Brown Vs the Board of Education

Education has long been regarded as a valuable asset for all of America's youth. Yet, when this benefit is denied to a specific group, measures must be taken to protect its educational right. In the 1950's, a courageous group of activists launched a legal attack on segregation in schools. At the head of this attack was NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall; his legal strategies would contribute greatly to the dissolution of educational segregation.

According to U.S. Court Cases the segregation among whites and blacks was a legal law established for almost sixty years in the United States. However, Brown vs. The Board of Education was the turning point in race relations. Still, most of the conflict between whites and blacks would be in the south, because they where the largest racial minority. They were subject to laws and customs, which prevented from full participation in social life. As a matter of fact, many of the laws imposed on black were that of segregation in public schools (U.S. Court Cases 154). Yet, to understand the laws that were being questioned in the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education, one must look back to the beginning, to when laws were first set to limit the lives of African Americans.

A little girl named Linda Brown, a black third-grader from Topeka, Kansas had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her elementary school which was for blacks only. Although there was an elementary school only 7 blocks away, it was for whites only. Oliver Brown, Linda’s father, tried to get her enrolled in the white elementary school but the principal of the school refused to have black students in his school. Brown decided that he was going to go to the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP had been waiting for a challenge to try and change the ways of the law and agreed to help