Linda brown biography board of education (1954)

Board of Education, an educator, and a lifelong activist. Her father, Oliver, was a railroad welder and local pastor, and her mom, Leola, was a homemaker. The family lived in a one-story, five-bedroom stone house near the Rock Island switching yard, a busy train junction. While Topeka struggled with racial tensions, it had fewer Jim Crow laws than other parts of the country.

The Browns—a Black family—lived in a mostly integrated neighborhood. Linda and her two younger sisters grew up playing with kids from different backgrounds. Even so, a Kansas law allowed cities with populations of over 15, people, like Topeka, to segregate their elementary schools. Linda attended the all-Black Monroe Elementary School, while her white friends from the neighborhood attended Sumner.

Monroe was 21 blocks away from the Brown home. To get there, Linda had to leave the house 80 minutes before class started, walk several blocks, traverse through the dangerous railroad switchyard, cross a busy street, and finally board a bus to take her the remaining two miles. In contrast, Sumner Elementary, an all-white school, was four blocks away.

They hoped to challenge the state law that allowed segregated ele mentary schools. He joined a group of 12 other plaintiffs representing a total of 20 children. They formed a plan: Each parent would walk to the ne arest all-white elementary school and attempt to register their child. He met with the principal while Linda waited in the main office, who worried over the sounds of their rising voices.

As expected, the principal refused to register Linda at Sumner. The other 12 parents went to their local all-white schools and, as anticipated, were met with the same result. Oliver Brown became the lead plaintiff. A three-judge panel unanimously ruled in favor of the board, reasoning that the physical facilities and other measurable factors between the white and Black elementary schools were equal.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal, consolidating Brown with four other school segregation cases from around the country Briggs v. Elliott, Bolling v. Sharpe, Davis v. During this time, Oliver became the pastor of a church in the northern part of Topeka, and the family moved. Born in , [5] Brown grew up in a perhaps surprisingly diverse neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas.

For Brown and the other African-American children, this meant taking a bus across town while the white children went to Sumner School, just a few blocks from the neighborhood. In an interview with NPR, Mrs. Brown recalled how she tried to explain it to Linda. In the simplest and most honest of terms, Mrs. In the reargument, heard from December , , the Court requested that both sides discuss "the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in The Court had to make its decision based not on whether or not the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had desegregated schools in mind when they wrote the amendment in , but based on whether or not desegregated schools deprived black children of equal protection of the law when the case was decided, in The Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools across America.

The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time.

Linda brown biography board of education (1954)

It did, however, declare the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Samuel Alito. Marcia Clark. Robert Shapiro. Johnnie Cochran. Robert Kardashian. A Timeline of Clarence Thomas Controversies. Sonia Sotomayor.

Ken Starr. Ketanji Brown Jackson. Winning 'Brown v. Board of Education' An aim of the case was to bring down the precedent set up by the decision of Plessy v.