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Topeka's elementary schools had been segregated since 1896, when the
Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned "separate
but equal" classrooms for black children. Until the landmark Brown
decision, young Linda Brown could not attend all-white Sumner Elementary
four blocks from her home. Instead, she had to cross a railroad yard and
busy boulevard to wait for a rickety and frequently-delayed bus that would
take her 20 blocks to all-black Monroe Elementary. The NAACP filed suit,
but in August 1951 a three-judge federal panel threw out the case, ruling
that although segregation might be detrimental to Topeka's black children,
it was not illegal, since all Topeka schools had equal facilities and programs.
The NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court, joining the Brown case with similar
cases from Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia,
and naming it after the Kansas case to show that the issue was not unique
to the South. Special counsel Thurgood Marshall argued that segregation
was unconstitutional because it stigmatized African Americans, thereby denying
them the equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice
Earl Warren and a unanimous court agreed.
On October 26, 1992, Congress passed Public Law 102-525 establishing Brown
v. Board of Education National Historic Site to commemorate the landmark
Supreme Court decision aimed at ending segregation in public schools. On
May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment
to the United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens "equal
protection of the laws."The site consists of the Monroe Elementary
School, one of the four segregated elementary schools for African American
children in Topeka, and the adjacent grounds. |
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