Week Nine: Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
This week, we continue our exploration of Supreme Court decisions that help bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.
After nearly two decades of winning lower-profile integration lawsuits (largely in higher education) by demonstrating that separate was not equal, in 1954 civil rights lawyers associated with the NAACP and led by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall took on segregation in its most sensitive setting, K-12 education, and using an argument that went straight to the heart of the matter — separate is inherently unequal. The resulting decision makes Brown is one of the cases that most truly, and sharply, bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.
Follow the link below to short videos from C-SPAN Classroom on events leading up to the consolidated cases we know as Brown v. Board of Education, the cases themselves, Marshall’s long term legal strategy, the pathbreaking use of social science by the plaintiffs, the decision, and the legacy and not yet fully-realized potential of Brown v. Board of Education.
“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. ”
School integration. Barnard School, Washington, D.C. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Our latest series focuses on the US Supreme Court and the role it has played in the struggle for civil rights. This new series has three parts. First, we look at two cases that established the principle of judicial review of actions by federal (1803) and state (1817) government. Second, we look at a series of Supreme Court cases decided between 1857 and 1944. These cases made it easier for governments to deny individuals their rights and so each made the moral arc of the universe a little longer. Finally, we look at a series of cases decided between 1886 and 1983 that moved America forward toward justice. For this new series, we draw on some very short (thirty seconds to four-minute videos) from C-SPAN Classroom.