Everything you know about Brown v. Board of Education is wrong

Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring racially segregated public schools unconstitutional.

The court’s ruling resolved a lawsuit filed by black parents fighting segregation laws in Topeka, Kansas. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs as part of the NAACP Legal Defense Funds’ efforts to overturn the 60-year-old “separate but equal” doctrine. On May 17, 1954, SCOTUS issued a unanimous decision, endlessly desegregating America’s public schools. Today, this landmark court case is being hailed as one of an important victories of the Civil Rights Movement. There is just one problem with this narrative:

Nothing like this has ever happened.

As with most versions of black history, there are two versions of the story. In your seventh-grade social studies textbook, you read a story that illustrates the slow but regular racial progress in America. While this uplifting tale is based on a near-true story, there is one other, lesser-known version:

In honor of the seventieth anniversary of this pivotal case history, listed below are 10 unwhitewashed facts you probably didn’t know.

1. You’re saying it wrong.

The first (and maybe most vital fact) about . is that it should actually be called

The case as we know it began when parents in Summerton, South Carolina, filed a lawsuit against Clarendon County School Board President R.W. Elliott. In a college district that was greater than 70 percent black, segregated all-white schools had 32 school buses, while black children needed to walk as much as nine miles to achieve their neglected schools. On May 16, 1950, the NAACP filed a lawsuit on behalf of black students, the primary of whom, alphabetically, was Harry Briggs Jr. A 12 months later, Oliver Brown filed a case on behalf of his daughter, Linda Brown.

Typically, Supreme Court cases are listed in alphabetical order by plaintiff or, within the case of a consolidated case, chronologically. The Supreme Court ultimately consolidated Briggs, Brown, and three other segregation cases once they got here before the court. Although Briggs was first in alphabetical order, the consolidated lawsuit was named after the Kansas case.

Even if the choice was named in reference to the Kansas case, it still mustn’t be called “When.” Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter in a close-by all-white school fairly than one a mile away, he joined a class-action lawsuit that was already pending. He was allowed to hitch the lawsuit since the remaining Topeka plaintiffs were women and the NAACP felt it will be higher to have a person spearheading the case.

2. Why there is no name

He was first in alphabetical order again. It was chronologically first. But for some reason the case was called

“We consolidated them and made Brown the first so that the whole thing wouldn’t feel like it was purely Southern,” Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark told Richard Kluger within the book “Simple Justice.” Some historians say Governor of South Carolina James F. Byrnesa staunch supporter of segregation and former Supreme Court justice, he convinced justices to defy the court’s naming convention after promising voters that “white and coloured children won’t “mix” in schools”

Earlier this 12 monthsThe Supreme Court dismissed the request to alter the name.

3. Segregation was not mandatory in Kansas.

One reason for changing the name of the case was that, unlike the opposite 4 states included within the lawsuit, most of Kansas’ schools were already integrated.

They sued the Topeka Board of Education because: Kansas law of 1877 gave districts in large cities the flexibility to segregate elementary schools. Like schools in small towns across the state, Topeka High School was already integrated. By contrast, integrated schools in South Carolina weren’t only illegal; they were constitutionally mandated.

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4. Integration was never the goal.

The Browns were also the one plaintiffs to expressly ask the court to permit their daughter to attend an all-white school. South Carolina plaintiffs demanded. Their entire case was based on the idea that white students were making the most of the theft of funds paid for by Summerton’s majority black residents. 107 parents who signed the act Petitionthis led to a case demanding “educational advantages and facilities equal in all respects to those afforded to whites.”

5. Thurgood Marshall was not an attorney

Attorneys Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg represented the Topeka case, while Marshall initially filed the lawsuit in South Carolina. Only after the justices consolidated the cases was Marshall chosen to deliver oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

6. created a brand new type of school.

Have you ever wondered why the demographics of most cities are a lot whiter than the demographics of school districts? For example, while the under 18 population within the US is 47.3% whitepublic schools are 43% white.

He did it.

Instead of integrating their schools, tens of millions of white families abandoned public schools private, all-white schools that also exist today. Today, Republican legislators in Georgia, Florida and other states are struggling to make use of public funds to finance these private, mostly white institutions.

7.

One of essentially the most famous by-products was The infamous “Doll Study” by Dr. Kenneth Clark.

The first psychological research project cited by the Supreme Court was commissioned specifically for the Briggs case to point out the psychological effects of segregation on black children. Scientists found that racial discrimination created feelings of inferiority and self-loathing in black children: “If society says that it is better to be white, not only whites but also Negroes come to believe it, Clarke testified. “The child may try to escape the trap of inferiority by denying the fact of his race.”

8. The Briggs family was driven out of town.

Shortly after filing the petition, Harry Briggs, Sr. was fired from his job at a neighborhood gas station, as was his wife, Eliza Briggs. The bank president then took over the family automotive. Even the family cow was trapped.

Not seriously.

Never mind.

9. The case was a matter of life and death.

Equality and justice weren’t the one causes of the Briggs case. The spark that lit the fuse occurred when an elementary school student drowned after falling from a raft on his option to school. For many students it was the one option to get to high school. Even once they arrived safely in school, they still had to gather wood to make a fireplace because there was no heating in black schools.

If only black people cared about education.

10. The case didn’t concern integrated schools.

Down integrate means “to form, coordinate, or combine into a functioning or unified whole” or “to end segregation and ensure equal membership in a society or organization.” Integration is defined as “the inclusion of equals in society or the organization of individuals from different groups.”

The Supreme Court’s decision did none of this stuff

Even though the court unanimously ruled that segregation was unconstitutional; white people largely ignored this decision. South Carolina had only just begun the desegregation process 1963. Mississippi, Virginia and other states began “mass resistance“, which opposed the Supreme Court’s decision for 15 years. Even today, most Black people children attend schools segregated by skin color. Nationally, white children are a minority in the public school system, but 77% attend predominantly white schools. Most non-white school districts receive them $23 billion less in financing than their mostly white counterparts. Black activists took advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision to make sure that the American education system stays separate and unequal.