Brown v. Board of Education

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered racial desegregation of public schools. It was based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution,[1] and on social science research that claimed to show that black children have trouble learning unless white children are in the classroom. The decision led to later decisions requiring racial busing of school children.

[edit] Law & social change

It is debatable how much actual desegregation was a result of this ruling and related federal court decisions. This raises interesting questions as to the role of the Supreme Court in bringing about actual social change. No one today will dispute the need to end the earlier system of segregated schools, and the importance of the decision, but many will query whether it changed that much, or if its use was rather in sending a definitive signal that the days of segregation and institutionalized racism were at a close.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. In 1954, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. "Racially segregated schools," the Court concluded, are "inherently unequal." The Court found support for its decision in studies that indicated that minority students learn better in racially mixed classrooms. [1]
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