
Board of Education, the momentous case in which the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and White students to be unconstitutional.įor over 60 years, laws in the United States allowed racial segregation. We are now at the 64 th anniversary of one of the landmark points in the ongoing work toward that educational equality: Brown vs. Board of Education:Īs the National Association for Music Education strives to advance music education by promoting the understanding and making of music by all, that goal will not be reached until our nation’s schools provide an equitable education for all students. James Nabrit, Jr.64th Anniversary of Brown v. They stood together for the American principles: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” We can do the same today. Ordinary people stood together and changed history. The landmark decision overturned generations of discriminatory precedent and practice. On May 17, 1954, Warren wrote the unanimous decision striking down school segregation as unconstitutional. So that’s the link between Westminster and Brown.” “And to utilize that, as a matter of fact, as the model for the brief eventually in Brown v. “What I did was to get the documentation and try to write (the amicus brief submitted by the NAACP in support of the plaintiffs in the Mendez case) and the brief being, segregation per se was unconstitutional,” Robert L.

That case was argued before the Supreme Court in 19.įor that case, Thurgood Marshall assembled a team of outstanding attorneys, one of whom was Robert L. In 1951, Oliver Brown, the father of a 9-year-old elementary school student named Linda Brown, filed suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, because his daughter was barred from a school because of her race.

Now Marshall was arguing the case of the Brown family and other families before the Supreme Court, a court led by the same Earl Warren who had recently been appointed chief justice by President Dwight Eisenhower. Marshall had submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in favor of the Mendez family and the other plaintiffs in the case. Warren had signed the legislation ending school segregation in California. Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall played significant roles in the desegregation of California schools.
