Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court

Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational development of Negro children and to deprive them of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. We have now announced that segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.

It is so ordered.

Pictured above: Thurgood Marshall (Counsel for the NAACP, which represented plaintiff Linda and her father Oliver Brown. Marshall would later be appointed to the Supreme Court), Chief Justice Earl Warren, Linda Brown (who was denied admission to the Topeka public school near her home because of its "Whites Only" policy), W.E.B. DuBois (one of the founders of the NAACP, author of The Souls of Black Folk), Charles Houston (Counsel to the NAACP and architect of its litigation strategy; it was he who conceived of a plan to attack segregation in the courts. He died in 1950, too soon to see the fruition of his life's work.)