Source: https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/may-17-1954-supreme-court-declares-school-segregation-unconstitutional-in-brown-v-board-of-education/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 02:41:58+00:00

Document:
Thomas J. O’Halloran/Library of Congress U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph CollectionIn Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall successfully argued that school segregation was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.
The decision overturned the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the court ruled that segregation laws were constitutional if equal facilities were provided to whites and blacks. Segregation was therefore justified under the doctrine “separate but equal,” but in few cases were segregated facilities actually equal. The disparity was particularly clear in public schools, where the amount of financing and the standard of education for all-black schools lagged far behind all-white schools.
In 1951, the NAACP recruited families from Topeka, Kan., to take part in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of school segregation. The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had a daughter who was forced to take a bus to an all-black school rather than attend the all-white school blocks from her house. The case was combined with similar cases from other parts of the country and argued before the Supreme Court by a team of NAACP lawyers headed by the future justice Thurgood Marshall.
In a separate 1955 case that became known as Brown II, the court ruled that school districts in the 17 states that required segregation and the four that allowed it (including Kansas) integrate their school systems “with all deliberate speed.” The ambiguity of the phrase encouraged many school districts to strongly resist integration, often by shutting down public schools and financing private schools (which were not affected by Brown) for white students. In some places, it took more than 10 years for public schools to become integrated.
In January 2012, The Times reported on a study by the Manhattan Institute that found that segregation in U.S. neighborhoods had greatly declined and that “the nation’s cities are more racially integrated than at any time since 1910.” While, as the article noted, the findings were generally accepted by a number of experts, some argued that the decline in busing to achieve racial integration has resulted in some public schools that are more segregated than before.
What are your thoughts on the evolution of integration in the United States since Brown? How do you think we should consider the issue of continued school segregation in the context of increased urban integration? Why?
Yes, it was 1954 that the Supreme Court declared school segregation was unconstitutional. Please tell me how Louisiana can still separate boys and girls in there schools here. I have lived in other States and there is not anymore Boys Academy or Girls Academy. The girls schools here do not even have equal rights when it come to getting to have any kind of sports. There are many other reasons but first how can they do this?
The May 16 article, discussing how the decision in Brown v. Bd of Education impacted on the First Lady, “The Decision That Helped Shape Michelle Obama,” overlooked a crucial and critical historical fact. Brown v. Bd of Education actually began with a school bus in Calarendon County, South Carolina. (See Chapter 1, “Simple Justice” by Richard Kluger.) Levi Pearson and three other individuals were seeking money to pay for gasoline for the school bus they and others in their community had privately purchased to transport black children to their segregated school. Their children had been walking 8 to 9 miles one way to get to their school, while white children were passing them on the free public school buses. Pearson volunteered to be the lead plaintiff in Levi Pearson v Clarendon County Bd of Education, signed by attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Harold Boulware. Mr. Levi, posthumously, received the Congressional Gold Medal on Sept. 8, 2004 for his courage to stand up and bring the first desegregation law suit that eventually became, Briggs v. Elliott, and which subsequently became Brown v. Bd of Education. We should never forget those who had the courage to stand up and be counted when such an act could result in their death.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.