Brown Vs Board Of Education

Brown vs. Board of Education
It started when a young African American student in Topeka, Linda Brown, requested to attend a local all-white School in her neighborhood rather than an all-black school that was further away.   Linda had to walk one mile to get to her black school when there was a school just   blocks away.(Roth, 2005, pg.258 chap.2)   Her father tried to enroll her in the school that was closer but the principal of the school refused to allow her to enroll because it was an all-white school.   When the principal refused then her father decided to sue the board of education.
The case began in 1951 when Oliver Brown, her father, sued the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education.(Cottrol, 2003)   He was suing to allow his 8 year old daughter Linda to attend a school that only white children were allowed to attend. The U.S district court heard the case and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) argued that segregation was not good for black students because it gave them an understanding that they weren’t equal and even inferior to white students.   The board of Education argued that segregation prepared the students for their life under future segregation, and that segregation was not harmful to blacks.   The court agreed with brown but ruled that she had to attend the all-black school because the conditions of the school and the education received was equal to that of an all-white school.   The court ruled in favor of the board of education because no court ruling had ever overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson case that started segregation.
After numerous appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court.   There a lawyer named Thurgood Marshall argued on behalf of Brown and against segregation in America’s schools(Cozzens, 1998).   The case was first heard in 1952, but didn’t reach a decision.   The case was reheard in 1953,(Cozzens, 1998) and requested that both sides discuss the 14th amendment.   This helped very little because they didn’t...