CLEP American Government, Chapter 25

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education (1954) brought together challenges to state-required school segregation from several communities. Years of legal strategy had already exposed inequality in graduate and professional education. In Brown, the Supreme Court addressed public elementary and secondary schools and unanimously held that state-imposed racial separation violated the Equal Protection Clause. Education had become a central governmental function, and when a state provided it, the opportunity had to be available on equal terms. The Court concluded that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Equal buildings, teacher salaries, or course lists therefore could not cure the constitutional injury created by compulsory racial separation itself. The Court considered the social meaning and effects of segregation, but its holding rested on the Fourteenth Amendment's equality guarantee rather than on one study or statistic. Keep the holding separate from the remedy. The 1954 decision-often called Brown I-identified the constitutional violation. The Court requested further argument about implementation and addressed relief in Brown II (1955), directing federal district courts to supervise desegregation with language calling for action "with all deliberate speed." That flexible wording gave resistant officials room to delay. Later cases had to define what genuine dismantling required, and executive enforcement became necessary when state officials defied federal orders.