as far as saying that the quality of stuff and material in black oriented and white oriented school was basically identical. By the end of the next year the major break in the case, giving Brown and other 12 plaintiffs a slight edge. This was due to really unusual pretext. In the age of political world-wide instability and the Cold War between the States and the USSR, racism and segregation didn’t really paint a flattering picture of American people. The case was reheard for the final time in 1953 then putting the case on hold before the unanimous opinion was voiced one year later on May 5th.
The Results and legacy
The outcome turned out to be in favor of the Brown team, as segregation was overruled throughout the whole state of Kansas. Any discrimination on the basis of skin color was deemed to be illegal from that moment. The outcome of the case for the start had a local influence only, it had some sort of the “snowball effect” as more and more states began accepting these lows which allowed African American kids get a decent education all over the country.
The influence of this monumental case is visible to this very date. Thanks to the struggle of concision citizens who wanted the best for the future generation, the USA got closer to that future. And while race relation is still a relevant topic in the USA, a lot of great work on fairness was done and the contribution of this case should never be overestimated.
