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Unlock This CourseLinda Brown was a black girl who lived in Topeka, Kansas. The nearest primary school, Sumner, was only a few streets from her home, but it was for white children only. Linda had to walk to a bus stop and ride to Monroe, a school for black children, much further away.
In 1950 the Topeka branch of the NAACP asked 13 black parents to try to enrol their children at their nearest white schools. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enrol her at Sumner. The school refused. In February 1951 the parents took the city's Board of Education to court. Oliver Brown's name came first on the list, so the case became Brown v Board of Education of Topeka.
The NAACP's role was vital. Ordinary families could not have paid for years of court cases, and they risked losing their jobs for speaking out. The NAACP found the families, paid the costs and supplied the lawyers, led by Thurgood Marshall.
A court in Kansas ruled against the parents later in 1951. It said the black and white schools in Topeka were roughly equal, so segregation was legal. The NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court. There, Brown was joined with similar NAACP cases from South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware, and a case from Washington DC was heard alongside them. This was no longer about one girl in Kansas. It was a test of school segregation itself.
Key terms:
In earlier cases the NAACP had argued that black facilities were not equal. This time Marshall went further. He argued that separate schools could never be equal, even when the buildings and books were just as good, because segregation itself harmed black children.
Marshall used the research of two black psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark. They showed black children a black doll and a white doll. Most of the children preferred the white doll, and many said the black doll looked 'bad'. Marshall argued that segregation taught black children to feel inferior.
The judges first heard the case in December 1952 and could not agree. Then, in September 1953, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died. President Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, the Governor of California. Warren believed segregation was wrong. He worked hard to persuade every judge, because he knew a split vote would encourage the South to resist.
On 17 May 1954 Warren read out the decision. It was unanimous: nine votes to none. The Court said that separating black children because of their race 'generates a feeling of inferiority', and it reached this conclusion:
'In the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.'
'Inherently' means by their very nature: separate schools were unequal simply because they were separate.
Segregated state schools now broke the Fourteenth Amendment, so they were against the Constitution. The Plessy ruling of 1896 had been overturned for schools.
But the Court had not said when or how schools must change. A year later, on 31 May 1955, it gave a second ruling, often called Brown II. Schools were to desegregate 'with all deliberate speed', and local courts were to oversee it. There was no deadline.
Black Americans celebrated, and some places obeyed quickly. Within about two years, cities on the edge of the South such as Washington DC, Baltimore and St Louis had begun to mix their schools. In the Deep South the reaction was anger and defiance.
The first was set up in Indianola, Mississippi, in July 1954. Within two years the councils had about 250,000 members. Many were respectable businessmen. They used economic pressure: black parents who asked for desegregation could lose their jobs, loans or homes.
In March 1956, 101 Southern members of Congress signed a statement calling the ruling 'a clear abuse of judicial power'. They promised to use 'all lawful means' to reverse it. They claimed the Court had trampled on states' rights.
Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia called for 'massive resistance'. Southern states passed laws to keep schools segregated. Alabama banned the NAACP from working in the state in 1956. Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed all its state schools from 1959 to 1964 rather than mix them.
President Eisenhower gave little help. He said he would uphold the law, but he refused to say in public that he agreed with the ruling, and at first he did very little to push the South to obey. Violence against black Americans also grew in these years, and the Ku Klux Klan began to revive.
Very little changed in the classroom. With no deadline and little pressure from the President, Southern school boards simply delayed. Each one had to be taken to court separately, which was slow and costly. In 1964, ten years after Brown, only about 2 per cent of black children in the Southern states went to school with white children. The ruling also covered schools only. Buses, restaurants and parks stayed segregated.
Yet Brown was a turning point.
Don't write that Brown ended segregation in the South. It made segregated schools illegal, but almost all of them stayed segregated for years, and the ruling did not cover buses or other public places. Don't confuse the two rulings either: the 1954 decision said segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the 1955 ruling (Brown II) said they must change 'with all deliberate speed'.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
The Brown ruling was greeted with cheers, but it proved a hollow victory. The judges set no deadline, and their vague call for 'all deliberate speed' was an open invitation to delay. Southern politicians seized it gladly. Ten years on, barely one black child in fifty in the South sat in a classroom with white children. For most black families, the famous words of 1954 had changed nothing but the headlines.
What impression does the author give about the Brown v Board of Education decision? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the Brown decision was a failure that achieved almost nothing. This is shown by the language. Calling it a 'hollow victory' suggests it looked like a win but was empty, and saying it 'changed nothing but the headlines' suggests it was only fine words. The author also blames the judges: their 'vague' ruling is described as 'an open invitation to delay', which makes the Court sound careless. The author has chosen to stress the lack of a deadline and the figure of 'barely one black child in fifty' ten years later. Nothing is said about the fact that Brown overturned 'separate but equal' or gave hope to campaigners. By selecting only the disappointing results, the author creates a negative impression.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations and what they suggest, and then explains what the author chose to stress and to leave out.
Don't just repeat what Extract A says about delay. Pick out loaded words such as 'hollow' and 'vague', say what each one suggests, and finish with a sentence on what the author left out. That comment on selection is what reaches the top level.